Morph Cut overview

Explore Morph Cut in Premiere Pro and get tips and techniques to improve your Morph Cut transitions.

A common challenge that comes with editing footage with a "talking head" is that the subject can stutter, make frequent use of "umms", "uhs", or unwanted pauses. All of which keep you from having a clean, continuous sequence without the use of jump cuts or cross dissolves.

Now, you can effectively clean interview dialog by removing unwanted portions of a clip and then apply the Morph Cut video transition to smooth out distracting jump cuts. You can also use Morph Cut to effectively rearrange clips in your interview footage to ensure a smooth flow without any jumps in visual continuity.

Morph Cut uses an advanced combination of face tracking and optical flow interpolation to create a smooth transition between clips. When used effectively, a Morph Cut transition can be so smooth that it looks as natural as shooting the video without unwanted pauses or words that can break the narrative flow.

Aspects to consider when using Morph Cut

Morph Cut works best with footage that features the following:

• A "talking head" interview shot with a single subject
• A fixed shot (minimal camera movement is typically OK)
• A static background, with minimal or no lighting changes

You can still get good results if all three conditions are unmet. However, you can run into blotchy results if there is too much background, hand, or body movement. Face detection can also be blotchy when the subject is tightly framed or in profile. Even with these three conditions met, results can vary. Face detection depends on things like:

• How the subject is framed and lit
• How much head or camera movement there is at the cut
• How natural the speech pause is for lip-syncing

Additional tips and tricks

• Look for relatively short, logical gaps with similar head placement at either end of the cut. Use the waveform to help spot areas with natural pauses to base your cut around.
• Adjust the Morph Cut duration and symmetry as needed after the initial application. It helps to make it start and end toward the peaks of the last and first words around the edit point. Adjusting the duration avoids difficult lip-syncing problems.
• Generate render preview files after the analysis is complete to ensure you see the correct performance and do not dropping frames.
• Consider framing your subject tightly to limit the amount of hand or upper body movement Morph Cut has to interpolate. But if you frame it so tight that significant face or head details are cropped out, the Morph Cut face detection could fail to recognize it.
• Consider applying effects over morph cut transitions and their associated clips using adjustment layers. In general, apply effects directly to clips. However, you can avoid potential display problems, especially if you have to make many more adjustments after applying the morph cut. This technique is the case with effects such as Lumetri Color effects.
• The analysis is triggered automatically as soon as you apply the transition. It is also retriggered automatically whenever you trim the transition in or out symmetrically or asymmetrically.