Fades & Transitions

Exaplay's transition between one clip and the next is a fade: a linear opacity ramp at the clip's own start and end, drawn on the GPU as part of the normal compositing stack.

There are only two fade types

Fade to black and Crossfade — plus None. There are no wipes, pushes or dissolves, and there is no separate "In transition" and "Out transition" picker: one clip has one fade type, with its own In and Out times.

Setting a fade

Select the clip and open Inspector → Fade.

Field	What it does
Fade type	-- Use default -- (inherit, see below), None, Crossfade, Fade to black
In	Fade-in length in seconds (0–10), used by Fade to black
Out	Fade-out length in seconds (0–10), used by Fade to black
Length	The single ramp length in seconds (0–10) used by Crossfade

Only the fields the chosen type uses stay on screen: picking Crossfade hides In and Out and shows Length; picking Fade to black does the reverse. None hides all three — a fade is active exactly when a fade type is set, so there is no separate on/off switch.

Defaults, and what inherits from what

-- Use default -- walks up the tree until it finds a real fade type:

1. the clip's own Fade type, if it is not -- Use default --;
2. the Track's Fade Default (Inspector on a track — None or Fade to black);
3. the Composition's Fade Default (None, Fade to black, and Crossfade on a playlist only);
4. otherwise no fade.

The shipped default is None, so out of the box cues cut hard. Project-wide starting values for new clips live in Settings → Timeline Defaults (Default Fade type, In / Out / Crossfade duration preset) — see Configuration.

What each type does

Fade to black

The clip ramps its opacity 0 → 1 over In seconds at its start, and 1 → 0 over Out seconds at its end. With nothing underneath it, that is a fade from and to black.

Crossfade

The same ramp, with Length used for both ends — so where one clip is ramping down and another is ramping up at the same moment, the two mix.

• In a playlist, this is the transition between cues: the outgoing clip holds while the incoming one fades in over it, so the picture changes cleanly. The audio of the two does overlap for the length of the fade.
• On a timeline, you get a crossfade by overlapping the clips yourself and giving both a fade: the outgoing clip's fade-out and the incoming clip's fade-in run together over the overlap.

Overlap alone does nothing

Dragging two clips so they overlap does not create a transition, and the length of the overlap does not set the fade length. The fade comes from the Fade type and its seconds; the overlap only decides whether the two ramps happen at the same time. Overlapping clips with Fade type: None simply means the upper track covers the lower one.

Fading a single clip

When a clip has nothing to blend against — a title over a background on another track — a fade type is often the wrong tool, because it ramps the clip's own opacity from and to nothing at fixed lengths. Use Opacity keyframes instead: they give you the shape you want anywhere in the clip. See Property Keyframes.

Frame blending

Frame blending mixes the outgoing and incoming source frame while a clip is showing the same decoded frame for more than one output frame — it softens the judder of content whose frame rate does not divide into the output's.

No Inspector control in this release

Frame blending is an engine value (buffer.frame-blending), off by default. Every video handler honours it, but there is no control for it in the Inspector yet — set it through show control, per clip:

<composition>.<track>.<clip>.set:buffer.frame-blending=1

See the TCP Command API. There is no motion-estimated or optical-flow mode; the blend is a straight mix of two adjacent frames.

Alpha

Clips with an alpha channel (HAP Alpha, NotchLC, PNG) composite over whatever is beneath them with straight alpha-over blending. Draw order comes from the position of the screen, composition and track in the project tree — see Key Concepts.

There are no per-clip blend modes (Add / Multiply / Screen) in this release. For looks of that kind, use the Visual Effects library.

Common recipes

Hard cut between two videos

Leave Fade type: None on both clips and butt them up against each other on the timeline.

Slow logo fade-in over a background

Put the logo (PNG with alpha) on a track above the background video, set Fade type: Fade to black with In: 3 s — or, for full control over the shape, draw an Opacity keyframe curve instead.

Black between two acts

Set Fade type: Fade to black with Out: 2 s on the outgoing clip and In: 2 s on the incoming one, and leave a gap between them on the timeline. The gap plays as black.

Crossfading a playlist

Set the playlist composition's Fade Default to Crossfade with a Length, and leave every clip on -- Use default --. Every cue change then crossfades.