Custom Transitions in Resolume — The Transition Phase Trick

The standard Resolume clip-to-clip transition is a fade (opacity blend). Clean, fine, gets the job done. But there's a hidden technique that lets you turn any effect in Resolume — Shift Glitch, Radial Blur, RGB Shift, whatever — into a custom transition driver. The effect only fires during the transition between clips, not on the clips themselves.

Once you know this trick, your transition library becomes the entire Resolume effects library. Design your own signature transitions per show.

Step 1: Enable Layer Transition Controls

First make sure you can see the transition controls in your Layer panel. View tab → Show Layer Transition Controls. (If you followed Lesson 2 (Composition Settings), this was already turned on.)

Click on a layer to bring up the Layer panel. You should now see a Transition tab with a duration slider. Set the duration to wherever you want — Rex uses 0.5 seconds in the demo for a punchy transition.

Alternative: there's a slider next to each clip in the clip panel that also adjusts transition length and has preset transitions built in. Use whichever feels natural.

Step 2: Add an Effect to the Layer

Pick the effect you want to use as your transition driver. Rex's demo uses Shift Glitch first (because the result is cinematic) then shows the same technique with Radial Blur.

Effects tab → search for the effect → drag it onto your layer (or open the Layer panel and drop it in there).

For symmetric effects: match the vertical value to the horizontal value. Creates a uniform distortion that reads as intentional rather than off-balance.

At this point the effect is applied to every clip in the layer — which is NOT what you want. Next step fixes that.

Step 3: The Cog Wheel → Transition Phase (The Magic)

Inside the effect's parameters, find the opacity parameter. Next to it there's a small cog wheel icon. Click it.

From the dropdown menu, select Transition Phase.

What just happened: the effect's opacity is now driven by the transition state of the layer. When clips are stable, the effect's opacity is zero — the clip plays clean. When you trigger a new clip, the effect ramps in/out across the transition duration, then disappears once the transition completes.

Trigger a new clip on the layer. You'll see the Shift Glitch (or whatever effect) hit during the transition only, then resolve to the clean new clip.

Step 4: Tune the Behavior — Invert + Range

Invert

The default behavior: the effect fades in at the start of the transition, peaks mid-transition, then fades out by the end (clip is clean by the time you're seeing it fully).

Click the Invert button on the parameter to flip it. Now the effect is full ON at the START of the clip and fades AWAY across the transition. Different feel — distortion is the dominant moment, then it dissolves into the new clip.

Range

The Range slider controls how much fading happens across the transition.

• Default range (gradual): smooth ramp in/out across the transition duration. Cinematic feel.
• Range = 1: turns off the fading entirely. The effect is either FULL ON or FULL OFF — sharp transition behavior. Better for hits and impact moments.

Rex's preferred look in the demo: range cranked to 1 so the Shift Glitch hits hard rather than blends softly.

Step 5: Stack the Technique

Same approach works on ANY effect. The pattern is always:

1. Drop the effect on the layer
2. Find the parameter you want to drive (usually opacity)
3. Cog wheel → Transition Phase
4. Tune invert + range until it feels right

Combine multiple effects (Shift Glitch + Radial Blur + RGB Shift) with different invert/range settings on each. Rex's final demo uses a stacked combination for what he calls a "funky lo-fi transition" — the kind of look that's instantly recognizable as designed-not-default.

Why This Matters

Resolume ships with preset transitions and they're fine. But fine isn't your. Once you know the Transition Phase trick, your transitions become as specific to your show as your visuals are.

Pair this with Effect Stacks and you can save entire transition designs as reusable stacks. Pair it with Audio Reactivity and your transitions can react to the music. Pair it with Blend Modes on the transition itself and you've got compositional moves nobody else's set has.

Cheat Sheet

• Enable: View → Show Layer Transition Controls
• Set duration: Layer panel → Transition tab (0.5s is a good starting point)
• The trick: drop effect on layer → cog wheel next to parameter → Transition Phase
• Invert: reverses transition direction (full → fade vs fade → full)
• Range = 1: sharp transition, no fading
• Stack effects: multiple effects with different invert/range = custom signature transitions

What's Next

Transitions are about how clips move. Other Techniques worth exploring once this is in your toolbox:

• Effect Stacks — building reusable effect chains (including transition stacks like the one this lesson ends with)
• Sprite Sheets — custom symbols and real-time text overlays
• Slice Transform — routing content (including transition effects) to specific LED panels of a multi-screen stage

If you haven't built the beginner-course foundation yet, this Technique lands best after working through Lesson 7 (Blend Modes) and Lesson 8 (Layers) — both lessons cover the layer-transition controls this technique is built on top of.

Want to see specific Transition Phase setups for festival vs club aesthetics, or a deeper dive on stacking multiple effects as transitions? Drop a comment inside the Academy or email vjacademy@outlook.com.