Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Two copies of the same clip on one track, one of them desaturated, joined by a Bar Horizontal transition with Softness dragged to 0 %. The divider is a hard vertical line that slides across the frame — and that zero is the whole reason it is a wipe and not a cross-fade.
Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut filter, control and value names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.
A before-and-after wipe shows the same shot graded and ungraded at the same moment, divided by a vertical line that travels across the frame. Here the “grade” is a single desaturation, and the moving line is a transition Shotcut already ships with.
Both halves are one clip. The bottom copy stays exactly as shot and becomes the “before”; the top copy carries one filter and becomes the “after”. Nothing else differs, which is what makes the comparison honest.
Saturation with its Level at 0 % turns the top copy black and white. Any grade would work in its place — the wipe does not care what the difference is, only that there is one.
Both copies end up on one track with their ends overlapping. Shotcut converts any overlap on a single track into a transition clip by itself, and that clip is where the whole effect lives.
The overlap arrives as Dissolve at 20 %, which cross-fades the two copies across a wide gradient. Bar Horizontal at 0 % replaces that blend with one crisp travelling line. That single number is the difference between the effect working and looking like a fade.
[ Once that’s zero, you notice here, it’s a hard edge ]
Ben Espanto · 7:05
Click any screencap or timestamp to play that section from its exact second, right here in the card. Quotes are transcribed verbatim from the audio. YouTube’s chapter data carries five boundaries and the last of them runs to the end of the video, so the final three cards were derived from the frames and are marked as such.
“In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to do the sliding before and after wipe the easy way.”
No interface on screen yet — this is the finished effect, demonstrated on the sunset beach clip the whole tutorial uses. Black and white on the left, full colour on the right, and a hard vertical edge travelling across the frame between them. The chapter also sets up what the build needs: one clip, and a desaturated copy of it.
“And you do that by clicking control I or right clicking and going to operations and then add video track.”
The Timeline menu is open on Track Operations, whose submenu lists Add Audio Track (Ctrl+U), Add Video Track (Ctrl+I), Insert Track (Ctrl+Alt+I) and Remove Track (Ctrl+Alt+U). With V2 created, the clip on V1 is copied and pasted onto it so both copies start on exactly the same frame.
“So now we have a black and white version.”
The top copy on V2 is selected, Filters holds a single entry — Saturation — and its Level field reads 0 %. That copy is now the “after”. The rest of the chapter splits both clips with Split At Playhead so their ends overlap instead of butting together.
“And now you’ve created an overlap.”
The desaturated copy has been dragged off V2 onto V1 and pushed left over the first clip until it snapped to the playhead. Shotcut turns the overlapping region into a transition clip on its own — the purple hourglass block in the middle of V1. At this point it is still a cross-fade.
“Once that’s zero, you notice here, it’s a hard edge.”
Softness reads 0 % and the preview shows the result: desaturated on the left, colour on the right, separated by one crisp vertical line. Playhead 00:00:03:15 of 00:00:09:07. This is the setting the whole effect turns on — at any softness above zero the two copies blend and the shot reads as a cross-fade rather than a comparison.
“There are actually other ways you can do it by using masks and all these other different types.”
The playhead has run past the transition, so the frame is entirely the desaturated copy. Nothing here is a mask: the only filter in the project is Saturation, and the moving edge came from a transition Shotcut already ships with. Ben names the mask route as an alternative but never opens one on screen.
Derived card. YouTube’s own chapter data stops at 6:59 and runs a single block from there to the end, so this boundary was read off the frames rather than supplied by the video.
“And so if you want to do, let’s say, barn door vertical, instead of left to right, it’s top to bottom.”
Video has been switched to Barn Door Vertical with Softness still at 0 %. The preview at 00:00:03:17 shows the black and white closing in from the top and bottom edges at once, leaving a colour band across the middle — which is the correction Ben makes aloud a few seconds later.
Derived card. YouTube’s own chapter data stops at 6:59 and runs a single block from there to the end, so this boundary was read off the frames rather than supplied by the video.
“So if we go back to Bar Horizontal, again, you go left to right.”
The Video dropdown open on the transition, Bar Horizontal highlighted. Every entry in it is the same build with a different edge shape — Bar Vertical, four Barn Door variants, Diagonal Top Left and Diagonal Top Right, six Matrix patterns, Barn V Up, Iris Circle, Double Iris, Iris Box, three Box wipes, Clock Top and Custom…. The video closes on the channel outro.
Derived card. YouTube’s own chapter data stops at 6:59 and runs a single block from there to the end, so this boundary was read off the frames rather than supplied by the video.
Every number below was read off the frames of the video, never from the narration. Where the interface never displayed a value, none is stated here.
Filter names, the Timeline menu and the wipe list below all match the release shown on screen. On a newer build the control names are the same, but the list of transitions is longer.
One file does the whole job. In the video it is a sunset beach shot sitting in the Playlist as item #1, dragged straight down into the Timeline.
Preview scaling is a playback-performance setting only and does not change the export. The project video mode dialog is never opened on screen, so no resolution or frame rate is claimed on this page.
Open the Timeline menu → Track Operations → Add Video Track, or press Ctrl+I directly. V2 appears above V1.
Select the clip on V1, copy it, click into V2 and paste. Both copies must start on the same frame — the comparison only reads if the two halves are the same moment of the same shot.
This second track is scaffolding. By the end of the build it is empty again, because the copy gets dragged back down onto V1.
Select the clip on V2, open Filters, add Saturation and drag Level to 0 %. That copy is now the “after”; the untouched copy on V1 is the “before”.
Black and white is simply the clearest possible difference for a demonstration. Swap in a colour grade, a blur or a sharpen and every other step is identical.
Park the playhead where you want the wipe to happen and use Split At Playhead on the top copy, then delete its head so the untouched copy plays first. Next split the bottom copy later than that point and delete its tail, leaving a region where the two clips would sit on top of each other.
The overlap length is the wipe duration. On the ruler it works out at roughly one second; Shotcut never prints a number for it in the transition’s own panel.
Put the playhead exactly where the top clip begins, then drag that clip down into V1 and push it left over the first clip until it snaps to the playhead. Shotcut converts the overlapping region into a transition clip — the purple hourglass block.
After this, V2 is empty. The finished project is a single track: original, transition, desaturated copy.
Select the transition clip and open Properties. It arrives as Dissolve, which cross-fades the two copies — the shot simply drains to grey. Change Video to Bar Horizontal and the blend becomes a vertical edge travelling left to right.
This is the step that makes it a wipe. At the default 20 % the two copies blend across a wide gradient and the shot still reads as a cross-fade. Drag the slider to 0 % and the boundary collapses to one crisp vertical line — a genuine divider between two states of the frame, not a blend of them.
There are no keyframes anywhere in this build. The divider moves because a transition plays across its own length; the Keyframes panel is never opened in the video, and no filter in the project has a stopwatch enabled.
Read directly off the frames. Where a value changed on screen, the tuning path is shown separately below.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 21.01.29 | Help → About Shotcut |
| Source clip | video.mp4 | Playlist item #1 |
| Source duration | 00:00:09:07 | Playlist |
| Preview scaling | ON at 540p | Player status bar |
| Track stack, while building | V2 desaturated copy / V1 original | Timeline |
| Track stack, final | V2 empty / V1 original + transition + desaturated copy | Timeline |
| Filter — the only one used | Saturation | Filters, on the top copy |
| Level | 0 % | Saturation |
| Transition created by | Overlapping two clips on one track | Timeline |
| Video, as created | Dissolve | Properties → Transition |
| Video, final | Bar Horizontal | Properties → Transition |
| Invert Wipe | Unchecked throughout | Properties → Transition |
| Softness, final | 0 % | Properties → Transition |
| Audio | Cross fade (selected) | Properties → Transition |
| Mix | A — B, 0 % | Properties → Transition |
| Overlap / wipe length | About one second on the ruler | Never shown as a number |
| Keyframes | None — the Keyframes panel is never opened | Not used in this build |
| Mask filters | None — named aloud at 7:31 as a different route only | Not used in this build |
| Timestamp | Video | Invert Wipe | Softness | What the frame shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6:10 | Dissolve | unchecked | 20 % | As created — a cross-fade, no edge at all |
| 6:30 | Bar Horizontal | unchecked | 20 % | An edge appears, but feathered into a wide band |
| 7:02 | Bar Horizontal | unchecked | 15 % | Mid-drag — still a gradient |
| 7:04 | Bar Horizontal | unchecked | 0 % | One crisp vertical line, travelling left to right |
| 7:50 | Barn Door Vertical | unchecked | 0 % | Closes from the top and bottom edges at once |
| 8:10 | Bar Horizontal | unchecked | 0 % | Back to the left-to-right wipe, final state |
Softness is the only value worth touching, and only downward. Anything above 0 % softens the divider into a blend and the shot stops reading as a comparison. The wipe’s speed is not a setting at all — it is the length of the overlap you left on the timeline.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product and control names the transcriber mangled have been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.
In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to do the sliding before and after wipe the
easy way.
I'm just a normal person with no video editing background, who wanted to start making YouTube
videos and maybe cool transitions and effects.
I don't really plan on being a professional video editor, so I was looking for a free,
easy to learn video editing software.
Luckily I stumbled on Shotcut, a free open source video editing program that can do many
of the tricks you can do on more enterprise video editors like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci
Resolve, but with a much simpler and leaner interface, thus dramatically shortening the
learning curve.
It just takes using your imagination.
So let's learn together.
So let's start out with the version that I'm using for this tutorial.
So in this tutorial, I am using the newest version, which is version 21.01.29.
OK, basically to get started, we need to come up with two files, the before and the after.
And so I took the liberty of downloading the most colorful video that I can find, which
is this one here.
And what I'm going to do is use the colorful version as the before video.
And then the after will be a black and white version of the exact same video.
So first let's get started.
Let's drag the video into the timeline.
Like so.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to add another track on the timeline.
And you do that by clicking Ctrl+I or right clicking and going to operations and then
add video track.
So on the second track, I am going to copy the existing video and then I'm going to
go into the top track and I'm going to paste the exact same video, making sure that I match
them exactly.
So at this point, all I have is the exact same video on top of each other.
And so what I'm going to do is make the bottom track, the before video, and then
the top track be the after video.
So like I said, the after video is going to be a black and white version of the bottom
video.
So I'm going to select that top video, I'm going to go into filters.
And the quickest way for me to turn this into black and white is to choose Saturation
and then drag the Saturation all the way down to zero.
So now we have a black and white version.
And if I play it from the beginning and I turn the visibility on and off, you then see that
it's the identical video but just the black and white version.
So now we want to start out with the before video.
So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to clip part of the top video.
So with the cursor where the selection is where I want to cut, I'm going to choose
the split icon and then I'm just going to delete that area there.
So now the bottom video is showing through and so this is what that looks like.
And then all of a sudden it's going to show the top video.
So I now want to choose where the bottom video ends, but I'm not going to cut it
exactly where the top video begins.
I'm actually going to give myself some overlap.
So I'm going to probably go to here, select the bottom video.
Once again, click the split icon.
And then select the area I want to delete and click delete.
And so now we have this.
You notice this area over here where the bottom extends a little bit further
and then the top is a little bit earlier than when the second video comes in.
That's because I'm going to use this area here as the overlap between the first
video and the second video.
And so you need to position the cursor exactly where the top video begins.
And with the cursor being at that position, now you can click and drag
that top video into the bottom track.
And then once you've dragged it there, you then drag the video over the first video
until it clicks into that cursor area right there.
And now you've created an overlap.
And this is what it looks like with the current settings.
So it's going to slowly turn into black and white.
And that's because when you create an overlap like that, which is a transition,
it defaults to a cross dissolve.
So we need to change that.
So if you go to properties while the transition is selected, you notice there,
the dissolve is the default value.
We actually want to go to Bar Horizontal, right?
So with that chosen, we get a little closer to that swipe that we want to occur.
But if you notice, let's bring it back here.
If you notice the boundary is a little feathered.
And that's because when you go up here, you notice that there's a little bit
of a softness to it, which is a 20% softness.
And so what we want to do is we actually want to eliminate that softness
by dragging this all the way to zero.
Once that's zero, you notice here, it's a hard edge.
And so once I play it now, all of a sudden, you get that sliding
or that swipe before and after look.
And literally that's it.
That's the easiest way to do it on Shotcut.
There are actually other ways you can do it by using masks
and all these other different types.
But literally, this is all you have to do.
And the cool thing about it is it's already built in to Shotcut
through all their default transitions.
And so if you want to do, let's say, Barn Door Vertical,
instead of left to right, it's top to bottom.
Or actually no, it closes from both sides, top to bottom.
So if we go back to Bar Horizontal, again, you go left to right.
And that's it.
I hope you find this useful.
This was a quick one today.
But again, thank you for watching.
I just wanted to remind you that if you haven't yet, go visit my channel.
I'm sure you'll find tons of Shotcut related videos.
And don't forget to subscribe so that you know when I drop
a new Shotcut related tutorial.
Every video on my channel was done on Shotcut.
So aside from examples of what Shotcut can do,
you can also visit my playlist of tips and tutorials,
all geared toward the beginner.
Visit my Shotcut tips and tricks playlist
and learn all the tips and tricks I've learned during my journey
toward video editing.
So once again, please subscribe.
And I'll see you next time.
Thank you.
