Effects: look, then when, then how

Decide when first; most cuts stay hard. Ranges carry their source (T08 effects, T07 pacing, T19 reframing: the kit's research notes, naming the editors' kits); a measured reference (bc:style-study) or the user's taste wins. Measure → choose → act → measure again.

1. Read what the cut already does

bashcut review measure (job: picture motion per shot), then bashcut review shots --summary. Count kinds and runs from each shot's cut.kind. Look for runs of one transition kind, neighbouring cuts with sameFraming, every shot with the same cameraMove (one failure: all 12 shots a push-in, vox-director; T08 §2), one ease on most moves, long stretches with no motion. Decide motif or mistake for each; a motif is fine when it is a choice. Other kits warn on: the same transition on two consecutive cuts, one kind more than 2× in a film under 60 s (3 when longer), fewer than 3 families when there are 5+ cuts, one ease on more than half the moves (saas-motion-kit variety_audit; T08 §2). Prompts to look, not rules.

2. When

• Effects serve a moment, not the whole video. Special transitions: 1–3 per minute of short form, 0–1 in documentary or cinematic work (saas-motion-kit, openmontage, hyperframes; T08 §3); the rest are hard cuts on a sentence, beat or action. Sources disagree: speech-led, documentary and cinematic edits keep most cuts hard; motion-graphic and short-form ads rotate flavours (T08 §3).
• Choose by what the cut means, never by rotating kinds by shot number (student-kit; T08 §4): new place → whip, shutter or cover-the-lens; same place, time skip → blink, dissolve or a jump cut; product or dish reveal → speed ramp, freeze or a zoom-hit (crash-zoom) into it; end of a chapter or story beat → dip-black; a memory or dream → double-exposure or blur. A dissolve says time passed; between takes of one sentence use a snap punch-in instead (ghost-editor; T08 §3).
• Never use a flash or transition to hide a missing action or a moment that should be seen (ReelMimic; T08 §2).
• Whole-frame hits are rare by default (flash, blink, crash-zoom, flicker, whole-frame zoom punch, exposure pop): each is a slam. bashcut review sync --events impacts lists them with beat and spacing. One promo study kept about 2–4 per 30–60 s on the strongest beats and moved only an element on the other beats; event and MV edits use far more. Check perMinute and minSpacingBeats before adding another.
• Every visible move gets a matching sound, sized to it (bc:audio-mix); cutting all music and SFX for 1–2 s on a punchline worked once.
• Cinematic: hard cuts, no whoosh; the look and serif captions carry the feel.

3. Motion in three families

Camera-like moves (zoom, pan, tilt, rotation over a shot). Sources mix three different moves (T08 §3):

• The ceiling is resolution, not taste: scale.maxZoomNative and pixelRatio per clip (timeline get, review shots); past 1 output pixel per source pixel it upscales, so look at ui frame F before keeping it.
• State drift as a rate so short and long shots feel alike: end zoom = 1 + rate × seconds (0.5 %/s over 8 s ≈ 1.04).
• Two moves in a row read as a glitch: merge into one gesture, front-load the travel (student-kit). Ease out on entrances, in on exits, linear only for a constant drift (T08 §3).
• After applying, check cameraMove perSecond (review shots) against the chosen range.

Speed and time. Speed changes break lip sync: b-roll and action only, never talking shots.

• Real slow motion needs 50/60/120 fps sources (media analysis tech facts); slowing 30 fps below ~0.5× stutters (our edits; T08 §3).
• A few frames short: slow the clip slightly, never freeze its last frame (vox-director ~1.02–1.1; T08 §3).
• Fast-forward: 1.5–2× when narrated over, 4–20× for silent waiting (digitalsamba, vlog tutorial; T19 §3); setSpeed goes to 16×. One example: a 65 s typing stretch read clearly at 16× (about 4 s) with no presenter or captions and one label saying what happens (the action, never the speed or effect name).

Graphic moves and transitions. Durations in seconds; frames = seconds × the project fps (T08 §3).

Transition kinds

39 built-in kinds in 11 groups (the Transitions panel):

motion properties (any other kind name): zoom, panX/Y, rotation, opacity, exposure, scaleX, reveal, revealFromRight/Top/Bottom, revealCenter, iris, diamond, swing, rgbSplit, halftone, blur, blurX/Y, zoomBlur, hue, saturation, kaleidoscope.

In and Out of text, stickers and overlays

A caption, title, sticker, graphic or overlay clip that is not part of a video cut takes any kind as its own entrance and exit, played inside its own frame (an iris or wipe reveals the text itself): setProperties {"enter": {"kind": "iris", "duration": 12}, "exit": {"kind": "whip-up", "duration": 8, "easing": "in"}}, or bashcut clip transition ITEM --side in --kind iris --frames 12 --base-rev last (--kind none removes). Use it instead of hand keyframes for item entrances and exits. A cut transition at a clip edge wins; a split keeps enter left and exit right.

4. Reframe: crop only to what matters

A crop decides what the viewer loses. Check the frame first, never crop blind.

1. Facts: scale (fit, frameCoverage, maxZoomNative) in timeline get / review shots; review layout --frame F for the pictures on screen at F.
2. Look at the start, middle, end and action peaks of each shot (nateherkai; T19 §2): media frame (source size, so you read a rectangle in source pixels), ui frame F, ui frames --compare source --items CLIP. Faces and people: media subjects (job); box is shares of the source picture from the top left, so multiply by the media's width and height; check it on media frame at that frame. review layout faceOverlap is null when no boxes are stored (unknown, not "no face"); review.maxFaceOverlap turns it into a text-face issue. media describe subjects are your own tags.
3. A face subject: one call, bashcut clip reframe ITEM --mode locked|cut|follow --base-rev last (job); look at its preview grid, that is your check. --gate 0.85–0.95, --drift 0.1–0.2, --min-hold 1–2 s; locked for a talking head, cut when the presenter changes place, follow only for real movement. Not a face: step 4.
4. Crop when what matters fits: clip motion ITEM --focus x,y,w,h around the subject, locked for the shot ("don't move unless you must", hotclip; T19 §2). Leave 0.3–0.5 of the face size around a face, more for a gesturing presenter (openmontage, hotclip; T19 §3). --focus-to only when the subject really moves; no smooth drift on a talking head (jianshuo). Check pixelRatio afterwards.
5. Fall back to fit when it does not fit (two people far apart, a wide landscape, a sign): fill false or project format --clips fit; clip backdrop ITEM --kind blur suits screens, slides and photos, not footage with a subject (nateherkai; T19 §3). Order: fit → a fixed crop at a position you checked → the original shape. A centre crop without a frame check is the anti-pattern (openmontage; T19 §4).

5. Zooms on a screen recording

One framing per narration line, aimed at the panel that line names, changing when the screen changes. One tutorial reused a single framing (pan 0, tilt −480, zoom 1.9) on every screen shot: each sentence named a different panel and the zoom showed none of them.

1. Where the screen changes: bashcut media frames --media ID --sheet --every 2 and the scene cuts in bashcut media analysis --media ID (correct them with media cuts). A new page, dialog or menu inside a line starts a new framing there.
2. What each line names: join the line's words (transcript words) with the frame under its key word; read the panel's rectangle in the recording's pixels on bashcut media frame --media ID --at SECONDS.
3. Build: clip motion ITEM --focus x,y,w,h per line (split at line edges, or --focus-to / --keyframes for a move inside one clip), out to the full screen between steps. Plan.cut clip rows take focus and focusKeys once BashCut's focus-band change ships (branch feat/focus-visible-band); write them there then, so plan apply keeps them.
4. Check every framing with bashcut ui frame F --phone at the line's key word: the named panel fills the frame and its text reads; no neighbouring window. Two lines in a row with the same transform on different screens is a miss unless they name the same panel.

Library first

Built-ins: effect presets ken-burns-in, ken-burns-out, zoom-punch-in, punch-in, speed-ramp, slow-motion; transition presets soft-dissolve, quick-whip, zoom-punch; emoji stickers. Set a preset's parameters (library get ID) from sections 3–4, not the defaults. Saving, making and fixing presets: bc:library.

How, in BashCut

Not possible yet: say so and offer the alternative

Typewriter text, counting numbers, shake, film grain, glitch held over a shot (only as a transition or In/Out), segmentation (text behind a person, cut-outs), object tracking (faces: clip reframe), AI-generated transitions. Note it as a feature request (BashCut or a plugin action); never fake it with a pre-rendered file.

Verify

review shots --summary again: the runs you meant to break are gone, the rest are motifs you can name. Look before, inside and after each effect (ui frame F; first, middle and last frame of a moving item; review window F across a transition); after a reframe, what matters is still in frame. Ask the user to listen to the sound.