how to eliminate jerking motion when repeating a video clip

I am using a moving clouds clip as a background in a video that I want to repeat continuously. When the clip reaches the end and restarts there is a distracting jerk in the moving scene. Is there a trick to eliminating this that is easy and fast?

Hi pioneer11!

It's not likely it will be perfect, but you can eliminate sudden changes. It also depends on how much change there is throughout the clip.

The way to do it is to cut the clip in half in any editor, move the second half to the front and the first half to the back. Then you would create a fade between the two clips, maybe of about 0.5-1 sec or so. The clips would overlap by this much. This means the total duration of the new clip will be shorter than the original by 0.5-1 sec. Whatever looks the best. Then you export that new clip and it will loop a bit smoother.

Normally, things in nature can never loop perfectly but if there isn't too much change or if there are repeating patterns it can be done quite OK.

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Another option is to play the clip normally first and then backwards. This may look a bit strange though, especially with clouds...