You can enhance your presentation way by adding visual effects that occur when any type of visual clip starts or stops. Your streaming presentation can include special effects found in professional video production. Transition effects are also used to create a streaming slideshow from still images.

When a clip starts or stops playing then every time transition occurs. if not using a transition effect then clip simply appears when it starts playing and, depending on its fill attribute, disappears when it stops playing. By using transition effects makes these transitions more visually compelling. Instead of just appearing onscreen, the clip might slowly fade in from a solid color. Or, a five-point star might expand from the center of a region to reveal the clip. Instead of just disappearing when it stops playing, a clip might crossfade into the clip that plays next.

Each transition lasts one second by default,but you can make a transition last any length of time. Using transition effects does not affect a presentation timeline.e.g. a two-second transition applied to the end of a clip occurs during the last two seconds that the clip plays. If it is applied to the beginning of the clip then it occurs during the first two seconds of playback.

You can use a transition effect with any visual clip regardless of the layout you have defined, or whether another clip precedes or follows the clip that uses the effect. When a clip starts, the area it covers is treated as its background, whether that area is a region color or a clip in another region, or a clip in the same region. A transition effect simply introduces the clip over, or removes the clip from, its background. So the clips do not have to be the same size, when you use transitions with a sequence of clips,.

Transition effects are distinct from the SMIL animations. A transition effect is a special effect that occurs when a clip starts or stops. An animation, on the other hand, is a special effect that occurs while a clip plays. You can use both transition effects and animations in the same presentation. You can even apply them to the same clip but define them separately.

Transition effects are applied on individual clips. Two clips playing in separate regions might end at same time and use the same transition effect, such as a wipe transition that travels from left to right. In such case, two separate wipe transitions occur, one for each clip. Each transition effect is confined to the region in which the clip play. You cannot make a single transition effect apply to both clips. e.g. you cannot make the left-to-right wipe effect travel across the entire root-layout area, ushering in a new clip to each region as it passes over the region.

The following SMIL sample illustrates the function and relationship of the tags used to create transition effects.

The SMIL file header section define the transition effects your presentation uses. The example given below defines three transition effects after the layout:

Each transition is defined by a separate <transition/> tag that typically has at least three attributes, which are given in a table.