How to fade a video in and out

Fading a video in and out takes one stop in the Filters tab of Cut by Zaweba. It has fade in and fade out for both the picture and the sound, so a clip can rise gently from black at the start and drift away at the end instead of starting and stopping abruptly. Set the fades, then save through a preset.

It's free software under the EULA, offline, with no account.

Why a fade helps

Most phone videos begin with a jolt. The first frame is mid-movement and the sound arrives at full volume. At the end the picture just stops, often on a blur as the phone goes back into a pocket. A short fade at each end hides both. It also makes a trimmed clip feel deliberate, as if it was always meant to begin and end there.

Fading the sound matters as much as the picture. A cut in the middle of a word or a bar of music is jarring even when the picture fades nicely.

Adding the fades

Open the video in Cut by dragging it onto the window or using Open.

Trim it first. Mark in with I and out with O around the part you want, or mark an unwanted stretch and press Delete to cut it out. Ctrl+K keeps only the marked part. The fades go at the start and end of what you keep, so it makes sense to settle the length before adding them.

Go to the Filters tab and turn on the fade in and fade out for the picture, the sound, or both. To watch the effect before you save, turn on View, then Show the filters in the preview.

Next, open the Convert tab and pick a preset: For WhatsApp, For YouTube 1080p, For email (under 25 MB), Small file, Best quality and the others. Cut shows the estimated size and the encoder it will use, then converts only the kept parts in one frame-exact pass, with the fades applied.

Fades that feel natural

Keep fades short. A second or so at each end is usually enough for a phone clip. Long fades suit a slow, reflective video and feel sluggish on anything lively.

Fade the sound with the picture. If only the picture fades, the sound cuts off at full volume against a black screen, which draws more attention than no fade at all.

Choose the cut point with the fade in mind. Step frame by frame with the arrow keys and pick a moment where nothing important happens in the first and last second. A fade over someone's punchline loses the punchline.

Fades don't work with a lossless cut. A lossless save copies the original packets untouched, which is what makes it so fast, but it can't change the picture or sound. Save through the Convert tab when you want fades.

Fades with other fixes

The Filters tab has the other everyday fixes beside the fades: volume, normalise, crop, rotate, speed, brightness and contrast, denoise and more. They all go into the same single save. A quiet clip that needs evening out and a fade at each end is one job, not two.

If you're saving just the sound of a clip as MP3, WAV or FLAC, the sound filters are applied there too, so a fade on the sound carries into the audio file.

Fading a batch of clips

For a set of holiday clips that should all start and end softly, set the fades once and add the files from the Batch tab. The current filters are applied to every file, the jobs run in the background, and the queue carries on after a restart.

A fade is a small touch, and in Cut by Zaweba it costs almost no time.