Clip handles and transitions

In most cases, you don’t want a transition to occur during the essential action in a scene. For this reason, transitions work best with handles—the extra frames beyond the In and Out points set for the clip.

The handle between a clip’s Media Start time and In point is sometimes called head material, and the handle between a clip’s Out point and Media End time is sometimes called tail material.

A clip with handles

A.: Media Start
B.: Handle
C.: In point
D.: Out point
E.: Handle
F.: Media End

In some cases, the source media may not contain enough frames for clip handles. If you apply a transition, and the handle duration is too short to cover the transition duration, an alert appears to warn you that frames will be repeated to cover the duration. If you decide to proceed, the transition appears in a Timeline panel with diagonal warning bars through it.

Transition using duplicate frames

For best results with transitions, shoot and capture source media with sufficient handles beyond the In and Out points of the actual clip duration you want to use.