What is a jump cut?

I saw it get referenced, but not sure what it means and why I would want to do it. I like knowing all these details before I get started so that I don’t have to go back and redo things again when I find a better way to do them.

You don’t want to do a jump cut, you want to avoid doing jump cuts. A jump cut is when you change from one clip of video to another clip of video but the change in the two clips is not so significant that there is a big difference on the screen. For instance you can be cutting up some dialogue and you cut out a few umms or ahhs but then the shot seems to pop to the next shot and the head seems to jerk unnaturally. The best way to avoid jump cuts is to either dissolve or use a cutaway. A cutaway is a shot that you put over the top of the underlying video in the time line that covers over any jump cuts. Usually this shot is of something that the person in the video is talking about, or even a screen with text on it.