Transitions and builds

A transition is how the show gets from one slide to the next. A build is how one layer comes onto the slide, or leaves it, on a click. Both live in the Animate inspector, and both play exactly the same in the editor preview and on air.

Set a slide's transition

A slide's transition plays on the way into that slide. To change how the show arrives at slide 4, select slide 4.

1. Select the slide in the navigator, and click an empty part of the canvas so no layer is selected.

2. Open the Animate inspector with the Animate button in the toolbar. Its header reads Transition.

3. Click Change and pick a transition. Hover over a name to see it play in the preview above. Pick None for a straight cut.

4. Adjust the options under it, then click Preview to play it again. On the first slide, the preview plays in from black.

The chooser keeps your three most recent transitions at the top. To use the current transition everywhere, click Apply to All Slides at the bottom of the pane. It copies the style and every option to each slide in the show.

Options

The transitions

Magic Move

Magic Move finds the layers two slides have in common and glides each one from its old position and size to its new one. Everything else crossfades. It's how a full-frame camera shrinks into a corner when your slides come up.

Layers pair up by what they show:

• Cameras, displays and windows pair when they show the same camera, display or app window.
• Images and videos pair when they show the same image or the same video file.
• Web graphics pair when they show the same graphic with the same settings.
• Text, shapes and Motion layers pair only when they are the same layer, which happens when you duplicate a slide. Select the slide in the navigator with no layer selected and choose Edit ▸ Duplicate (⌘D), then change the copy.

If a slide has two layers of the same camera, the first one on each slide pairs with the first, and the second with the second. Hidden layers don't take part.

A paired layer moves and resizes, and also blends its rotation, corner pin, crop, opacity, corner radius and effect settings. Changing the crop between slides zooms smoothly into the picture. With Spring acceleration, position and size overshoot a little before they settle.

Stingers

A stinger is a short clip, like a logo sweep, that plays over the picture while the slide changes underneath it.

1. Choose the Stinger transition, in the Broadcast group.

2. Click Choose… and pick a movie. A clip with an alpha channel works best: ProRes 4444, or HEVC with alpha. The transition takes the clip's length as its duration.

3. Set Cut At: the moment, in seconds into the clip, when the program switches to the new slide. It starts halfway. Move it to where the clip fully covers the frame.

The clip plays once, with its sound. ArcLight refers to the clip where it sits on disk rather than copying it into the show. If you move the file, its name turns red in the inspector; use File ▸ Relink Media… to find it again.

Luma wipes

The Wipe transition has three shapes. Linear sweeps a soft edge across in the direction you choose. Iris opens a circle from the center. Image is a luma wipe: click Choose… and pick a grayscale image, and the dark areas reveal the next slide first, the light areas last.

The wipe image is saved inside the show, so there's nothing to relink later.

Builds

Builds bring a layer onto the slide, or take it off, while the slide stays up. Each click of the clicker or arrow key runs the next build before the show moves to the next slide.

1. Select one layer on the canvas. The Animate inspector switches to that layer's builds.

2. Pick Build In or Build Out at the top of the pane.

3. Click Add an Effect and choose one. Hover over a name to preview it.

4. Set the options: Duration, Direction for effects that travel, and Acceleration.

Click Change to swap the effect, Preview to play just this build, or Remove to take it off. A layer can have one build in and one build out.

Build effects

Keyboard and Typewriter animate the letters themselves, so they appear only for text layers. Drop starts with a bounce, and Keyboard and Compress with a spring; you can change the acceleration afterward.

Text by line, word or character

For a text layer, the options section also has Delivery: All at Once, By Line, By Word or By Character. When the text builds in pieces you also get:

• Order: Forward, Backward, From Center, From Edges or Random.
• Overlap: how much each piece overlaps the next. 100% builds every piece together; 0% builds them one after another.

Delivery isn't offered for Appear or Typewriter. Choosing Keyboard switches a text layer to By Character.

Build order and timing

The Timing section sets when this build runs:

• Order: its position in the slide's builds.
• Start: On Click, With Previous or After Previous.
• Delay: seconds to wait before it starts. Delay doesn't apply to On Click builds.

Builds set to With Previous or After Previous that come before the first On Click build run as soon as the slide appears. Each On Click build starts a new click, and the builds that follow it with With Previous or After Previous run in the same click.

The Build Order list at the bottom of the pane shows every build on the slide, numbered in play order, with an icon for how each one starts. Drag rows to reorder them, or click a row to edit that build. Play All previews the whole sequence. With no layer selected, the list also appears under the slide's transition.