The timeline editor

Early preview

The video editor and the picture editor are both available as an Early preview: every editor page shows an Early preview label. Click or tap it to read what that means: the editor is still being finished, your work is saved, but some tools may change.

The editor lets you open a video edit as a timeline, tracks of clips laid out in time, and change it by hand: trim a cut, move a clip, split one, add a title or a marker, undo a change, or go back to an earlier version. It works on the edit itself, not on a finished video file, so every change is cheap and reversible until you render.

The picture editor is part of the same early preview, so its page shows the same Early preview label.

Each section below stands on its own.

Opening a timeline

Go to Editor in the left menu. The page is one project at a time (switch it with the project picker at the top right) and has two tabs: Videos and Pictures.

Videos lists every video timeline in the project, newest edit first, with when it was last changed and what it started from.

• New timeline creates one. The name starts as "Untitled video", already selected, so you can type over it. For a blank timeline pick a Format (Landscape 16:9 1080p, 4K landscape, Vertical 9:16, Square 1:1 or Portrait 4:5) and a Frame rate (24, 25, 30, 50 or 60 frames per second, or Match my first clip, which uses the frame rate of the first video in your project and says so if none is known yet). Advanced holds the pixel shape and the Start timecode. Start from can pick a finished workflow video instead: its cuts, titles, music and the agents' reasons become the starting point, and it keeps that video's own size and frame rate.
• Above the list, Search narrows it by name as you type, and Sort orders it by Recently edited, Name or Created. The browser remembers the order.
• A timecode field takes digits from the right: type 1215 and it reads 00:00:12:15. Enter keeps it, Esc cancels, and anything that is not a real time goes back to what it was with a short reason underneath. On a phone the number keypad opens.
• In the editor's Timeline settings, Format and Frame rate use the same words. Once there are clips on the timeline the frame rate is locked, with the reason shown: "The frame rate can't be changed once there are clips on the timeline. Start a new timeline at the frame rate you want."
• From your workflow runs lists finished videos you have not opened yet. Edit turns one into a timeline and opens it. Opening the same video again (from here or from Open in editor on a workflow run) brings you back to the timeline you already made from it, never a second copy.
• If something from the run cannot be placed, the editor tells you how many items were left out.
• Import reads an OpenTimelineIO (.otio) file from ReelBolt or another editor.
• The … menu on a row can Rename the timeline, Duplicate it, open its review page, copy the review link, or Delete it. Delete asks first and tells you what happens: the timeline moves to Recently deleted for 30 days, its review page and comments stop working while it is there, and they come back when you restore it. Videos you already rendered stay in your project. Right after deleting, a message with Undo stays for a few seconds. Recently deleted (under the list) shows how long ago each one went and how many days are left; Restore brings it back with all its edits. After 30 days it is removed for good.
• The ⋯ menu on a timeline duplicates it, opens its review page, or copies the review link to send to someone who only needs to watch and comment.

Click a timeline to open it. Its address is /app/editor/<project>/timeline/<timeline>; you can bookmark it. The back arrow at the top left of the editor returns to the list.

What you see

The editor takes the whole window (the app menu folds away; the menu button at the top left brings it back). Panels can be resized by dragging the thin lines between them, or with the arrow keys once a line has keyboard focus.

• Top bar: the timeline's name and revision, the workspaces (Media, Cut, Edit, Compose, Color, Audio, Deliver) in the middle, and on the right the review page, saved layouts, keyboard shortcuts and Export (which opens Deliver).
• Viewer (centre): plays the timeline. Under it is the transport: mark in / mark out, previous and next cut, frame steps, play/pause, a timecode box, marker jumps and loop. The icons on the right save the current frame as a picture, show the picture without colour grades, and open the preview options (playback resolution, single-clip mode).
• Timeline (bottom): a toolbar (select, blade and hand tools, split at the playhead, snapping, Remove silence, and zoom with a fit button), then the ruler, a lane for markers, and the tracks. Each clip is a coloured block with its name and length, a thumbnail or a filmstrip for pictures and a waveform for sound; a hatched edge means the clip is trimmed and there is more of the source behind it. The selected clip shows trim handles at its edges.
• Track headers (left of the tracks): the target, lock, eye (video) or mute and solo (audio) buttons, and a Track options button. Its menu renames the track (or double-click the name), colours it, makes the row Small, Medium or Large, moves it up or down (or drag the handle beside the row), adds a video or audio track above or below it, and removes it. Removing a track that has clips asks first, and Undo brings it back. Show waveforms, Show thumbnails and Show clip names only change what you see, not your edit.
• Left panel: Markers, Edits (a table of every cut with its in and out times), Transcript, Subtitles, Takes (alternate takes), Structure, Comments and History (your undo list). Tabs that do not fit scroll sideways.
• Right panel: Inspector (the selected clip's name, times, enabled flag, and its speed, transform, crop, fades and keyframes), Assist, Settings (the timeline's frame size and frame rate), Versions (saved versions you can go back to) and Compare.
• Status bar: the save state, how many frames the preview had to skip, the kind of preview you are getting (see below), the render cache and the current time.

Versions lists the points you can go back to, grouped by editing session and newest first (for example "Today 14:02-14:40"). Each one says why it was saved: an auto-saved checkpoint, before you restored, before a render, before an AI suggestion, or a version you named. Auto-saved checkpoints are kept for 30 days and the row says how many days are left; name a version to keep it forever. Press Save a named version now to name where you are, or use Name this version, Rename and Remove the name on any row. Restore asks first and keeps your current state as "Before you restored", so you can always come back. Accepting an AI suggestion saves a "Before an AI suggestion" version first. On a phone the panel is a sheet at the bottom of the screen.

Every workspace keeps the viewer and the timeline; it swaps the side panel for its own tools. Media gives the media pool the whole centre of the screen: select a clip and press Insert at playhead (it goes in at the nearest cut that fits and pushes the rest along), Overwrite (it goes in exactly at the playhead and replaces whatever is under it; nothing moves), Add to end, or Place on top (exactly at the playhead on the topmost free track, or on a new track, without touching other clips). After each one a message tells you where it landed ("Placed on Video 1 at 00:00:12:04") with an Undo button. The clip goes in at its full length, or only the part between the In and Out marks you set in the source viewer; Create subclip adds that marked part to the end of the timeline. A video with sound brings its sound along on a Camera audio track under the picture, and one undo removes both. If the file has not been prepared yet its length is unknown: it goes in at 5 seconds and the editor tells you so, so you can trim it once the file is ready. The pane follows the preparation by itself; there is no need to press Check again. A sound file plays in a simple audio player and a picture is shown as a picture.

To give a clip already on the timeline its own sound, select it and press Extract audio in the Inspector: the sound goes on the Camera audio track at the same place, linked to the picture.

Picture and sound travel together (linked clips)

A clip and its sound are linked: a small chain mark sits on both, the Inspector shows a Linked note, and clicking one selects both. Moving, nudging, trimming, splitting, deleting, copying, pasting, duplicating, changing the speed and disabling a clip all act on the pair, and one undo reverts the whole change. Delete closes the gap on both tracks.

To cut the sound on its own (a J or L cut, where the sound starts before or ends after the picture), hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while you drag a trim handle or a clip, or turn on Edit sound separately in the toolbar and select just the picture or just the sound. The two stay linked. To break a pair apart, select it and choose Unlink in the clip menu (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L); Link selected clips (Ctrl+Alt+L) joins one picture clip and one sound clip from the same source again.

In the Inspector, a selected pair shows a Picture / Sound switch to choose which of the two you are editing. Timelines made before linked clips show a banner, Add sound tracks to my clips: it links the pairs you already have and adds missing sound, tells you in plain words what it did, is one undo step, and never runs by itself. Not now hides it for that timeline.

On a phone or a narrow window

On a phone (a screen narrower than 600 pixels) the editor shows a phone view with the whole screen to itself. The top bar has Back, the timeline's name and whether it is saved, Undo, Redo, Export and a ⋯ menu (Assistant, Review, History, Drag clips with your finger (beta) and Open full view). The viewer sits under it with play, previous and next edit, and marker buttons; the timeline strip is below, and the bar at the bottom has Media, Edit, Audio, Look and Captions. Each opens a panel that slides up: drag its handle down to make it smaller or close it, tap the handle to make it taller, or press the phone's back button. While a panel is open the viewer shrinks so the timeline stays in sight. Turned sideways, the viewer moves to the left, the timeline to the right and the panels open from the right edge. A note says "Phone view. Some tools need a larger screen."; Copy link lets you open the editor elsewhere and Open full view loads the tablet layout and remembers the choice on that device. A tablet (600 to 1100 pixels) keeps the full layout with bigger touch targets: the workspaces sit in a narrow column on the left, and on a narrow tablet the tools and the inspector slide in from the sides with the buttons above the picture. The tablet works, but is not certified yet, and the editor says so in the header's More menu. Everything is the same editor, so a change made on a phone is saved like any other. For watching a render and leaving comments, the timeline's review page is simpler still.

Where to find things on a phone:

You want to	Tap
Add photos, videos or sound	Media in the bottom bar, or Add media in the bar above it
Cut, remove, copy or move a clip	Tap the clip, then the bar above the bottom bar (Split, Duplicate, Trim, Nudge, More, Delete)
Fix the sound	Audio (Duck music, Clean voice, volume, voiceover)
Change how it looks	Look (looks, brightness, contrast, titles)
Fix a caption or cut the silences	Captions
Make the film and send it	Export in the top bar, then Render, Download or Share film (see Export your film)
Watch it and read comments	⋯ then Review (the review page works on a phone)
Work on a picture or thumbnail	Pictures on the Editor page (see Pictures on a phone)
Use the whole editor	⋯ then Open full view (it is not tuned for phones)

On a touch screen:

• Tap a clip to select it. The bar above the bottom bar then shows Split (at the playhead), Duplicate, Trim, Nudge, More and, set apart from the rest, Delete (it closes the gap, on the linked sound too). Nothing asks "are you sure": Delete and Lift show Undo for six seconds, and Undo in the top bar still brings anything back.
• With nothing selected the same bar offers Add media, Add text (a title at the playhead), Marker and Select.
• Select switches on Select mode: tap clips one by one to build a group (a picture and its linked sound come together), then Duplicate, Nudge, Lift or Delete them all at once. Clear empties the group; Done leaves the mode.
• Trim opens a sheet with the clip's In, Out and Duration (type a frame count or a timecode), -10 / -1 / +1 / +10 frame buttons for the start and the end, and the trim mode (Shift everything after, Move the cut, Change the part shown, Move the clip). Changes show straight away and one Undo takes back everything you did in that sheet. If a change cannot be made, the sheet says why.
• Clip (a button on the timeline strip when a video or sound clip is selected, also in More) opens the clip sheet: Fit and Fill, a 3 by 3 pad to place the picture, Across the frame, Up and down, Size and Opacity, Speed (0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x, or any speed), Volume with Mute, and Fade in and Fade out. Every slider has a number box next to it for typing a value; each change is one Undo. Anything animated on desktop is shown but not changed here ("Animated on desktop"), and rotation, crop, reverse and transitions stay on desktop; a clip that already has them says so.
• Look opens Look and fix: pick a look by name (or Original), set How strong it is, and adjust Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Warmth and Tint. Show the original (or hold Hold to compare) shows the picture without its colour. Apply to all clips gives every video clip the same look and settings in one step, so one Undo takes it back. Titles adds a title at the playhead (type the words, pick Plain, Lower third, Boxed, Outline or Card) and edits the words of the title you selected. Colour wheels, curves, keying, masks and reframing are on desktop; a clip that already has them keeps them. Footage shot in HDR on a phone is converted to standard colours before your grade is applied, so it does not wash out or blow out. The preview shows an HDR clip approximately (the clip is marked HDR clip); the finished film is exact.
• More has Select several clips, Fit, position and fades, Speed, Volume, Move earlier and Move later (swap places with the neighbouring clip), Extract audio, Freeze frame, Link picture and sound and Unlink, Copy, Cut and Paste at the playhead, Previous marker and Next marker, Clear in and out, Snapping, and Lift (leave a gap).
• The phone has no timeline toolbar: Undo and Redo are in the top bar, and the timeline strip has Fit (the whole timeline across the screen); pinch to zoom.
• Drag a selected clip's yellow edge to trim it, drag an empty part of the timeline to scroll it, pinch to zoom, and drag two fingers to scroll without changing what is selected. Double tap a clip to zoom to it. Every one of these has a button too (Trim, Fit, the previous and next clip buttons). Moving a clip by pressing and dragging it is experimental and off until you switch it on in ⋯ (Drag clips with your finger); until then, press and hold a clip for its menu, or use Nudge and Move earlier / later.
• Media (and Add media in the bar) opens the Add media sheet. Choose photos, videos or sound lets you pick files from your camera roll or files (several at once), Take a photo or video uses the camera, and each file shows how far it has got ("Uploading 40%", "Added", or "Did not upload" with Try again). Each tile says whether its preview is Ready, Processing preview, or "Preview not ready - you can still add it". Tap Actions on a tile for Insert at playhead, Add to end, Add to bin, Remove from bin, Keywords and notes and Preview. After you add a clip the sheet shrinks so you can see the timeline, and Undo is offered for six seconds. The bin chips at the top filter the tiles, and New bin makes one from a name. Drag a finger sideways over a tile's picture to look through the clip.
• Export in the top bar opens the export sheet: Render stays at the bottom, and a finished film can be downloaded or shared right there.
• The timecode box opens the number pad: type digits only, so 1215 goes to 12 seconds 15 frames.
• Audio opens the audio panel. Duck music under the voice lowers the music wherever someone talks, and Clean voice removes background noise and evens out the volume on the voice tracks; each is one tap and one Undo. Every audio track has Mute, Solo and a volume slider (Back to 0 dB resets it), and the selected clip's volume is there too. Voiceover records from the microphone at the playhead; if the browser cannot record it says "Recording is not available in this browser. Upload a voice file instead." and lets you pick a file.
• Captions opens the captions panel: each caption can be edited (a full-width box, saved when you tap Done), Split at the playhead, Merge with next or Delete; Add at the playhead and Generate from speech make new ones. Remove silence shows the quiet stretches and what cutting them will do before anything changes. Delete words shows the spoken words: press and hold a word, or tap Select words and tap the first and last word, drag the two round handles (or use the arrow buttons) to change the range, then Delete cuts them out and closes the gap. More tools at the bottom keeps the analysis, transcript, markers and caption looks.
• If the timeline was changed somewhere else, a short bar above the bottom bar says so: Keep my copy saves your edits as a new timeline, Use the latest loads what is saved. Hiding the app or switching apps does not lose an edit.

A few tools need a larger screen and say so on a phone instead of showing a control that would not work: compound clips, buses and automation, curves, tracking a power window through a clip, moving bins inside other bins, dragging transcript paragraphs (the arrows still reorder them) and selecting by drawing a box (use Select in the bar to tap several clips instead; the Clip menu says so).

A few keyboard shortcuts have no button on a phone: the J, K and L shuttle keys, Stop, play in to out, ten-frame playhead steps, and moving a clip to another track. Everything else on the keyboard has a button.

Playing and moving around

Action	Keys
Play / pause	Space
Play in to out	Shift+Space
Shuttle reverse	J
Stop	K
Shuttle forward	L
Back one frame	←
Forward one frame	→
Back ten frames	Shift+←
Forward ten frames	Shift+→
Previous edit	↑
Next edit	↓
Previous marker	Shift+↑
Next marker	Shift+↓
Go to start	Home
Go to end	End
Mark in	I
Mark out	O
Clear in and out	Alt+X
Add marker	M
Blade tool	B
Select tool	V
Hand tool	H
Trim mode: ripple (default)	R
Trim mode: roll	T
Trim mode: slip	Y
Trim mode: slide	U
Snapping on/off	N
Delete selection (closes the gap)	Delete or Backspace
Lift selection (leaves a gap)	Shift+Delete or Shift+Backspace
Cut at playhead	Ctrl/Cmd+B
Nudge left one frame	,
Nudge right one frame	.
Nudge left ten frames	Shift+,
Nudge right ten frames	Shift+.
Copy clips	Ctrl/Cmd+C
Cut clips (copy, then delete)	Ctrl/Cmd+X
Paste clips at the playhead	Ctrl/Cmd+V
Duplicate clips	Ctrl/Cmd+D
Move clip to the track above	Alt+↑
Move clip to the track below	Alt+↓
Link selected clips (picture and sound)	Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+L
Unlink selected clips	Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt+L
Deselect	Escape
Undo	Ctrl/Cmd+Z
Redo	Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z or Ctrl/Cmd+Y
Select all	Ctrl/Cmd+A
Select forward from playhead	A
Select backward from playhead	Shift+A
Select all on track	Alt+A

Press J or L again to shuttle faster (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x). Shortcuts (top right) lists the same keys and lets you change them.

Your in and out marks are saved with the timeline: they are still there after you reload the page, and undo and redo bring back earlier marks too. A mark is only saved once both are set and the out mark comes after the in mark. When both are set, Deliver starts with the render limited to that range.

You can also click or drag on the ruler to move the playhead, and type a time into the timecode box. Typing digits fills the box from the right, so 1215 means 12 seconds and 15 frames. Typing +15 moves 15 frames forward, -2s two seconds back, +1:00 one second forward.

Selecting, cutting, moving and trimming

• Click a clip to select it; Shift-click another clip on the same track to select everything between them; drag on an empty part of a track to draw a box around several clips; Ctrl/Cmd+A selects everything.
• The Select menu above the timeline offers Select all, Select forward from the playhead, Select backward from the playhead, Select all on this track and Deselect. The keys A and Shift+A select every clip from the playhead forward or backward (a clip the playhead is in counts both ways); Alt+A selects every clip on the track of the selected clip.
• Blade (B or the scissors button) splits a clip where you click. Blade at playhead splits every clip under the playhead.
• Move: drag a clip along its track or onto another track of the same kind.
• Trim: drag the handle at either end of the selected clip. The Trim: menu in the toolbar picks what the drag does: Ripple (default: the clips after it move with the edge), Roll (moves the cut between two clips), Slip (changes which part of the source shows, nothing moves) or Slide (moves the clip; the neighbour on the side you drag absorbs the change, and the other side keeps its edge, so a gap can open there).
• Join, Fit to the gap, Replace (in the Clip menu and the right-click menu, on a larger screen): Join with next clip puts two halves of one split back together. Fit to the gap stretches or squeezes a clip to fill the gap after it and tells you the new speed ("Speed becomes 83%"). Replace with... plays another file from the media pool in the same place and length. When one cannot run, the reason is written under it.
• Delete: Delete (or Backspace) removes the selected clips and closes the gap, on the clip's paired sound too (the matching clip on another track, same source and same place). Shift+Delete lifts them instead and leaves a gap; Close gap before this clip in the Clip menu closes it later.
• Undo / Redo: the arrow buttons at the left of the timeline toolbar (or Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z).
• Snapping (N) makes a dragged edge jump to nearby cuts, markers, the playhead and the in/out marks. Turn it off when you need to place something between them.
• Select tool / hand tool (V / H): the hand tool pans the timeline instead of editing it.

A dragged clip only becomes a change when you let go, so one drag is one undo step.

The Add menu above the timeline places a three-second Title or Colour card at the playhead, on the top video track that has room there (or on a new video track above the others). Title with style and length... opens one dialog: pick a style (Plain, Lower third, Boxed, Outline, Card) with a live preview, type the text, set the length and choose the track. Colour card with a chosen colour... offers named colour swatches or a custom #RRGGBB. Both say where the item landed. The new item is selected so you can change it in the Inspector straight away (a colour card's colour has the same swatches there), and one undo removes it.

Freeze frame here (2 s) is in the clip menu (and the "..." Clip button): it splits the clip under the playhead, holds that frame for two seconds and pushes the rest of that track later. The hold is silent, and one undo puts everything back.

Markers

Press M to add a marker at the playhead, or type a name in the Markers panel and press Add. Click a marker to jump to it; the panel lets you rename or remove it.

Timelines that came from an agent run also show reasoning markers: for each cut the agent made, the reason it gave, at the frame it applies to. They are labelled with the agent and the AI service that made the decision. You can read them but not edit them, they are the agents' notes, not yours.

Undo, redo and saving

• Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes, Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z (or Ctrl/Cmd+Y) redoes. The History panel lists every change in the session; click any entry to jump back to that point.
• Saving is automatic. The status bar shows Saving…, then Saved · rev N. You never need to press a save button.
• If the editor says Invalid it found a problem with your last change and did not send it; undo the change.
• If it says Read-only with a banner, someone else (or you in another tab) saved a newer version while you were editing. Your last changes stay on screen so you can see them, but they are not saved. Press Reload latest to continue from the newest version; your unsaved changes are discarded, never merged automatically, this is deliberate, so two people can never silently overwrite each other's work.

Going back to an earlier version

ReelBolt keeps restore points for you. It saves one when you start editing after a pause of a couple of minutes, before a restore, and before each render, plus the very first version of every timeline. You can also save the current state yourself and give it a name. Restore points ReelBolt saves for you are kept for 30 days. A version you have named, and the first version, are kept until you remove them. A deleted timeline can be brought back from the trash for 30 days, then it is gone for good.

The version list shows which points can be restored. Restore brings that copy back as a new revision, so nothing is ever lost, you can restore the restore. Restore asks for confirmation first, because it replaces the whole timeline and clears this session's Undo history.

What the preview shows you, and what it cannot

The viewer plays the timeline itself, not a rendered file. To do that quickly it uses proxy (low-resolution) copies of your clips, so:

• A badge over the viewer says how faithful the current frame is. Faithful means what you see is what the render will do (cuts, which clip is on top, volume). Approximate means the render will differ in detail (titles and captions are drawn with a stand-in font, animated values are interpolated by the browser, a slow-motion or fast-motion clip shows the right timing but not the render's sound stretch). Render required means the effect is not previewed at all. Preview not ready means part of the picture is missing or still being prepared.
• Tap or click the badge to see why, in plain words, for example "Clip "Interview": Slow motion (0.5x) ...". Each line about a clip is a button: it selects that clip and moves the playhead to it, so you can go straight to what the badge is talking about. Lines about clips that are not on screen right now are listed under "Elsewhere in this timeline". The badge is never "Faithful" while the preview is the Simple preview, runs at reduced quality, or a picture is missing.
• Preparing the preview. When you open a timeline, ReelBolt asks for a small, fast copy (a proxy) of every clip it uses. While a clip's copy is not ready the viewer says so instead of showing black: "Preparing preview 42%" with a progress bar, "Source offline" when the file cannot be reached, or "Preview failed: ..." with a Try again button. A line above the viewer ("Preparing preview 42%", "Preview failed for 2 clips") opens the list of clips with their state, Try again for each failed one and Prepare all. When everything is ready the line disappears.
• Preview quality (the sliders button under the viewer) is Auto, Full, Half or Quarter. Auto looks at your device: a phone, a browser that draws with software graphics, or a computer with four or fewer processor cores or about 4 GB of memory or less starts on the Simple preview at a smaller picture. The Simple preview plays one clip at a time from its small copy and is labelled Simple preview above the viewer. Your edits are still exact: the finished video is always made by the render. If playback keeps dropping frames, the viewer offers Switch to simple preview. Your pick is remembered on this device; the Simple preview switch in the same menu turns it on or off yourself.
• The status bar counts dropped frames. If the number climbs, your computer cannot decode and draw fast enough; lower the preview quality or switch to the Simple preview. The count is never hidden, so you always know when the preview is cheating.
• The status bar also says which kind of preview you have: live (the full compositor), simple (one clip at a time over its small copy), or unavailable (no copy exists for the clip yet; the Media workspace shows what has been generated).
• While the viewer starts it shows a neutral grey frame at the size of your picture, so the layout does not jump and there is no black flash.

The finished video is always produced by a render, never by the preview. You start one from the Deliver workspace; see Rendering a finished video (Deliver).

Tracks and timeline settings

The small +V and +A buttons above the track names add a video or an audio track at the bottom of the stack; the bin icon on a track removes it, with everything on it, as one undoable step. The lock, eye, mute and solo buttons on a track are saved with the timeline now, so they are the same when you reopen it. The Settings tab on the right edits the frame size, frame rate, sample rate, pixel aspect, aspect policy and start timecode: change what you need and press Apply, one undoable change for all of it.

Nudging clips

With one or more clips selected, press , to move them one frame earlier and . one frame later; hold Shift for ten frames. A nudge that would overlap another clip or start before the beginning is refused and nothing moves.

Removing silence

Remove silence (in the timeline toolbar) lists the pauses the footage analysis measured, mapped onto the clips of the chosen track, each with its timecode and length. Untick the ones you want to keep, choose how many frames to leave on each side of a cut and how short a pause to ignore, read the summary ("3 cuts, 212 frames removed"), and press Remove. All the cuts land as one step, so one Undo brings everything back. The dialog can only offer what was measured: a timeline that was not seeded from an analysed run has no pauses to list, and the dialog says so.

Rendering a finished video (Deliver)

Open the Deliver workspace (or press Export at the top right). Choose a format, HD 1080p, 4K, vertical, square, portrait, the timeline's own size at master quality, or audio only, decide whether to render the whole timeline or only the part between your in and out marks, give the file a name (or leave it blank to name it after the timeline), optionally normalise the loudness, and press Render. The render runs like any other job: the queue below shows it queued, running with its progress, and then finished with a download button (it saves the file under the name you gave it), or failed with the reason. Stop halts a running render. Unsaved edits are not in a render until they save, and the button says so.

If a finished render had to leave something out (a screen insert, which rendered videos do not include yet, for example) or has something to tell you, its row says so in a line such as "2 items were left out of this render · 1 note". Tap or click Show details to read each one; an item is named the way it is named on your timeline.

Your plan sets the highest resolution an export can have, measured on the short side of the picture (see Export resolution on each ReelBolt plan). HD 1080p, vertical, square, portrait and master quality are always available: if the format is bigger than your plan allows, the export is scaled down to your plan's limit with the same shape and the same quality settings, and the form says "Exports at {cap}p on your plan." (for example, a vertical export on Trial comes out at 720×1280). 4K is a size you choose on purpose, so it is greyed out when your plan does not include it, with a note naming your plan's limit and a link to the plans.

Each render remembers which parts of the timeline it could reuse from earlier renders: after a render of the version you are looking at, a thin strip at the foot of the ruler turns blue where a part was reused and red where it was rendered afresh, and the status bar shows the count. Edit anything and the strip disappears until the next render, it never shows the cache of a version that is no longer on screen.

Moving, scaling, rotating and fading a clip

Select a clip and open the Inspector. Everything is in plain units. Opacity is a percent (a field and a slider). Fade in and Fade out are in seconds; the selected clip also shows a round handle at each top corner, so you can drag a fade by eye (or focus the handle and use the arrow keys for one frame at a time). Auto fade puts a half-second fade at both ends. The Transform section moves the picture (Position X and Y are fractions of the frame, so 0.25 is a quarter of the width to the right), scales and rotates it; Crop trims each edge. Each section has a Reset. A value that is out of range is refused with a sentence that says what the range is, and the field shows the stored value again; nothing is silently changed.

The Inspector shows the controls that apply to where the clip sits. A clip on a picture track offers the picture controls (speed, reverse, freeze frame, Animate, Transform, Crop, Fades) and no sound controls: the sound of a clip on a picture track is not played or rendered, so use Extract audio to put it on a sound track. A clip on a sound track offers speed, reverse, Audio channels, Fades and Volume, and none of the picture controls. Volume is a percent with a Mute switch (0% is the quietest setting; unmuting brings back the volume you had). The dB box and its keyframe diamond are under Advanced. A number you type counts as one change when you press Enter, leave the field or pause typing, so one Undo takes it back.

Move the picture right on the viewer

With a picture clip selected and the playhead on it, the viewer shows handles around the picture while it is paused. Drag the picture to move it, drag a corner to scale it (the shape is kept; hold Alt to scale from the centre), and drag the round handle to rotate (hold Shift to turn in 15-degree steps). The picture sticks to the middle, the thirds, the safe margins and the edges of other pictures as you pass them; hold Ctrl to move freely. With the picture focused, the arrow keys nudge it by one pixel (Shift for ten). The Position menu above the viewer has Fit, Fill, a 3 x 3 grid that parks the picture against an edge or corner, and four "picture in corner" presets. If a value already has keyframes, the change is stored as a keyframe at the playhead. One gesture is one Undo, and the Inspector numbers follow the drag.

Animating a clip

Select a picture clip and look at Animate. Tap Zoom in, Zoom out, Pop, Slide from the left, right, top or bottom, Fade or Ken Burns. Each tap sets all the keyframes the motion needs as one change, so one Undo takes the whole motion back, and the playhead jumps to the start of the clip so you can press play. Each preset has a small looping preview. Under the chips you can set how long the motion takes, how strong it is, and for slides and fades whether the clip comes in or goes out. Tapping another preset replaces the first one; Remove animation clears the motion; an Animated badge shows that the clip carries keyframes.

Fine-tune keyframes is for exact control. Beside each number is a small diamond. Put the playhead where you want the change to start and click the diamond: that sets a keyframe there with the current value. Move the playhead, change the number: with keyframes on, the field sets a keyframe at the playhead instead of changing the whole clip. The button showing the count opens the curve: click a point to select it, drag it left or right to move it in time, pick how it eases into the next point, or delete it. Everything is undoable, one step per change.

Speed, reverse and freeze frame

Speed has chips (0.25x, 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x, 4x), a stepper for any other value, and a line that says Clip is now N s, because the clip's length changes to match and everything after it moves along. If the new length would be shorter than the fades, the fades are shortened and a message says so. Reset puts the speed back to 1x. Reverse plays it backwards (up to a minute of footage). Freeze frame holds the clip's first frame for its whole length, silently.

Transitions

Every cut between two clips on the same track shows a round + (a 44 pixel target on a touch screen). Click it to open the transition picker: about eight labelled words (Dissolve, Dip to black, Dip to white, Wipe left, Wipe right, Slide left, Slide right, Circle open), each with a looping preview, More for the rest, and a length (0.25, 0.5, 1 or 1.5 seconds). A line beside the picker says how close the preview is to the export: a dissolve is faithful, every other word is approximate (the viewer shows a dissolve; the render uses the real wipe or slide). Add places the transition centred on the cut. Apply to all cuts adds the chosen word to every cut that can hold it in one step, and tells you how many cuts had no spare footage. A clip that is selected shows its trim handles at its edges instead of the +; the same picker is in the Inspector's Transition section.

The clip after the cut needs some footage before its first frame to show during the blend. When it has none, the picker says so and offers Make room: it trims the start of the next clip (the clips after it move up, and its linked sound follows) so the blend has footage to reach into. If the clip is too short to give any, the picker says that instead. An existing transition shows a small glyph on the cut: click it to change the word (the item's name follows) or Remove transition (back to a hard cut). The + and the glyph are for larger screens; on a phone use the Inspector's Transition section. For frame-exact control and saved transition presets, open Advanced in the Inspector. The render always uses a linear ease, whatever easing you pick.

The mixer (Audio workspace)

Open the Audio workspace. Each audio track has one Volume fader from silence (−∞) up to +12 dB, with a scale under it. Drag it, or type a number in the dB box (Enter to apply; "-inf" for silence). Double-click the fader, or press the small reset button beside the box, to go back to 0 dB. Below it are pan (double-click to centre), mute and solo, a Clean voice switch, a Cut low rumble switch and a level meter. The expert controls (the exact equaliser numbers, buses, compressor, gate, limiter, de-esser and automation recording) sit behind the Advanced audio switch at the top.

Clean voice removes background noise and evens out the volume of that track in one switch. Like all sound processing it is fully heard in the rendered film, so press Audition around the playhead: the editor renders about ten seconds around the playhead the same way the final render does and plays it right there. The sample is a throw-away preview, not a file in your project.

Loudness against a target

Under Loudness choose where the film will be heard: Social (−14 LUFS), Podcast (−16) or Broadcast (−23). Measure loudness plays the whole mix through once and tells you how far it is from the target ("6.0 dB too quiet for Social"); a result within 1 dB counts as on target. Match target moves every unmuted audio track's volume by that difference in one Undo and measures again. The live meter under it is only a preview. If your plan charges credits for the measurement you are told how many before it runs.

Ducking music under speech

In the mixer's Ducking section choose the music track and the voice track(s) (they are picked for you when the tracks are named like Music and Voice), choose how far the music drops, and press Duck music under voice. The badge reads Ducking: on, and the music track's volume gets points that dip wherever someone talks. While ducking is on, the points follow the voice clips when you move or trim them (each update is one Undo). Update ducking does it on demand, Remove ducking restores a flat volume and turns it off. The points are ordinary keyframes you can still edit in the track's automation lane.

Editing from the transcript (Text)

If the timeline was seeded from an analysed run with transcription on, the Text tab in the left panel shows what was said, as paragraphs of words. Click a word to jump to it; shift-click another to select the run between them; Delete words cuts exactly those frames out of the track and closes the gap, one undo step, like any cut. Find fillers… lists every "um", "uh" and stutter it can hear; untick the ones you want to keep and remove the rest in one go. Drag a paragraph onto another (or use its arrows) to move that part of the recording earlier or later. Words shown faded are no longer on the track; a word marked ≈ has estimated timing, so a cut on it lands within its sentence rather than on the word's own edge.

Subtitles

The Subs tab generates captions from the transcript: choose how many characters fit on a line and how many lines a caption may have, pick the track to put them on and press Generate captions. By default the captions go on the timeline's existing captions track; the first time, when there is none, the editor adds a "Subtitles" track. Generating again fills only the gaps: a caption that would overlap one already on the track is skipped, so you never get a second copy. Each caption is an ordinary clip: edit its text in the list, switch it off, split it where the playhead sits or merge it with the next one. Captions on an enabled track are burned into the render; for a separate subtitle file instead, disable the subtitle track and download SRT or WebVTT from the same tab (they carry what is saved, so save first).

The Cut workspace

The Cut workspace is for assembling fast. The strip at the top shows the whole timeline at once, click it to jump; the detail timeline follows. Under it, the source tape lists the project's media: Insert drops a source at the nearest cut to the playhead and pushes what follows along. Review plays each clip at a speed scaled to its length, so a long shot does not take long to check. Boring shots lists the shots the analysis measured as long and still, Show selects one, Remove cuts it out and closes the gap.

Alternate takes

Where the analysis found near-identical shots, the Takes tab stacks them: for each clip with alternatives it shows the take you are using and the others, marking the one the analysis rated best and marking a take shorter than the clip as short. Use this take swaps the footage while keeping the clip's place and length. It refuses a take shorter than the clip, because the clip would run on into the footage after that take, and tells you how long the take is and how long the clip needs; shorten the clip first or pick a longer take.

Comparing two timelines

The Compare tab in the right panel lists the differences between another timeline of the project (a duplicate, an earlier cut) and the one you are editing: clips added, removed, moved, trimmed or changed, plus track and settings changes. Click a time to jump there.

Exporting, importing, stills and single clips

In Deliver, the Export the timeline links download the saved timeline as OpenTimelineIO, a CMX3600 EDL, or SRT/WebVTT captions (a timeline with no captions says so instead of offering an empty file). OpenTimelineIO keeps everything, so Import OTIO on the Videos tab brings a timeline back whole, or imports the cuts of a file another editor made. When some clips' media is not in this project the timeline still opens: each missing clip is a red Offline: name marker where it was, a message lists them, and Relink lets you pick a project file that goes at that marker (one undo step). Under the export links, What is in the file? says what each format carries and leaves out, which media it points at, and a Hand off line counting what will be in the file. Still above the viewer saves the current frame as a PNG at preview quality, handy for a reference, not a finished frame. With one clip selected, Export only "…" in Deliver sets the in and out marks to that clip and switches on Only the marked in/out range, so the next render covers just it.

Keywords, labels and smart bins

In the Media workspace, selecting a clip shows Notes and keywords: add keywords, a note, a colour label, and mark it a favourite or flag it, then Save. In the bin tree, New smart bin… (see below) creates a bin that always shows every source matching a filter, keywords, kind, label, favourite, flag, part of the name, instead of what you drop in it. Tag the clips and the smart bins fill themselves.

To put a clip in an ordinary bin, drag its tile onto the bin, or open the ⋯ menu on the tile and choose Add to bin (smart bins are never offered: they fill themselves).

Finding, starring and sorting media

The pool shows a picture for each clip (a video shows its first frame), its length and size when known, and one quiet line, Not analysed yet, when nothing has measured it. The star and flag on a tile save the moment you tap them; a coloured dot shows the clip's colour label and small chips name the bins it is in. Search matches file names and keywords, Sort orders by when added, newest, name, length or size, and Filter narrows by kind (video, audio, pictures) or by Starred, Flagged or Not analysed yet. Clear filters brings everything back.

Bins without dragging

Every bin has a ⋯ menu: Rename, New sub-bin (the next bin you add goes inside it), Move to another bin or the top level (desktop), Edit rule (smart bins) and Delete bin, which asks first. A clip's row inside a bin has its own ⋯ > Move to menu.

Smart bins

New smart bin… opens a short form in plain words: the kinds of media, starred or flagged, a colour label, keywords, and part of the name. A line under it says what the rule means and how many sources match right now ("Video, starred: 3 sources match now"). A rule with nothing chosen is refused, because it would only repeat All media. Choose Edit rule on a smart bin's menu to change it later; the tree shows each smart bin's match count.

Putting media on the timeline

Drag a tile onto a track in the timeline: a blue line shows exactly where it will land, and a track the clip cannot go on (a sound on a video track) shows a red line and refuses the drop. The clip covers whatever is under it, nothing else moves, the marked In/Out range of the source viewer is used when you set one, and a message says where it landed with Undo. Without a mouse, use the tile's ⋯ > Put it on the timeline menu, or the buttons beside the source viewer. The Edit workspace opens with the media pool on the left on a computer or tablet, so a tile and the timeline are on screen together.

The source viewer

There is one player: it uses the lightest copy that is ready (labelled Simple preview) and the original otherwise, with no switch to think about.

Upload (at the top of the Media workspace, and in its empty state) adds video, audio or images from your device; you can also drop files onto the Media area. Each file shows its progress, and one that fails says why and offers Try again. When it finishes it appears in the pool. On a phone, Upload opens the file picker. Deleting a bin asks first, naming the bin and how many sub-bins and clips it holds: clips stay in your project, only the grouping goes.

Grading a clip (Color workspace)

Color opens on looks. With a clip selected, the gallery shows your current frame with each look applied: Warm, Cool, Filmic, Vibrant, Muted, Mono and Teal & orange. Click one to grade the clip with it; Strength (0 to 150 percent, 100 is the look as written) makes it subtler or stronger, and Original takes it off. Under Fix, five plain sliders (Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Warmth, Tint) fine-tune the picture. Show the original (before) flips the viewer between before and after without changing the clip; Split before / after draws the original on the left of the viewer with a slider for the dividing line. Apply to all clips gives every clip the same look and fixes in one step (one Undo takes it all back); with several clips selected you can apply to just those, or to the clips from the same file. Copy grade and Paste onto selected move a whole grade, and Match this clip to… picks another clip and nudges this one toward its colour at the amount you choose (a first-order match: refine or remove the Match correction afterwards). Adjustment layers lists the layers that grade everything below them for a range; add one over the selected clip, select it, and give it a look like any clip. The node stack, curves, LUT, qualifier and the other expert tools are under Advanced, described next.

Open Advanced in the Color workspace for the expert tools. Add correction gives you lift, gamma, gain and offset for red, green, blue and all together, plus exposure, contrast (around a pivot), saturation, hue, temperature and tint; Curves lets you click points onto a tone curve for luma or one channel; LUT applies a .cube file from your project at the strength you choose. Each correction has its own on/off switch, and the switch at the top bypasses the whole grade. Add look turns the words a Colorist agent uses, Warm, Cool, Filmic, Vibrant, Muted, Mono, at a strength, with lifted or deepened shadows and softened or brightened highlights, into an ordinary correction you can keep, tweak or delete. Grade on/off above the viewer compares before and after in the preview only: renders and stills always use the grade as it is switched.

Colour groups

Clips graded together belong to a colour group: select them and press Group selected clips, or Groups from look groups to make one group per set of similar-looking shots the analysis found. A group's grade is applied first, then each clip's own. Pick the group in the Color workspace's target menu to grade it; rename it, add the selected clips, or remove members in the list.

Stills, wipe, scopes and shot match

Grab still keeps a picture of the current frame in the gallery; click one to make it the reference and drag Wipe to compare it against the live picture in the viewer. The scopes (waveform, parade, vectorscope, histogram) read the composited preview, grade included. Match to reference adds a correction that moves the current clip's brightness, balance and contrast toward the reference still, a starting point to refine, not a guarantee.

Masks, keys, pins and effects (Compose workspace)

Open Compose with a clip selected. A shape mask shows the clip only inside (or outside) a feathered rectangle or ellipse; a chroma key makes a colour transparent, with spill removal; a corner pin places the whole picture onto four corners; effects (blur, sharpen, vignette, grain, pixelate, mono) stack in order with an amount each; Stabilise steadies shaky footage in the render; Reframe crops to the timeline's aspect around a subject point; Slow motion can interpolate frames for smoother slow motion. With a mask or Reframe switched on you can set them on the picture itself: pause, select the clip, and drag the yellow shape (drag inside to move it, the square handles to resize it, the round handle to soften the edge) or the green cross for Reframe, which holds a fixed point for now (following the subject comes later). Invert mask sits above the picture, the arrow keys nudge by 1% (Shift for 10%), and one undo reverts a whole drag; the sliders stay for fine-tuning. The power window under Colour, Advanced tools can be moved the same way (purple), unless it follows the picture: then turn off tracking to move it by hand. None of these show in the preview, the badge above the viewer says so, the render applies them. To see the real result before you deliver, press Preview 3 s: it shows the price first (or "included"), then renders three seconds around the playhead and plays them over the viewer. Close preview or Back to editing returns to your timeline, which is unchanged. For an insert, Compose edits its matte and the corners of its tracked quad at the playhead. With nothing selected, Add adjustment clip puts a clip on a new top track whose grade and effects apply to everything beneath it for its length.

Title templates

Select a title: the inspector's Template offers a lower third, a boxed title, an outlined one and a card, in addition to the plain centred title. The viewer draws the template's position, box and outline; the text itself is drawn by the browser, so its exact size can differ slightly from the render.

Nesting clips (compound clips)

Select some clips and open the Structure tab: Make compound turns them into one clip that behaves like any other, move it, trim it, cut it. Open shows what is inside so you can edit it (cut, move, trim, delete, undo); Save to compound puts your changes back, and one Undo outside takes the whole session back. Decompose puts the clips back on the timeline as they were.

Several cameras of one moment (multicam)

Select two or more clips recorded at the same time (the first one is the reference) and press Sync by waveform: the editor listens to each clip's sound and lines them up. Each camera shows its offset in seconds and a confidence badge; a low confidence badge means the sound did not match clearly. Fine-tune an offset with −1 frame and +1 frame or by typing it. Under Sound of the multicam choose which recording supplies the audio: the first camera (program), any selected clip (a separate recorder clip is one of them), or no sound. Make multicam replaces them with one clip; change the sound later from the multicam's panel. Play it and click a camera's button to cut to it at that moment; stop and click a button to change the camera of the section under the playhead. Each cut is one Undo.

Buses, compression and clean-up (Audio workspace)

Under the mixer, Buses and processing lets you group tracks: add a bus (say, Dialogue), route tracks to it, and route buses into each other or to the master. Each track and bus can have a compressor, limiter, noise gate, de-esser, noise reduction and a leveler that evens out speech. These apply in the rendered video. Buses, the compressor, limiter, noise gate and de-esser are also heard in the preview, approximately (each shows "Heard in preview, approximately" or "Heard after render only"); denoise and the leveler are heard after the render only.

Automation: set a track to Latch, play, and move its fader, when you stop, your moves are written as the track's volume curve (one Undo). Read plays the curve back on the fader.

Channels: in the inspector, Audio channels fixes a clip recorded on one side only, folds it to mono or swaps left and right. The preview plays the channels as recorded, so a clip with a channel map is marked "Render required"; the render applies it.

Recording a voiceover

In the Audio workspace pick your microphone (if you have more than one) and press Record at playhead. A 3-2-1 count-in runs while the level meter shows what the microphone hears; Stop and place saves the take to the project's files and puts it on a new Voiceover track where the playhead was. Retake records again and replaces that track in one Undo. If the browser blocks the microphone, has none, or cannot record, the panel says so in plain words and Upload a recording puts a file you already have on the timeline instead.

Asking the AI for suggestions (Assist)

On a phone, ⋯ then Assist opens a sheet over the strip with the same helpers. The price and the hour's allowance show before you ask. Each suggested change is a row: tap it to jump to that moment and see only its outline on the strip. A change to a clip you made has a tick inside it that you must tick first. Accept and Reject stay at the bottom; after Accept an Applied. Undo bar undoes the whole suggestion in one step.

Open the Assist tab, pick a helper, Re-cut, Graphics, Grade, Sound effects or Review (each one's job is written under the picker), optionally mark in and out to limit it to part of the timeline, write what you want in the one prompt box, and press Ask for suggestions.

Before you ask, the panel tells you what it will cost ("Asking costs about 2.5 credits"; nothing is shown when billing is off, and it says Included when your workspace uses its own AI provider), how many suggestions you have left this hour ("12 of 20 suggestions left this hour") and exactly what is sent to the AI: counts of clips and seconds, your brief, never video, audio or file names. Looking at this costs nothing. If you are out of credits the button is disabled and says how many you need; if you used up the hour's suggestions it says how long to wait. If the AI gives an unusable answer, the panel says so and how many credits that attempt used.

The answer is a list of changes, each with its reason, and the timeline shows what would change: green outlines for additions, red hatching for removals, orange for changes. Press Accept on a change to apply just that one, Skip to drop it, or tick several and press Accept checked changes, they apply in one step (one Undo) and the rest stay listed. A change to a clip you made is marked, and you must tick Allow changing your clip first. If no AI provider is set up, the panel says so; an admin adds one under Admin → Inference providers.

Working offline

If your connection drops, keep editing: the status bar says Offline and your edits are kept on this device (even if you close the tab). When the connection returns they are saved. If someone else changed the same part of the timeline in the meantime, the editor will not guess: it keeps your edits, shows Download my offline edits, and asks you to reload.

Shortcuts and layouts

Shortcuts (top right) lists every keyboard shortcut; click Change and press the keys you want. Two actions on one key are flagged and must be fixed before saving. Find a shortcut searches by action or key, Export JSON / Import JSON keep your shortcuts in a file, and Restore previous settings puts back what was there before your last save (kept on this device). If you save from two devices, a save keeps the other device's changes. Layout saves the panel sizes and open tabs of the workspace you are in (as fractions of the window, so a layout fits a smaller screen), Reset layout returns the default sizes, and the bin next to a saved layout deletes it. All of it follows you to every project.

Display settings

The Display settings menu in the editor header sets how roomy the controls are: Comfortable or Compact. A touch screen always gets the larger touch sizes. Always dark keeps the editor dark while the rest of the app is light; choose Match the app (or close the editor) to go back to your own setting. On a phone, Editor always dark is in the header's More menu. Both choices are kept per person on this device.

Presets

Save the settings you reuse as project presets: a transition (in the inspector, between two clips), an effect stack (Compose), or a loudness target (Deliver, the editor also offers Social −14 LUFS, Podcast −16 LUFS and Broadcast −23 LUFS). Pick a preset to apply it; deleting a preset does not change anything you already applied it to. Manage next to the picker shows what each preset does and lets you apply, rename, duplicate or delete it (deleting asks first).

Correcting one colour or one area (Color workspace)

In a correction, HSL qualifier limits it to a range of colours (hue, saturation, lightness), and Power window limits it to an ellipse or rectangle. Track through clip follows what is inside the window as it moves. These show in the rendered video; the preview shows the clip without them.

Review and comments

The Review tab holds timecoded comments: type, press Comment at the playhead (or over the marked range), reply, and resolve. Each comment card has buttons to jump to its time, edit the text, mark it resolved (or reopen it) and delete it, on the editor tab and on the review page. Review link opens one page that works on a phone and on a computer: the newest finished render of the whole timeline, with its picture. On a computer the video sits beside the comments; on a phone they stack. Markers on a bar under the video show where the comments are, and a chip above the comment box shows the time a new comment will pin to (the frame the video is paused on). If you edited the timeline after that render was made, a banner says Newer edits exist and links to the editor; the Render picker lets you watch an older render. Copy review link (and Share where the phone offers it) gives the link; the page says "Anyone in this workspace with access can open it". To let someone without an account watch and comment, see Share a film for review. On a phone you can reply, resolve and delete a comment.

Final Cut Pro

Deliver → Export the timeline → Final Cut Pro XML downloads the cut (clips, gaps, transitions, markers, extra tracks as connected clips) for Final Cut Pro. Titles, grades and effects are not included.

What the editor does not do

• It does not automate a bus's volume.
• The preview does not play compression or noise reduction and does not show colour secondaries; the render applies all three.
• It has no blend modes and no speed ramps, and it does not preview grades made with curves or LUTs.

Editing on the timeline

What changed: Delete used to leave a gap, the same as lift. It now closes the gap, and Shift+Delete lifts the clip and leaves the gap.

• Delete closes the gap; Shift+Delete (or Lift in the Clip menu) leaves a gap. Click an empty space between two clips to select that gap, then press Delete (or Close selected gap) to close it. Close all gaps closes every gap on the selected clip's track.
• Right-click a clip (or tap Clip on a touch screen) for the full list: split, delete, lift, copy, cut, paste at the playhead, duplicate, fit to fill, replace from the media pool, join, move to the track above or below, speed, disable, select forward or backward, properties. Double-click a clip to open it in the inspector.
• Copy / Paste (Ctrl or Cmd with C, X, V; Ctrl/Cmd+D duplicates) keeps the spacing between several clips and works across tracks and timelines.
• The -10 / -1 / +1 / +10 buttons move the selected clip or the playhead by frames.
• Trim: choose ripple, roll, slip or slide in the Trim menu (keys R, T, Y, U). While you drag an edge, a label shows the frames. In the inspector, type the clip's In, Out or Duration in frames or timecode and press Enter; if it cannot be done, a sentence says why.

With your fingers

• Tap a clip to select it. Drag with one finger to slide the timeline sideways. Pinch with two fingers to zoom, and move both fingers together to slide.
• Double-tap a clip to zoom in on it.
• Press and hold a clip for half a second to open its actions (move, split, delete). Every action is also in the Clip menu.
• Drag the yellow handles on the selected clip to trim it. The handles are large enough for a finger.
• Moving a clip by dragging it with a finger is off by default. A device setting turns it on; then a press and hold picks the clip up.
• Touches in the first few millimetres of the screen edge are ignored so the browser's back swipe keeps working.
• In Media, press a clip and drag sideways to scrub through it; a label shows where you are. Drag up or down to scroll the list as usual.

Analyse your footage, then cut by what it contains

Open the Analyse tab and press Analyse on a file to find its quiet stretches, shots and motion. Transcribe speech shows what it will cost first and only starts when you confirm. Then:

• Remove silence and Delete words cut the picture and its linked sound together. Play the result shows the cut in the viewer before anything is saved; Apply keeps it, Cancel drops it.
• Words marked with a tilde have only rough timing; you are asked before cutting them.
• Subtitles makes captions from the transcript, lets you pick a look and position, add a caption by hand (two lines are fine), nudge timing, or Import SRT or WebVTT (preview first, then add or replace).
• In Deliver, choose to burn captions into the video, get separate SRT and WebVTT files, or both.
• Takes groups lines you said more than once, suggests the cleanest, and sets the others aside on a switched-off track.