With Descript, you can apply fade-ins and fade-outs on clips in the Timeline, as well as create crossfades between adjacent clips within a single layer.
Adding a crossfade or fade over all layers in a scene
If you want to fade or crossfade a still image or all the layers within a scene simultaneously, you'll want to apply a transition on the scene.
You can quickly create visual and audio fades and crossfades by dragging a transition handle in the Timeline.
You can also adjust and apply fades or crossfades by:
- Clicking on the transition handle of your clip.
- In the property menu that appears you'll have more granular control over your fade properties.
Applying crossfades between layer clips
If you're attempting to crossfade two separate clips in the layer lane above the script track, you will first need to join the clips together into the same track. You can do this by:
- Select one of the clips and drag it until the pointer hovers closely to the adjacent clip which will cause a red vertical line to appear.
- Drop the clip to join the two clips together.
- Apply the crossfade as you would normally.
How fades work
Video clips
With video, fades allow you to quickly show or hide elements in your canvas by adjusting the clip's opacity up from fully transparent to fully visible (fade in) or down from fully visible to fully transparent (fade out).
Crossfades on the other hand allow you to gradually transition between two video clips by equally overlapping the fade in and out of each adjacent clip, causing a blending effect as one element turns into another.
Audio clips
With audio clips the effect is similar; fades will gradually increase the volume of your audio from silent to it's current volume (fade in) or decrease the volume of the clip down to silent (fade out).
Adding a crossfade will subsequently blend the audio of two clips together, which when done effectively, can help mask edit points like magic.
Why crossfades sometimes don't work
End of the file
Occasionally you may notice that you are unable to create a crossfade between two clips, even though you can create a regular fade on either of the two clips independently.
This is because one or more of your clip boundaries is the beginning or end of the file. In order for a crossfade to work, you must have additional clip media beyond the visible edit boundary, so that as the crossfade is extended outward, it has room on each clip to fade down or up into.
To resolve, you'll need to be able to trim one or both of the clips a sufficient amount for the size of the desired crossfade.
Separate layers
If you want to crossfade between two distinct clip layers above the script track, start by combining them onto the same track. Simply drag the second layer over the first layer until a red line appears, showing that you can release the clip to merge them into one layer. After that, you can crossfade the two clips as usual.
Fades on Non-Script Track Layers
In Descript, fade-in and fade-out on non-script track layers are treated as animations. When you apply a fade-in or fade-out to these layers, it animates the layer, creating a smooth transition effect.
To adjust the fade, click the transition handle at the start or end of the clip in the timeline or fine-tune the settings in the layer panel.