Camera Shake — effect skill for transitions

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A short violent shake (often with a zoom) hits on the cut, like an impact or a bass hit.

What it does

Built on Camera Shake by HeyGen (HyperFrames), Apache-2.0. The write-up and recipes below are varg's.

The image jolts in x/y and slightly in scale for a few frames around the cut, then calms.

When: Drops, punches, slams, gaming and hype edits.

Watch out: Shaking calm or informational content; long shakes.

Timing: 0.2–0.8 s (CapCut Shake 3 0.8 s); strongest on the first 3–4 frames

Also called: Shake 3, Jerky Camera, Zoom Shake 2, Shake down, impact shake, shake transition

In FFmpeg

Shake the first 0.4 s of B with crop offsets driven by sin/cos (crop x/y are evaluated per frame):

ffmpeg -i a.mp4 -i b.mp4 -filter_complex \
"[1:v]crop=w=iw-48:h=ih-48:x='24+24*sin(t*61)*max(0,1-t/0.4)':y='24+24*cos(t*47)*max(0,1-t/0.4)',scale=1280:720,setsar=1[b];\
 [0:v][b]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v]" -map "[v]" out.mp4

In HyperFrames

npx hyperframes add camera-shake (nine measured handheld/telephoto/rig profiles for any wrapper).

In Remotion

Wrap B in <AbsoluteFill style={{transform: translate(${dx}px, ${dy}px)}}> where dx/dy come from noise2D (@remotion/noise) times a decaying envelope from interpolate(frame, [0, 12], [1, 0]). remocn impact-shake, lens-zoom include shake.

In CapCut

Transitions tab → Camera → Shake 3, Jerky Camera, Zoom Shake 2, Shake down. Desktop: drag the tile onto the cut between two clips and set Duration in the right panel ("Apply to all" reuses it on every cut). Mobile: tap the small white square between clips, pick the transition, drag the duration slider, tap ✓. Tab labels and placement change between versions and regions. Or Effects → Video effects → a Shake effect over the first frames of B.

Ready-made components

Where this comes from

Use when

Not for

Install

Example output

https://s3.varg.ai/how-to/previews/206d3f5ddbda/take-camera-shake.mp4 — shake between two shots, with the timeline strip of the edit. Footage: Cosmos Laundromat (2015), (CC) Blender Foundation | gooseberry.blender.org, CC BY 4.0; Sprite Fright (2021), Blender Studio | studio.blender.org, CC BY 4.0. (credit: Rendered by varg · Cosmos Laundromat (2015) + Sprite Fright (2021))

More transitions skills

Run the generation on varg

varg is one API key for the models these skills drive — Seedance 2.5, Kling 4, Veo 3.1, Wan 3, Nano Banana 2.1, GPT Image 2.5, ElevenLabs v4 and 200+ more — billed in credits, with a cost estimate before anything runs.