Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Six frames are split off either side of a plain cut. On each one, Rotate and Scale turns the frame half a revolution and pushes it past 200 %, and Blur: Gaussian ramps in and back out. That is the whole transition — no transition clip, no overlap, no plugin.
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.
The cut between two clips stays exactly where it is. What changes is the last six frames of the outgoing clip and the first six of the incoming one — and all the change is keyframes on two ordinary filters.
Rotation runs 0 to 180 across the outgoing six frames and 180 to 360 across the incoming six. One unbroken revolution, split across the cut.
A rotated frame leaves black wedges at the corners of a rectangular canvas. Scale is pushed to 200 % to cover them, which is also what makes the shot lunge at the viewer.
Blur: Gaussian ramps 0.0 to 60.0 on the way out and 60.0 back to 0.0 on the way in, so the softest frame in the sequence is the one on either side of the join.
At roughly a fifth of a second per side, the eye reads motion rather than detail. Longer and it stops being a transition; shorter and the spin never registers.
[ We might have to key frame every frame of this transition, but thankfully there’s only six frames ]
Ben Espanto · 6:54
The chapters on this video were generated by YouTube, not written by Ben: the first has no title at all and the rest are lowercase fragments lifted straight out of the narration. Their timings are useful and were checked against the frames, so those are kept and the titles above were written fresh. YouTube’s list also stops at 12:43 while the video runs to 19:47; every card marked DERIVED was read off the frames instead and says where it was read from. Click any screencap or timestamp to play that section from its exact second, right here in the card.
“In this quick tutorial, I’m going to show you how to do a spin blur transition, so stay tuned.”
YouTube left this first chapter untitled, so the title above was written from the frames. The effect runs before any interface appears — one clip whips into a rotating, expanding blur and lands on the next. No panel is on screen for this whole stretch; the app opens at 0:40.
“And in this particular tutorial, I’m using version 20.07.11.”
Derived from the frames. Help → About Shotcut, open on screen from roughly 1:08 to 1:13: Shotcut version 20.07.11, “a free, open source, cross platform video editor”, Copyright © 2011-2020 Meltytech, LLC. Every panel layout, filter name and field label below is that release — later builds rename Rotate and Scale to Size, Position & Rotate.
“So I’m starting out with a couple of royalty-free videos here that I’ve downloaded.”
The Playlist holds exactly two source files: #1 girl.mp4, Duration 00:02:49:16, and #2 video.mp4, Duration 00:00:11:17. The transition is built between them — the first spins out, the second spins in. The player status bar reads Preview scaling is ON at 360p, a playback setting only; it does not touch the export.
“And so I’m actually going to shorten this first clip down to about 10 seconds here.”
The source clip is nearly three minutes long, which makes the transition point impossible to work with. He splits it with the Split button, deletes the tail, then butts video.mp4 up against the end of what is left. The finished project runs 00:00:21:15.
“And then I’m going to isolate that transition point by splitting it. … Count to six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Split that as well.”
This is the move the whole tutorial rests on. Six frames are counted back from the end of girl.mp4 and split off; six frames are counted forward from the start of video.mp4 and split off too. The spin lives entirely inside those two short segments — everything either side stays untouched. Screencap at 3:55; V1 carries girl.mp4, V2 carries video.mp4.
“And what we want to do is we want to start out with a rotation of zero degrees and end up, by the end of the clip, rotating it all the way to 180 degrees.”
One filter, added to the outgoing six-frame segment only: Rotate and Scale. With the playhead on the segment’s first frame — 00:00:09:16 — the Rotation stopwatch is clicked, which writes a keyframe at the value already in the box: 0.0 deg. Scale stays at 100.0 % for now, and both offsets at 0. Screencap at 4:30.
“Let’s then fast forward to the very end and let’s set the key frame to 180 degrees.”
The playhead moves to 00:00:09:22, the segment’s last frame, and Rotation is typed as 180.0 deg. Two keyframes now bracket six frames and Shotcut fills the gap linearly. Reading the panel at intermediate positions proves it: 30.0 deg at 09:17, 60.0 deg at 09:18, 120.0 deg at 09:20, 150.0 deg at 09:21 — a clean 30 deg per frame.
“… and within the same filter we can also apply the zoom effect using the scale side of it right now to make sure we eliminate these gaps that we see here.”
A rotated frame does not fill a rectangular canvas — black wedges appear at the corners. Scale is not decoration here; it is the fix. Pushing the frame past 100 % while it turns keeps the canvas covered, and the growing magnification is what sells the whip. Screencap at 6:10.
“And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to choose the key frame icon. Now on the scale section, click that and make sure it starts out at 100%. … We might have to key frame every frame of this transition, but thankfully there’s only six frames.”
The Scale stopwatch is clicked while the playhead sits on the segment’s first frame, writing 100.0 % there. Both stopwatches now read as active. Because the segment is only six frames long, he keyframes it almost frame by frame rather than trusting one long ramp. Screencap at 6:50.
“And so now we’re going to move it to the third frame. … And so I’m going to guess maybe 190. Nope. 200. Okay. Maybe 210 is the way to go.”
Screencap at 7:50, playhead 00:00:09:18 — the third frame of the segment — with Scale still reading 175.7 % from the second-frame pass, moments before 190, 200 and finally 210 are tried. The Keyframes panel below shows the shape: Rotation climbing in a straight line right across the segment, Scale stepping up early and then holding flat.
“And in this instance, I prefer using the Gaussian blur. So I’m going to choose Gaussian blur. While the cursor is still at the beginning of the clip, I’m going to click the key frame icon again. I’m going to default to zero and then go to the very end of the clip.”
Derived from the frames. Typing blur into the filter search at 9:10 returns five: Blur: Box, Blur: Exponential, Blur: Gaussian, Blur: Low Pass and Reduce Noise: Smart Blur. Blur: Gaussian is the pick, and it is added as a second filter on the same segment — the filter list reads Rotate and Scale then Blur: Gaussian, in that order.
“So that’s the first part of the zoom transition, or the rotation transition, my bad.”
Derived from the frames. Blur: Gaussian carries a single field, Amount, and it is keyframed the same way as the other two: 0.0 on the segment’s first frame, climbing to the last. This screencap catches it at 50.0 during tuning; it is raised again later and finishes at 60.0.
“Otherwise, if we click zero, it’s going to rotate counterclockwise. … So instead of 180 to zero, we’re actually going to go 180 to 360.”
This is the one place the effect is easy to get wrong. video.mp4 gets its own Rotate and Scale, and its first keyframe has to be 180.0 deg, not 0.0 deg — otherwise the second half unwinds counterclockwise and the spin visibly reverses at the cut. The panel here reads Rotation 180.0 deg on video.mp4.
“And that should complete the full circle, just like that.”
Derived from the frames. The last keyframe of the incoming segment is 360.0 deg — one continuous revolution across the cut rather than two half-turns that fight each other. Verified against intermediate positions: 300.0 deg at 00:00:10:02 and 330.0 deg at 00:00:10:03, the same 30 deg per frame as the outgoing half.
“… the second half of the transition we’re actually shrinking. So let’s see what that looks like. … Let’s run the full transition.”
Derived from the frames. Scale on the incoming segment runs the outgoing values backwards: it starts high and lands on 100.0 % at the final frame, 00:00:10:04. In the Keyframes panel the Scale track is a descending line where the outgoing clip’s was a rising one.
“We’re going to add another keyframe. We’re going to need to magnify this a little bit. Let’s say 170 close, probably 175. … Then we’re going to go one frame before that. We need to magnify that to, let’s say, 200 right there.”
Derived from the frames. The middle of the incoming segment is tuned by eye, one frame at a time, until no black wedge survives at any point in the turn. Values read off the panel across this stretch: 203.8 %, 182.0 %, 136.7 %, 118.3 % and 100.0 %, all on Scale at 00:00:10:02 and 00:00:10:03.
“Actually, it looks like it dropped by the time we got to the end. So we’re going to set this last key frame to 60 as well. And then we’re going to go over here. Once again, we’re going to add another filter and that’s going to be blur, Gaussian blur.”
Derived from the frames. The outgoing blur is finalised at Amount 60.0 on its last frame — up from the 50.0 seen earlier — and a matching Blur: Gaussian is then added to video.mp4. The two are mirror images: 0.0 to 60.0 going out, 60.0 to 0.0 coming in, so the frame is at its softest exactly at the join.
“And there you go. … So there you go. That’s the spin blur transition.”
Derived from the frames. Six frames out, six frames in, two filters per segment, nothing else. The timeline is still just V1 and V2 with a plain cut between them — there is no transition clip, no overlap and no plugin anywhere in this project.
“… if you have any other suggestions on the type of tutorials you’d like to see or if you have any comments about this particular tutorial, please let me know on the comments section of this video.”
The outro plays over footage rather than interface. Worth keeping in mind if you try this yourself: the six-frame length and the 210 % peak are taste, not law — a longer segment gives a slower, heavier whip, and a lower peak keeps more of the shot readable through the turn.
Every number below was read off the screen in the video — the filter panel, the keyframes panel and the player timecode field. Nothing here is a recommended-sounding guess; where a value was never shown, it says so.
In the video the Playlist holds girl.mp4 and video.mp4. The first is dropped on V1, trimmed to about ten seconds, and the second is butted against it on V2. There is no overlap and no transition clip — a plain cut is all the effect needs.
The status bar reads Preview scaling is ON at 360p throughout. That is a playback-performance setting and does not affect the export.
Park the playhead on the join, step back six frames and press Split. Do the same forward from the start of the second clip and split there too. You now have two short segments that nothing else in the project depends on.
Six is Ben’s own count, said out loud at 3:25 and again at 6:58. Everything downstream is sized to it.
Select the short segment on V1, open Filters, add Rotate and Scale. The panel in this build carries Preset, Rotation, Scale, X offset, Y offset and Background color. Later Shotcut releases ship the same filter under the name Size, Position & Rotate.
Leave X offset and Y offset at 0 for the whole build — they are never touched in the video.
With the playhead on the segment’s first frame, click the stopwatch beside Rotation. That writes a keyframe at the current value, 0.0 deg. Move to the last frame and type 180.0 deg. Shotcut interpolates the six frames in between.
The ramp really is linear, and the panel proves it: 30.0 deg at 00:00:09:17, 60.0 deg at 00:00:09:18, 120.0 deg at 00:00:09:20, 150.0 deg at 00:00:09:21.
Still on the first frame, click the stopwatch beside Scale with the value at 100.0 %. Then step forward frame by frame and magnify until the black corner wedges disappear. In the video the second frame lands on 175.7 % and the third on 210.0 %, reached after trying 190 and 200. From there it holds flat to the end of the segment.
Scale is doing a job, not a flourish. Too little and the corners go black mid-turn; too much and the subject leaves the frame.
With the segment still selected, add a second filter. Type blur into the filter search — the list returns Blur: Box, Blur: Exponential, Blur: Gaussian, Blur: Low Pass and Reduce Noise: Smart Blur. Choose Blur: Gaussian. It sits after Rotate and Scale in the filter list, so it blurs the already-rotated result.
Blur: Gaussian in this build exposes exactly one field: Amount. There is no percent sign on it and no second slider.
On the segment’s first frame, click the stopwatch beside Amount and set it to 0.0. On the last frame, set 60.0. The clip therefore leaves the cut at its blurriest.
Select the short segment on V2 and add the same two filters. Rotation starts at 180.0 deg — not 0.0 deg — and ends at 360.0 deg. Scale starts at 210.0 % and lands on 100.0 %. Amount starts at 60.0 and lands on 0.0.
Starting the second half at 0.0 deg is the classic mistake: the spin reverses direction at the cut and the whole illusion dies. 180.0 deg to 360.0 deg keeps one continuous revolution.
Play it back, then step through the incoming segment frame by frame and add Scale keyframes wherever a black wedge shows. Values read off the panel during this pass: 203.8 %, 182.0 %, 136.7 %, 118.3 %, then 100.0 % at the last frame.
Nothing in the video is exported, so no export preset, codec or bitrate was ever shown. That part is your own project’s business.
Read directly off the frames of the video — the filter panel, the keyframes panel and the player timecode field. No value here came from the narration.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 20.07.11 | Help → About Shotcut |
| Copyright line | © 2011-2020 Meltytech, LLC | About Shotcut |
| Project duration | 00:00:21:15 | Player, total field |
| Source clip 1 | girl.mp4 · 00:02:49:16 | Playlist #1 |
| Source clip 2 | video.mp4 · 00:00:11:17 | Playlist #2 |
| Track stack | V2 video.mp4 / V1 girl.mp4 | Timeline |
| Preview scaling | ON at 360p | Player status bar |
| Filter 1 | Rotate and Scale | Both transition segments |
| Filter 2 | Blur: Gaussian | Stacked after the first |
| Fields on Rotate and Scale | Preset, Rotation, Scale, X offset, Y offset, Background color | Filter panel |
| Fields on Blur: Gaussian | Preset, Amount | Filter panel |
| X offset / Y offset | 0 / 0 — never changed | Rotate and Scale |
| Background color | Left at its default; never set in the video | Rotate and Scale |
| Keyframe interpolation | Linear (diamond markers) | Keyframes panel |
| Segment length | 6 frames per side | Timeline |
| Frame | Timecode | Rotation | Scale | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — keyframe | 00:00:09:16 | 0.0 deg | 100.0 % | 0.0 |
| 2 — keyframe | 00:00:09:17 | 30.0 deg | 175.7 % | interpolated |
| 3 — keyframe | 00:00:09:18 | 60.0 deg | 210.0 % | interpolated |
| 5 | 00:00:09:20 | 120.0 deg | 210.0 % | interpolated |
| 6 | 00:00:09:21 | 150.0 deg | 210.0 % | interpolated |
| 7 — keyframe | 00:00:09:22 | 180.0 deg | 210.0 % | 60.0 |
Ben counts six frames and Shotcut shows seven timecodes, because both ends carry a keyframe: 00:00:09:16 through 00:00:09:22 is six steps. The Rotation column is the proof that the interpolation is linear — every reading falls exactly on 30 deg.
| Position | Timecode | Rotation | Scale | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First keyframe | segment start | 180.0 deg | 210.0 % | 60.0 |
| Mid, tuned by eye | 00:00:10:02 | 300.0 deg | 136.7 % | interpolated |
| Mid, tuned by eye | 00:00:10:03 | 330.0 deg | 118.3 % | interpolated |
| Last keyframe | 00:00:10:04 | 360.0 deg | 100.0 % | 0.0 |
Other Scale values seen on this segment while it was being tuned: 203.8 % and 182.0 % at 00:00:10:02, 170 % typed at 00:00:10:03. They are working values, not settings — the ones that survive are in the table.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product and filter names the transcriber mangled have been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.
In this quick tutorial, I'm going to show you how to do a spin blur transition, so stay tuned.
I'm just a normal person with no video editing background.
I 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.
Welcome back to the channel.
This particular tutorial was actually a subscriber request.
And for anyone who subscribes to my channel, I'm always down to help you out.
So I will gladly show you how to do what is called the spin blur transition.
And so here we are with Shotcut.
Again, before I begin, I always want to show you which version I have.
And in this particular tutorial, I'm using version 20.07.11.
So I'm starting out with a couple of royalty-free videos here that I've downloaded.
This is the first one.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to spin blur transition this one to the second one here.
So let me drag the videos into the timeline.
So that's the first one.
And just to make organization a little easier,
I'm going to separate them into two different tracks.
I'm going to add another video track and I'm going to put this track two on the second one here.
And for this tutorial, we don't really need that much.
And so I'm actually going to shorten this first clip down to about 10 seconds here.
And so I'm going to click this split icon again.
And then choose the area I'm going to delete that.
I'm then going to drag the second image or second video, but it right against the end of the first one.
So let me just make it a little bigger for you.
And so this is where it ends.
And that's actually a pretty decent transition already, but that's just me cutting them.
And so what I want to do is I want to spin blur this end part
and begin the second part also with a spin blur.
So here's how I would do it.
So let me select the first video clip.
I'm then going to count back by six.
Zoom in there.
And then I'm going to isolate that transition point by splitting it.
I'm going to do the same thing.
I'm going to go to the beginning of the second clip.
Count to six.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
Split that as well.
So that now all I need to do is focus on that one and that one.
Let's zoom in a little bit so that you can see what I'm working with here.
So let's start with the first one.
So there are two movements that we want to focus on.
The first one is the spinning movement.
The second one is for it to blur when it gets to the end of the clip.
And so with that particular clip selected, we're going to go to filters.
And we're going to choose rotate and scale.
And what we want to do is we want to start out with a rotation of zero degrees and end up,
by the end of the clip, rotating it all the way to 180 degrees.
And so all we have to do is go over to the rotation part.
Clip the keyframe icon.
Let's zoom in a little bit.
Keep that first keyframe at zero.
Let's then fast forward to the very end and let's set the keyframe to 180 degrees.
And so this is what it looks like.
So you notice now that once it starts rotating,
there are some blank areas
that doesn't look good.
And so it's going to mess up our transition here.
And so what we would need to do is while it's rotating,
we also want to make it zoom to the very end to eliminate all these black areas,
these ugly black areas here.
We don't want that.
It's going to ruin the look of the transition.
And so thankfully we've already chosen the rotate and scale
and within the same filter we can also apply the zoom effect using the scale side of it right now
to make sure we eliminate these gaps that we see here.
And so I'm going to go to the first frame.
That's okay.
There aren't any gaps.
I'm going to go to the second frame here.
And we notice these gaps here.
And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose the keyframe icon.
Now on the scale section, click that and make sure it starts out at 100%.
Go to the second frame.
We might have to keyframe every frame of this transition,
but thankfully there's only six frames.
So it's not that big of a deal.
So this is the second frame.
And obviously we want to magnify this a little bit to fill in the gaps.
And so I'm going to start out with 150%.
Almost there.
Let's go 160.
Still not there.
170.
Almost there.
I mean, if you're really picky, you see these two little dark areas there.
I think 175 might get it.
Okay.
So I'm a little picky.
So there's a little section right there.
So while that's selected, I'm just going to raise it up by 175.7 is the resulting magnification on this one.
And so now we're going to move it to the third frame.
And as it continues to rotate, once again, we're seeing these gaps here.
And so we're going to need to add another keyframe here.
And so I'm going to guess maybe 190.
Nope.
200.
Okay. Maybe 210 is the way to go.
210.
Okay.
So the next keyframe is at 210.
And then we move it to the third keyframe.
That looks okay.
Next keyframe.
That looks okay.
That looks okay.
And then we start on the second clip.
And so right now this is what it looks like.
So now what we want to do is we want to add a blur to this so that it gives you the perception of a motion blur as it's spinning.
And so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the beginning of that transition clip again.
I'm going to go to the filter section again, click the plus symbol, and then choose blur.
And in this instance, I prefer using the Gaussian blur.
So I'm going to choose Gaussian blur.
While the cursor is still at the beginning of the clip, I'm going to click the keyframe icon again.
I'm going to default to zero and then go to the very end of the clip.
And I want it to have a Gaussian blur of 50.
And so let's see what happens.
Let's zoom in that area here.
So along with the rotation, we're also getting blur.
I actually want to blur it a little earlier, so maybe instead of choosing the sixth frame,
I'm going to choose the fifth frame, and I'm going to go back and set that to 60.
Let's see what happens there.
Okay.
So that should be okay.
So that's the first part of the zoom transition, or the rotation transition, my bad.
Before we continue, if you can do me a huge, huge favor and subscribe to my channel right now,
your subscription will go a long way to help me reach that 1,000 subscriber mark.
Hitting the 1,000 subscriber mark is a huge milestone for my channel.
This will go a long way to help me make more videos to help my fellow Shotcut users.
So please, if you can subscribe, that will help me a lot.
Thank you.
Okay.
The first part of the transition is now done.
And just to take inventory of what we did.
So we're spinning this image 180 degrees.
And while it's spinning, we're also magnifying it to fill in the gaps.
Finally, as it's spinning and magnifying, we're also blurring it so that the resulting blur setting is 60 by the time we get to the end.
And so with that being said, what we need to do in the second half of this transition is we need to do the polar opposite of what we did in this first half of the transition,
just to make it look like it's part of that one continuous motion.
So let's work on the easy part first.
So while the second half of the transition is selected or that clip, we then go to the filter section, click plus.
And once again, we're going to take, we're going to choose rotate and scale.
While in the first clip, we begin with a zero degree rotation ending up in 180.
In the second clip, we're going to begin with 180.
And instead of ending at the end of the clip at zero, we're actually going to end at 360 degrees.
Otherwise, if we click zero, it's going to rotate counterclockwise.
So the first half of the transition is going to rotate clockwise and then it's going to go backwards counterclockwise.
So instead of 180 to zero, we're actually going to go 180 to 360.
So while we have this at 180, let's click the keyframe icon.
And so the first keyframe here is set at 180.
We're then going to go to the very end of the clip.
We're going to add another keyframe by just making adjustment here and setting that to 360.
And that should complete the full circle, just like that.
So I'm going to go once again to the very first half of the transition only because I forgot what the settings were.
And if you notice here, under the scale, the setting is set at 210%.
So what I'm going to do at the beginning of this clip is actually set this at 210%.
Click the keyframe icon and then go to the end of the clip and set this back to 100%.
And so while the first half of the transition we're actually zooming in or we're actually magnifying,
the second half of the transition we're actually shrinking.
So let's see what that looks like.
Let's run the full transition.
And just like the first half of the transition with the little black gaps on the side,
we're also having that same problem with the second half.
And so we're also going to have to fill in the gap by setting magnifications for some of the areas before it reverts back to 0% or 100% scale.
So at the very end I think we're okay.
So here, let's start with this point right here.
And again, let's go to the keyframe section.
We're going to add another keyframe.
We're going to need to magnify this a little bit.
Let's say 170 close, probably 175.
Got it.
Then we're going to go one frame before that.
We need to magnify that to, let's say, 200 right there.
Add a little bit more just to fill in the little gaps.
And it ended up being 204.2.
We're good to go.
One frame before that.
That's fine.
The frame before that is fine.
That one.
That one.
Okay.
So we're good to go.
Let's go back to the timeline and now let's see what the transition looks like.
Almost there.
The only thing we're missing, even though this particular clip actually already has a blur at the beginning,
just for all intensive purposes to complete the technique,
we're going to add that same blur that we added in this first part of the transition.
So once again, we chose Gaussian blur and we went from,
let's see what the settings are, we went from zero all the way to 60.
Actually, it looks like it dropped by the time we got to the end.
So we're going to set this last keyframe to 60 as well.
And then we're going to go over here.
Once again, we're going to add another filter and that's going to be blur, Gaussian blur.
And we're going to set this to 60 because now we're going to go from blurry to clear.
Click the keyframe icon, go to the very end, set this one to zero.
And now here is the complete spin blur transition.
Start a little earlier here.
And there you go.
So there you go. That's the spin blur transition.
If you can do me a huge, huge favor and subscribe to my channel.
If you didn't know, I'm trying to reach the 1000 subscriber mark
and your subscription will help me.
It'll go a long way for me to be able to make more of these types of tutorials.
Aside from that, if you have any other suggestions on the type of tutorials you'd like to see
or if you have any comments about this particular tutorial,
please let me know on the comments section of this video.
Don't forget to like, make a comment and subscribe to this channel.
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I'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
