Punch-in

The video suddenly jumps a bit closer to your face on an important line. Nobody moved the camera; the editor just zoomed into the picture.

A cut between two scales of the same shot, made by scaling and repositioning the frame in post rather than with a second lens or camera. Common steps are around 110% to 130%, limited by the source resolution relative to the delivery resolution.

Nothing is filmed twice. The editor enlarges the frame, say from a chest-up shot to a face-and-shoulders one, and cuts to that enlarged version at a chosen moment. Because today's phones and cameras record more pixels than a vertical short needs, there is usually room to zoom without the picture going soft.

That's why it is sometimes called a digital zoom or a crop zoom, and why it costs nothing to shoot.

Moving closer reads as importance. A punch-in on the line that matters, the price drop, the result or the one tip, tells the viewer to lean in.

It also resets attention. Short videos hold people by changing something every few seconds, and when you only have one camera, the size of the frame is one of the few things you can change without any extra footage.

When a stumble is cut out of a single take, the two sides rarely match: your head has tilted, your hands have moved. Played at the same size, that mismatch looks like a glitch.

Played at two different sizes, it looks like a deliberate camera change. That is why punch-ins and filler word removal go together, and why they pair so well with J cuts that carry the sound across.

Press Auto Edit on the web or the Mac and Bang AI cuts the ums, long pauses and false starts out of your takes, then adds punch-ins on some lines together with J and L cuts and captions. You don't pick zoom levels or keyframes.

Because it cuts by what you said, it works best on videos with clear speech. If you want a different zoom on a line, change it by hand in the Mac app.

Not on every cut. A punch-in works best on:

• The hook, so the first line already feels like it's coming at the viewer.
• The single most important sentence, such as a result, a price drop or a recommendation.
• A cut where a stumble was removed, to hide the mismatch between the two sides.
• The line that sets up a product close-up, so the frame is already moving towards it.

Punching in again and again on alternate lines turns emphasis into a rhythm, and viewers stop reading it as meaning anything.

A punch-in is only noticeable against the wider frame around it, so the video needs to return to the wide shot. Editors usually go back out at the start of a new point, after the emphasised line has landed. Two sizes are enough for most short videos; a third, very tight size is best kept for one moment, if any.

• Frame a touch wide, chest up with room above your head, so a closer crop still looks good.
• Film at the highest resolution your camera offers; extra pixels are what you zoom into.
• Keep the camera still; a locked-off shot makes the size change read as intentional.
• Light your face well, since a crop enlarges noise along with everything else.