Whoosh (transition sweep)
The rising swish laid over a move or scene change so the motion flows through the cut instead of bumping into it.
See it
What it is
A whoosh is a short sweep, usually filtered noise with pitch, volume, or stereo motion, that turns a visual transition into one continuous gesture. Its loudest or brightest point lands on the cut, so the ear follows the motion through the edit instead of noticing two unrelated shots touching.
Reach for it under a whip pan, logo move, title fly-in, fast zoom, or scene change that needs momentum. Match its contour to the picture: rise into an arrival, fall away from a departure, pan with the object, and make the duration exactly as long as the visible move. Edgar Wright's whip-pan cuts in Hot Fuzz are the loud, obvious version of the same trick. Layer a soft noise body with a sharper transient only when the destination needs a hit.
Gotcha: a whoosh does not rescue an unmotivated transition. The same stock sweep on every cut quickly sounds like a template, and too much high-frequency energy fights speech and becomes tiring. Shape it to the movement, keep it below dialogue, and leave quiet cuts quiet.
Ask AI for it
Design a 700 ms transition whoosh in Ableton Live from white noise: use Auto Filter automation to sweep a band-pass filter from 400 Hz to 7 kHz, draw an exponential volume rise into the cut, place the peak transient on the exact hit point, then automate Utility from 20% to 90% stereo width. Roll off below 120 Hz, keep the tail under 250 ms, and export a 48 kHz 24-bit WAV with no limiter clipping.