Of all the module types, themes are probably the easiest to conceptualize. From the user's perspective, there's little difference between using a theme and video clips since both appear in the main visual track along with images and transitions. But themes generate frames programmatically, based on current position and perhaps user input. For instance the Clouds theme generates an animation based on a user-definable speed property. Themes are often used as input for other modules.

Transition modules are a bit more complex in that frames from adjacent clips are available to them for manipulation. Typically the clips are merged together using alpha transparency, animated masking or some other mechanism. For instance, the Matte module can be combined with the Shapes theme to create many transitions like swipe, iris, barn door, and more.

Effects modules are yet more complicated because they can potentially affect a large number of clips, depending on how they are being applied. When effect clip appear directly in the timeline, they are positioned in additional tracks directly above the main visual track. Effect tracks are applied from the bottom up, with each successive track affecting the ones below it. Effect clips within the timeline always have positive track values, starting at one.

Effect clips can also be applied to any clip or to the entire mash itself by binding an instance of the Browser control to the 'effects' property. These clips always have negative track values starting at negative one, and tags that are literally nested within whatever they're being applied to. The length of these clips is automatically adjusted to match their parent, so the effect is essentially embedded or attached. Effect clips can be applied to other effect clips to create compound effects as well.

Each module has properties that can either be made editable for advanced effects, or predefined to generate a wide variety of simpler, non-editable effects. It's also possible to limit the range of possible values for each editable property, keeping users from applying effects too strongly.

The core effects modules currently include a multi-purpose Adjust module which can be used to color balance the underlying clips in a variety of ways, and a flexible Convolution module which applies any matrix-based filter like sharpen, blur, emboss or outline. There are also several text related effects including Caption, Textbox and Ticker, all of which overlay colored text on to underlying clips, displayed in a custom font.

Some modules are able to merge video tracks together. The simplest is Picturebox, which allows the merged video to resized, positioned and cropped. Composite goes a step further by enabling it to be rotated and sheared. And finally, the Displace module uses the merged video as a 'bump map', enabling effects like wave, ripple and glass.

All effect modules have a length property which determines the amount of time they are applied. Many effects also have an fade property, which allows their intensity to be increased and decreased arbitrarily over time.

Like other modules, transition modules are used to generate the actual transition mediaitems that users drag from the Browser into the Timeline. Each property can either be made editable or predefined, allowing many transition media items to be generated from a single transition module.

Core transition modules include Crossfade, which simply fades the next clip into the previous one, and Cube, which scales both clips over time in one of the four directions to mimic a rotating cube.

All transition modules have a length property which determines the amount of time they are in effect. If this becomes longer than half the length of the previous clip its last frame is repeated to fill any gap, causing the video to appear to freeze at some point during the transition. This is also true of the next clip, which will repeat its first frame to fill a gap.

Transition modules also all have a freezestart property that, when set to true, will cause the transition to wait until the last frame of the previous clip before starting. This frame is then used throughout the transition, making the video appear to freeze. The freezeend property works the same way with the next clip.

Core theme modules include Title, which displays colored text in a custom typeface, and Gradientmap which generates textured backgrounds (well suited for bump mapping with the Displace effect module).