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Your video track has been sitting all this time, images slightly overlapping in the A and B tracks, waiting for you to lay down the transitions that will move them seamlessly forward in time.

Under the Window menu, choose Transitions, and let's get a look at them.There are 57 possible ways to have one clip transition into another. The Transition window shows 56 of them, and the other you have already used: it is called a cut edit.

If you simply have two clips going from one to another without a transitional effect, it will cut from one picture to the next. Watch film or television and you will see that the cut edit is by far the most consistently used transition. Having said that, transitions are lots of fun, and Premiere makes it very easy.
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Keep in mind as you explore transitions that, from a design standpoint, they are gimmicky and annoying unless they are rationalized by the content (like a Page Peel transition showing calendar pages flying by). The Cross Dissolve is almost always an excellent choice, and many movies can use only that transition with excellent results.

To activate a transition, in the Transition Window, click on the thumbnail of the transition you want. Let’s start with Cross Dissolve (hint: they are in alphabetical order), and drag the transition into the Transition Track between A and B in the Construction Window. As you bring the transition into the track notice that as you align the transition in between the overlapping clips, it shows it is locking into position by turning black. Release your mouse when it locks in. Move your Yellow Work Area Bar over the area on either side of the transition and build a preview. Presto, a transition.

You can also double click on the Transition in the Construction Window, click on the Show Actual Sources box, and then use the slider under the clip on the left to see the transition executed.

Notice that it is important whether the Preview is going from the A track to the B track, or vice versa. If the Transition locked in when it was placecd, it will always follow the correct direction. However, if it does get messed up, double click on the transition and change direction by clicking on the arrow in the right side of the Transition Window.

The Cross Dissolve transition has the simplest settings: two sliders and a direction arrow. Other transitions used in "A Recipe" have trickier settings that are representative of settings on many other transitions.

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The border slider can add a wedge of color, from thin to thick, between the two shots as they transition. Click on the color swatch to open the color picker.

Some transitions, like Cross Stretch, have edge selectors. In this window, the red triangle on the left edge of the A/B window indicates that Image B will move in from the left side. In this transition you have the option of selecting either side or top or bottom.

That F is part of the Forward/Reverse selector. Right now it shows that Image B will move forward as it transitions. With a little experimentation, you'll see that setting Right/Reverse is the same as Left/Forward. How you set it matters little as long as it's the final effect you want.

Those jagged diagonal blocks are a way to adjust the smoothness of the transitions edges. There are three settings: low, high, and off.

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Some transitions, like Zig-Zag Blocks, have custom settings. If you look closely at this transition as it runs, it looks like someone unravelling a piece of knitting. There goes the knit row, as it zigs from left to right. And there goes the purl row, as it zags back in the other direction.
Adjusting the settings to larger numbers is like unravelling something knitted with very fine yarn. Very little unravels in each row. Setting it to smaller numbers looks more like chunky yarn unravelling. Each row is big, and you notice the difference as each row goes by.

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Studying the Iris Round transition teaches that the start and end sliders in transitions are good for more than just previewing how a transition will look. You can control how far you want the transition to go: all the way, or just part of the way. You can even hold a transition in one spot.

In "A Recipe," the Iris Round setting is used at the very end of the story, to zero in on Massimo's face and hold while the credits roll. Once they're done, the black circle contracts into nothing. End of movie. This effect is achieved by duplicating the transition three times, slightly altering the settings each time._

The first transition starts with all of Massimo in the shot and ends with black closing in on all but his face.

With some experimentation, we found that a good end point would be 71% of the transition finished. To focus on Massimo's face, we used the cursor to position the white repositioning box almost right between his eyes.
The second transition is long and perfectly static; it holds in place, 71% of the transition completed at the start, 71% at the finish.
The third transition starts at 71% and ends at 100% finished. Everything's black.

Where did this black come from? you might ask. What is the image in the A track transitioning to in the B track? we answer back, a question for a question. Nothing! you reply. Right. And when Premiere has a blank track, only black shows up on the screen.
Transitions aren't as sophisticated as they might be in Premiere. Witness how we had to use three separate transitions to get what looks like in the final movie as a seamless transition. Some of the filters give you more settings to control, as we shall explore next.