Types of cuts in video editing: hard, jump, J, L, and more

The main types of cuts in video editing are the hard cut, the jump cut, the J cut and L cut, the match cut, the cutaway, the cross-cut and the smash cut. A hard cut switches straight to the next shot. The others change what gets joined, such as two moments of the same shot in a jump cut, or when the sound changes, as in J and L cuts.

The Sume facts below come from the Timeline 1.0 and Video inspect docs and the Sume API reference, and the FFmpeg facts from the FFmpeg filters documentation, all read on 2026-09-28. Anything described as current behavior is read from Sume's code.

What does each type of cut do?

• Hard cut, or straight cut: picture and sound switch to the next shot at the same frame, with no transition.
• Jump cut: a cut between two moments of the same shot, so the subject seems to jump. Cutting the pauses out of a talking-head recording makes jump cuts.
• J cut: the next shot's sound starts before its picture.
• L cut: the current shot's sound carries on over the next shot's picture.
• Match cut: a cut between two shots linked by a matching shape, movement or composition.
• Cutaway: a cut from the main shot to other footage, such as B-roll or a reaction, and then back.
• Cross-cut: cutting back and forth between two scenes, so they seem to happen at the same time.
• Smash cut: an abrupt cut from one scene into a sharply different one, such as from a loud moment into silence.

What is the difference between a hard cut, a jump cut and a match cut?

A hard cut changes the shot. A jump cut keeps the same shot and skips time, so the framing stays put while the subject moves. A match cut changes the scene but keeps a shape or a motion in the same place across the cut. All three are plain cuts; what differs is the footage on each side.

Fades replace the cut with a gradual change. A crossfade blends the outgoing shot into the next one, and a dip to black fades the first shot out to black before the next fades in; dip to black transition shows how to build one.

How do I make each cut in a Timeline render?

A Sume Timeline 1.0 render lays out the picture and the sound separately: ordered video[] slots for the picture, and one audio spine that can be built from up to 20 audio.parts[] slices. Most cut types are a way of arranging those two lists. Every file must already be in your workspace on media.sume.com, such as an earlier Sume job's output (which URLs each endpoint accepts).

• In current code, a render plays only its spine and an optional soundtrack; each slot's own audio is dropped. That is why the sound is laid out on its own.
• In current code, two slots with no transition between them are joined with a plain cut.
• A transition goes on a slot after the first. Its type is fade, wipeleft, wiperight, slideup, slidedown or dissolve. It lasts at most 1 second and 50% of the shorter neighbor, and at most 8 can run in a row.
• fade maps to FFmpeg's xfade filter, which FFmpeg's docs describe as a cross fade from one video to another. Video transitions API covers the settings.

How do I find where the jump cuts go?

Look for the pauses. POST /v1/video-inspect with transcribe: true returns words[], each with start and end in seconds from the start of the video, and the gaps between words are where jump cuts go. How to remove silence from a video turns those timings into slots, J cut and L cut offsets the sound at a cut, and add B-roll to a talking-head video builds cutaways.