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Last updated on Dec 14, 2023

Morph cut transitions are commonly used in interviews, dialogues, or presentations to eliminate awkward pauses or changes in facial expressions and make the overall video flow more smoothly.

Before you begin

Open your Premiere Pro project and navigate to the sequence where you want to apply the Morph Cut. Select the clip with the jump cut you want to smooth out.

  1. Set In and Out points on the timeline to select the part of the clip that you want to remove.
  2. You can remove clips from your sequence in different ways, like lift and extract, delete, and ripple-delete. To see how you can do it in different ways, see this video tutorial.
  3. In the Effects panel, select Video Transitions > Dissolve > Morph Cut and drag the effect to the edit point between clips in the timeline.
Tip:

To avoid lip sync problems, apply Morph Cut between places where the last or first words of the speech peak. You can also use audio waveforms to help identify areas with a natural pause and make your cuts there.

After you apply the Morph Cut transition, Premiere Pro immediately starts to analyze the clip in the background. As analysis begins, an Analyzing in background banner displays within the Program Monitor indicating that analysis is occurring. You are free to work with the footage or elsewhere in the project while the analysis occurs.

Screenshot of Premiere Pro analyzing footage when using Morph Cut transition
Premiere Pro analyses the footage in the background.

  1. After analysis is complete, a symmetrical transition is created, centered at the edit point. The transition duration matches the default of 30 frames specified for Video Transition Default Duration. You can change the default duration using the Preferences dialog. A typical transition duration that works well is about 10-20 frames.
  1. (Optional) If the lip movements and voice are not exactly in sync or the results are not satisfactory, change the In and Out points or adjust the duration of the transition.
Note:

Every time you make changes to a selected Morph Cut, or even undo a change, Premiere Pro retriggers a new analysis. However, you don't need to delete any previously analyzed data.

Result

Play back the sequence to view the result. Once you are satisfied with the Morph Cut, it's a good practice to render the entire sequence to ensure smooth playback during editing or exporting.

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