Montage Sequence — effect skill for cuts & pacing

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A run of short shots, usually on music, that compresses time or builds one feeling.

What it does

Built on varg Music Video by varg (varg), MIT. The write-up and recipes below are varg's.

Many 0.5–2 s shots in a row with a common rhythm, often with one recurring visual motif.

When: Passage of time, progress, travel recaps, product feature runs, brand films.

Watch out: Shots that are all the same size and motion; vary wide, medium and close and the direction of movement.

Timing: 0.5–2 s per shot, on beats or half-bars

Also called: montage, sequence of shots, training montage, time-compression montage

In FFmpeg

Concat many normalized shots (the concat filter accepts mixed sources after scaling):

ffmpeg -i s1.mp4 -i s2.mp4 -i s3.mp4 -i song.mp3 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]trim=0:1.2,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,scale=1080:1920,setsar=1,fps=30[a];\
 [1:v]trim=0:0.8,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,scale=1080:1920,setsar=1,fps=30[b];\
 [2:v]trim=0:1.6,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,scale=1080:1920,setsar=1,fps=30[c];\
 [a][b][c]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0[v]" -map "[v]" -map 3:a -shortest out.mp4

In HyperFrames

Chain clips with relative data-start values; keep music on its own <audio> track; see beat-timeline.

In Remotion

Map an array of shots to <Series.Sequence>; put the music in a single <Audio> outside the series.

In CapCut

Import all shots, use AutoCut or a template, or cut manually to Beats markers.

Ready-made components

Where this comes from

Use when

Not for

Install

Example output

https://s3.varg.ai/how-to/previews/ca79a7f74db5/take-montage-sequence.mp4 — montage between two shots, with the timeline strip of the edit. Footage: Cosmos Laundromat (2015), (CC) Blender Foundation | gooseberry.blender.org, CC BY 4.0; Spring (2019), Andy Goralczyk / Blender Foundation (Blender Studio) | studio.blender.org, CC BY 4.0. (credit: Rendered by varg · Cosmos Laundromat (2015) + Spring (2019))

More cuts & pacing skills