Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Split eight frames off each side of an ordinary hard cut, drop the Glitch filter onto both slivers, and copy the settings across so the two halves match. Two splits, one filter, sixteen frames of tearing with the edit hidden in the middle — and no keyframes anywhere.
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.
Nothing is downloaded, no overlay is imported, no second track is created and no transition object is made. Two clips butt against each other, two splits carve an eight-frame sliver off each side of the join, and one filter goes on both slivers.
Applying Glitch to a whole clip would tear the picture for its entire length. Splitting eight frames off each side of the cut gives the filter a short, disposable piece of footage to live on, so the effect starts and stops exactly where you want it without a single keyframe.
Eight frames out, eight frames in. The cut sits dead centre of the disturbance, which is what sells it as a transition rather than as damage on one shot. The on-screen caption — 8 frames on each side — is the only instruction the silent video gives in words.
Block height comes down to thin the tear bands, Frequency goes up so more of the frame tears at once, and Shift intensity goes up to throw the bands further sideways. Color intensity is never moved off 50.0 %.
Copy the filters on the first sliver, Paste filters on the second. The values come across identically, which is the only way to guarantee the two halves of the glitch look like one effect rather than two.
This video carries no chapter list and no narration, so there are no chapter titles to quote. The thirteen stops below are ours, read off the interface frame by frame and anchored to the timestamps where each operation is visible. Click any screencap or timestamp to play that moment right here in the card.
The video opens on its own title card — SHOTCUT 2-Minute Tip, then GLITCH TRANSITION. There is no narration anywhere in the runtime. Everything that follows was read off the interface itself.
Help → About Shotcut is opened on screen and reads Shotcut version 20.07.11, copyright 2011-2020 Meltytech, LLC. The video description says Shotcut V20.02.17 instead. The dialog is the stronger evidence, so this page uses 20.07.11 throughout and flags the disagreement rather than hiding it.
The Playlist holds exactly two files: Cliff - 28.mp4 at 00:00:03:19 and production ID_4612115.mp4 at 00:00:05:01. They go onto a single video track, V1, butted straight against each other. No second track is ever created.
The two clips are played through so the join can be seen. Nothing is overlapped and no transition object is made — the edit stays an ordinary cut, and the player duration field reads 00:00:08:20, the exact sum of the two clip lengths.
The playhead is parked at 00:00:03:11 — eight frames back from the cut at 00:00:03:19 — and the timeline toolbar's Split at playhead button is clicked. The burned-in caption on screen reads 8 frames on each side, which is the only instruction the video gives in words.
The playhead moves to 00:00:04:03 and splits again. That leaves four clips on V1: the long tail of Cliff - 28.mp4, an eight-frame sliver of it, an eight-frame sliver of production ID_4612115.mp4, and the rest of that second clip. The sliver is what gets the filter.
With the first sliver selected, + on the Filters panel opens the chooser. Typing glitc into the search box narrows a list of hundreds to one entry: Glitch, a video filter. The chooser on this build has three tabs — Favorite, Video and Audio.
Added to the sliver, the filter shows four controls under an empty Preset box — Frequency, Block height, Shift intensity and Color intensity — and every one of them sits at 50.0 %. That default is already a usable glitch; the rest of the video is taste.
Block height comes down first, which turns a few fat bands into many thin ones. Frequency then goes up, so more of the frame is disturbed at once. Shift intensity goes up last, pushing the displaced bands further sideways. The preview is doing all the talking here — the picture tears into horizontal stripes of shifted, colour-blown footage.
The panel settles on Frequency 65.8 %, Block height 19.7 %, Shift intensity 61.2 % and Color intensity 50.0 %. Color intensity is the one control never touched. Preset is left empty — nothing is saved under a name.
Rather than building the filter twice, the third button on the Filters toolbar is used. On this build that toolbar has four buttons only: add, remove, Copy the filters and Paste filters.
The eight-frame sliver of production ID_4612115.mp4 is selected — the Filters header changes to that filename — and the fourth toolbar button pastes Glitch in with all four values intact. Two instances of one filter now bracket the cut.
Played back, the effect runs for eight frames of the outgoing shot and eight of the incoming one — sixteen frames in total, the cut buried in the middle. The project is never saved, never named, and never exported on screen.
Every number below was read off the screen, because there is no audio to read it off. Where something was never shown, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
Two files, one video track, nothing else. They sit end to end on V1 with no gap and no overlap, so the join between them is an ordinary hard cut.
The two durations add up to the sequence length exactly, which is how you can tell nothing has been trimmed or overlapped.
Scrub to the join and read the player position field. Here it lands on 00:00:03:19 — the first frame of the second clip. Every number after this is measured from that one.
The timebase is 24 fps. The video never opens Settings → Video Mode, but eight frames after 00:00:03:19 is shown on screen as 00:00:04:03, and that arithmetic only works at 24 frames per second.
Move the playhead back eight frames, to 00:00:03:11, and press the Split at playhead button on the timeline toolbar — the keyboard shortcut is S. That carves an eight-frame sliver off the end of the outgoing clip.
Move forward to 00:00:04:03 and split again. V1 now carries four clips instead of two, and the two in the middle are the eight-frame slivers either side of the join. The on-screen caption for both of these operations is 8 frames on each side.
Select the outgoing sliver, open the Filters panel, press + and type glitc into the search box. One result comes back: Glitch. It arrives with four controls, all at 50.0 %, and an empty Preset box.
Block height comes down, Frequency goes up, Shift intensity goes up. Color intensity is left where it started. Lower Block height means thinner, more numerous tear bands; higher Frequency means more of the frame is torn at once; higher Shift intensity throws the torn bands further sideways.
These are Ben’s taste, not a rule. The defaults already glitch; these values simply make the tear finer and more violent.
With the first sliver still selected, press the third button on the Filters toolbar, Copy the filters. Select the incoming sliver — the panel header changes to production ID_4612115.mp4 — and press the fourth button, Paste filters. The four values come across untouched, so the two halves of the glitch match exactly.
On this build the Filters toolbar has four buttons: add, remove, Copy the filters, Paste filters. The move-up, move-down and close buttons, and the Save a filter set button, do not exist yet on 20.07.11.
That is the whole build. The glitch runs for eight frames of the outgoing shot and eight of the incoming one, with the cut itself buried in the middle of the disturbance. Nothing is keyframed, nothing is saved as a preset, and the project is never exported on screen.
Read directly off the frames. The video is silent, so there is no spoken figure anywhere on this page — every number here came out of the pixels.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 20.07.11 | Help → About Shotcut |
| Version in the description | V20.02.17 | Disagrees with the dialog — the dialog wins |
| Source clip 1 | Cliff - 28.mp4 · 00:00:03:19 | Playlist |
| Source clip 2 | production ID_4612115.mp4 · 00:00:05:01 | Playlist |
| Track layout | V1 only | Timeline — no second track anywhere |
| Sequence length | 00:00:08:20 | Player duration field |
| Timebase | 24 fps | Derived: 00:00:03:19 plus 8 frames is shown as 00:00:04:03 |
| The cut | 00:00:03:19 | A plain hard cut — no transition object |
| First split | 00:00:03:11 | 8 frames before the cut |
| Second split | 00:00:04:03 | 8 frames after the cut |
| Clips on V1 afterwards | 4 | Two long, two 8-frame slivers |
| Filter, the only one | Glitch | Applied twice — once per sliver |
| Preset | Empty | Nothing is saved under a name |
| Frequency | 50.0 % → 65.8 % | Glitch |
| Block height | 50.0 % → 19.7 % | Glitch |
| Shift intensity | 50.0 % → 61.2 % | Glitch |
| Color intensity | 50.0 % throughout | Glitch · never touched |
| How the second copy is made | Copy the filters → Paste filters | Filters toolbar, buttons three and four |
| Total glitch length | 16 frames · 8 either side | Roughly two thirds of a second at 24 fps |
| Thing | Status in this video |
|---|---|
| Keyframes | None. The stopwatch beside each control is never pressed, so the glitch is constant for its whole sixteen frames rather than ramping in and out. |
| A transition object | None. The clips are butted, never overlapped, so Shotcut never creates the purple transition rectangle this series shows elsewhere. |
| A filter set | Not possible on this build. Save a filter set and the Sets tab do not exist on 20.07.11 — the filter chooser has only Favorite, Video and Audio. |
| A preset | The Preset box stays empty for both copies. |
| Export settings | Never opened. The project is not saved, not named and not exported on screen. |
| Video mode / frame rate | Never opened. The 24 fps figure on this page is derived from the timecodes, not read from a dialog. |
| Narration | None. The video is silent apart from its music bed; there is no uploaded caption track either. |
| Point | Glitch Transition · Sep 2020 | Light Burst · Oct 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| What sits at the cut | Four clips — 8 frames split off each side | Four clips — 12 frames split off each side |
| Edits needed | Two splits | Two splits |
| Filter instances | 2 · one per sliver | 2 · one per segment |
| The filter | Glitch | Color Grading |
| Effect length | 16 frames · 8 either side | 24 frames · 12 either side |
| Keyframes | None — constant for the whole run | 2 per segment · 4 in all |
| How the copy is made | Copy the filters → Paste filters | Built twice by hand |
| Effect on sequence length | Unchanged — nothing is consumed | Unchanged — nothing is consumed |
| Shotcut build | 20.07.11 · Sep 2020 | V20.09.27 · Oct 2020 |
Two builds, one structure. A month after this video, the Light Burst tutorial does the identical thing with a different filter: split a fixed number of frames off each side of a hard cut, put one filter instance on each sliver, leave the sequence length alone. Only the filter and the frame count change — sixteen frames of Glitch here, twenty-four frames of keyframed Color Grading there. If you can build one you can build the other. The 2024 Flash Transition tutorial replaces that whole approach with a real transition object, which is the newer and tidier route — but it needs spare footage on both sides of the join, and this split-and-filter method does not.
Two things about the version. The description under the video says Shotcut V20.02.17, but the About Shotcut dialog opened on screen at 0:09 plainly reads 20.07.11. This page follows the dialog. And on that build the project-wide filter target at the top of the timeline is already labelled Output, not Master — useful if you are following an older tutorial that calls it by the earlier name.
On a current Shotcut. Glitch and its four controls are unchanged, and the whole method still works exactly as shown. Two things have been added since: the Filters toolbar now carries move-up, move-down, close and Save a filter set buttons alongside the four seen here, and the filter chooser has a fourth tab, Sets. On a modern build you can save this configuration once as a named set and skip the copy-and-paste step entirely.
This tutorial has no narration. Its audio is a music bed only, and no caption track was ever uploaded with it, so there is nothing to transcribe. What follows is every piece of text burned into the picture, quoted verbatim, with the timestamp it appears at. Everything else on this page — every filename, timecode and percentage — was read off the interface in the frames.
SHOTCUT · 2-Minute Tip · GLITCH TRANSITION — the opening title card.
8 frames on each side — held under the timeline across both splits. The only instruction the video puts into words.
If this video has inspired you in any way, I’d LOVE for you to SUBSCRIBE NOW. It goes a long way to help my channel! · bentacular · LINKS ABOUT GEAR USED IN THE VIDEO ARE IN THE DESCRIPTION — the end card.
