Fusion

In one line#

A multi-track video editor with a node compositor and a colour page attached, all in the browser.

The layout#

The five pages#

The toolbar switches the whole workspace, rather than opening a panel:

What you do here#

Bring media in#

Drop files onto the browser, or click to import. Filter by Video, Audio or Image, search by name, and organise into bins. Media can also arrive from other studios (see below)

Cut#

Load a clip in the Source viewer, mark it, and send it to the timeline as an Insert or an Overwrite; Lift and Extract take material back out. On the timeline: trim, split with the razor, move, and reorder, with Snap on by default.

Tracks are added with + Track and each carries the usual per-track controls, solo, mute, lock, and visibility.

The transport plays, loops, and scrubs, with a RAM preview button for when real-time playback cannot keep up and a speed selector next to it.

Inspect a clip#

Select a clip and the inspector fills in, across five tabs: Props, Keys, Speed, Track, Mask: with Transform (position, scale, rotation, opacity), Effects and Info underneath. Every value here is keyframeable; the Keys tab is where those keyframes live.

Composite and grade#

The Composite page stacks and keys; the Nodes page is the same work as a graph, which is what you want when an effect has more than one input. The Color page is the grade.

Compositing runs on WebGPU when the browser has it, and falls back to a Canvas 2D path when it does not: the Fusion stats panel tells you which you are getting.

Titles, effects and markers#

The browser's FX, Titles and Marks tabs are libraries, not settings: drag a title or an effect onto the timeline the same way you drag a clip.

The panels behind the pages#

The five pages are the workspace; these are the panels they open.

Colour#

Audio#

Fusion does not send you to Pulse for a mix. Audio Mixer gives every track a strip, Audio Effects is the per-clip chain, and Essential Sound is the guided pass: tell it a clip is dialogue, music or an effect and it applies what that implies.

Time and motion#

Speed Ramp for variable-speed retimes, and Stabilization for shaky footage.

Titles, transitions, markers#

Title Editor builds titles; Transitions and Markers have panels of their own rather than living only on the timeline.

Delivering#

Export for one sequence, Render Queue for several, and Batch Export for a whole set at once. WebCodecs is the browser encoding path, and Stats / Render Stats report what it is achieving, including whether compositing is running on WebGPU or on the Canvas 2D fallback.

Nodes#

Node Graph and Node Properties are the compositor's two halves: the graph and the selected node's parameters.

Shortcuts#

Fusion has its own Shortcuts Editor: the key bindings are yours to change.

The node compositor#

Twenty-one node types, and they are the compositor rather than a decoration on the timeline:

Nodes take keyframes of their own, can be disabled without being removed, and a backdrop groups a region of the graph so a large comp stays readable.

Transitions#

Twenty-one, on the timeline or from their own panel:

cut · fade · cross dissolve · wipe (left, right, up, down) · radial wipe · slide (left, right, up, down) · push (left, right) · zoom in · zoom out · zoom rotate · blur · flash · glitch · morph

Grading#

Scopes: waveform, vectorscope, histogram, are the only honest way to judge a grade, and twelve looks ship as starting points:

neutral · orange & teal · warm film · cold blue · vintage · faded · black & white · sepia · vibrant · muted · bleach bypass · day for night

HDR Grading unlocks peak brightness, tone mapping and zone exposure, and says plainly that it is disabled until you enable HDR, rather than showing dead controls.

Speed and stabilisation#

Speed Ramp is a time-remap curve, not a percentage: Initialize Time Remap creates the curve, then click to add a point and drag to move it. The current speed is read out as you go, with slow-motion and fast presets and a reset.

Stabilization analyses shaky footage and has a method to choose.

The preview, and what it costs#

RAM Preview caches rendered frames for real-time playback, at full, half or quarter resolution and under a memory limit you set. It reports itself as ready or stale, stale meaning the timeline changed under it, and can be cleared.

The render profiler is the other half of that story: FPS, frame time as p50/p95 (not an average, which hides the stutter), dropped frames, and the per-phase breakdown. It carries one warning worth watching for:

⚠️ "{n} frames graded on CPU, GPU path unavailable or failing." The grade has a GPU path and a CPU fallback. The fallback works; it is just far slower, and without this line you would experience it as "Fusion is slow today".

Delivering, and going to another edit suite#

Export does one sequence, Render Queue several, Batch Export a whole set, and WebCodecs is the browser's own encoder, which requires Chrome 94+, Edge 94+ or Safari 16.4+, and says so instead of failing quietly.

The other half of delivery is the interchange formats, which are what let a cut leave for a different suite:

Tracking data exports on its own too, for a match-move done elsewhere.

Files it reads and writes#

Sending work to other studios#

Produces a video project. Accepts images and animations.

A video project is also accepted by Engine, for cutscenes and in-game screens.

Working with someone else#

Fusion syncs operation by operation: tracks added, deleted, reordered; clips moved, trimmed, split and updated; effects, transitions and markers; playback and project settings. Two editors can work on the same sequence.

Limits and common snags#

• Playback stuttering is not always the project. Watch the CPU/GPU/RAM meters in the top bar, and use the RAM preview to cache the section you are judging.
• The status bar tells you the truth about the sequence: its format, its codec, its length, and whether anything is unsaved.
• The Nodes page and the Composite page are the same effects, expressed two ways. Use whichever the effect fits; a single-input effect is clearer as a stack, a multi-input one as a graph.