Six free Final Cut plugins: Transitions with curve controls

In which I provide six Final Cut plugins that provide more controls for video transitions.

If you want more control over how transitions start and finish, try these six transitions. Depending on the nature of the effect, you might want transitions to ease in and ease out. In other cases, you might want the effect to start quickly and finish slowly.

Here’s what they look like:

Cross Dissolve + curve

The graph shows the visibility of the outgoing clip. On the left, it starts at 100%, it initially reduces in visibility quite slowly. The curve is at its steepest halfway through the transition – the visibility is changing the most quickly at this point. The curve is shallower towards the right. That is when the visibility is changing more slowly as it approaches 0.

The curve controls look like this:

To display the graph, choose ‘Curve’ from the View pop-up. To change the shape of the curve, click the ‘+’ next to the point you want to change, then drag in the Canvas.

For example, these settings:

…produce this graph. The dissolve will happen quickly initially, then slow down:

If the ‘Green’ point (the control for the angle at which the curve approaches the end of the transition) is changed, the transition will start quickly, continue slowly and finish quickly:

Cross Zoom + curve

This version of the built-in transition ‘Cross Zoom’ adds controls so you can choose which parts of the incoming and outgoing clips are zoomed into and out of:

Which produces results like this:

Spinback3D + curve

There is also an extra control to choose a custom background colour for the background of the transition.

Spin3D + curve

Swing + curve

Zoom + curve

To use this plugin, download the ZIP document, copy the ‘Alex4D_transitions_+_curves’ folder to

Your Startup HD/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins

(Your Startup HD/Users/your name/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Express Support/Plugins for Final Cut Express users)

All the transitions except ‘Cross Dissolve + curve’ will appear in the ‘3D Simulation’ transition category. ‘Cross Dissolve + curve’ will appear in the ‘Dissolve’ transition category.

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