Transitions smooth the start, end, or change between media in your project. Apply them between scenes and/or individual clips in your composition.

By default, Smart Transitions are added to your scenes automatically to speed up your editing workflow and add consistent polish with fewer clicks. In this guide, we’ll focus on how to apply and customize transitions manually. Learn more about Smart Transitions.

This article covers

• Apply a transition to a scene
• Apply a transition to a clip
• Available transition types
• Crossfade and cross-zoom
• Known limitation: transitions and ignored text

Apply a transition to a scene

To apply a transition between scenes:

1. Select the scene thumbnail in the script panel.
2. In the hover menu that appears, click the hourglass icon.
3. Select from the available transition presets, then adjust the duration.

Transitions can also be applied from the timeline or the properties panel in the right-hand sidebar.

Apply a transition to a clip

1. Expand the timeline (click and drag up) to display your clips.
2. Select a clip. A small white dot (the "handle") will appear. Click and drag the handle to apply a fade, or click it to open the Transition menu.
3. Select from the dropdown of transition presets, adjust the duration, the loops, and whether to fade in.
4. Preview the transition with the Play button in the top-right corner of the Transition menu.

Transitions can also be applied from the timeline or the properties panel in the right-hand sidebar.

Available transition types

Descript includes the following transitions:

Fade	Crossfade	Cross-blur
Cross-zoom	Directional wipe	Star wipe
Dip to color

Crossfade and cross-zoom

Crossfade and cross-zoom are unique transitions. They create a moment of overlap where the first clip or scene fades out as the second fades in.

Why don’t I have the Crossfade option available?

To use a crossfade or cross-zoom transition, each clip needs room to fade in or out. If a clip is trimmed to the very start or end of its source file, there's no extra footage to work with, and these options won't be available.

Trim one or both clips to make room for the transition.

Crossfade clips on separate layers

To crossfade two clips, they must be in the same layer. Drag one clip onto the other until a red line appears, then release to combine them. Apply the crossfade as usual.

You may see the error "Cannot insert into layer or clip that ends at scene boundary." This means the clip or layer ends exactly where the scene does, leaving no room for the transition to extend into. Trim one or both clips to make room.

Transitions don’t work across ignored text

If you have ignored (strikethrough) text between two scenes, Descript cannot successfully render the transition. The ignored content—although skipped during playback—still exists between the clips in the timeline structure.

To fix this, delete the ignored text completely (select it and press Delete). Once removed, the transition should work.