How your movie transitions between clips helps determine its flow. For example, upbeat, fast-paced music videos tend to have abrupt cuts between clips. By contrast, videos for slow, dramatic songs tend to use transitions that slowly fade one clip into the next.

iMovie comes with many transitions that you can easily add to your movie. You can fade between clips, push one clip offscreen as the next clip appears, and even add transitions between video clips and still images.

Steps

Add transitions between your video clips

1. Open the clip viewer and click the Return button. This will set the location for our first transition to be at the beginning of the movie.
2. Click the Editing button and then click Transitions. You’ll see a list of all the transitions you can choose from.
3. Select Fade In and watch the preview applied to your first clip. You can control the length of the fade in using the speed slider.
4. Drag the Fade-In transition to be the first clip in your movie. You’ll see the other clips shift to the right as you drop the fade-in in place and you’ll see a new transition marker get added to your movie. Notice the small red line below the transition marker. This line appears while the transition is being created, or rendered.
5. After the transition marker renders, click the Rewind button and watch the new opening of your movie.
6. Select the second video clip in your movie, and then select the Cross Dissolve transition. Notice the preview window now shows a cross dissolve from your first video clip to the second.
7. Drag the Cross Dissolve transition to the location between your first and second video clips to apply it.
8. After the new transition renders, click Rewind, and then click Play. Notice how the new cross dissolve provides a smooth transition between your two clips.
9. Select the cross dissolve transition marker, and change the speed of the transition using the speed slider. Click Update to apply the new speed to your existing transition.