The timeline is where you arrange, cut and time everything in a video. This page covers track kinds, adding media, trimming, splitting, speed, fades, audio linking, markers, snapping and the per-clip properties in the inspector.
A project can hold any number of tracks, in six kinds. Each kind accepts only its own clips.
| Kind | Holds | Header controls |
|---|---|---|
| Video | Video clips, and still images you want processed by effects | Lock, show or hide, mute |
| Image overlay | Still images layered over the video | Lock, show or hide |
| Text | Titles and captions | Lock, show or hide |
| Effect | Effect clips that process the video below them | Lock, show or hide, plus a quick-add button |
| Tracking | Motion tracking overlays | Lock, show or hide |
| Audio | Music, voice and sound | Lock, mute |
To add a track, click Add Track under the track headers and pick "Video track", "Image overlay track", "Text track", "Effect track", "Tracking track" or "Audio track". New tracks are named after their kind with a number.
To reorder or remove a track, click the three-dot button on its header (or right-click the header) and choose Move track up, Move track down or Delete track. Deleting a track removes its clips too, but you can undo it.
The preview is drawn in a fixed order, from back to front:
Each video track shows one clip at a time, so to layer two videos, put them on two different video tracks.
First bring files into the media panel on the left, then place them on the timeline.
Imported images get a default length of 5 seconds. Videos and audio keep their real length.
Tip: Put a still on a video track, not an image overlay track, when you want it processed by effects or animated with a Ken Burns move. Image overlay clips have their own lighter filters instead.
Shift (or Cmd / Ctrl) and click to add or remove clips from the selection.Click or drag on the time ruler to move the playhead.
Drag a clip to move it in time. When several clips are selected, they move together and keep their spacing.
Drag a clip up or down to move it onto another track of the same kind. The clip turns red while you hover over a track that cannot take it, and snaps back if you let go there. You can also right-click a clip and choose Move to track above or Move to track below.
Clips cannot move earlier than the start of the timeline.
Hover over the left or right edge of a clip until the cursor becomes a resize arrow, then drag.
0.1 seconds.Shift while dragging the right edge to ripple trim: every clip after it on the same track moves by the same amount, so no gap opens and nothing overlaps.For exact numbers, use the Timing fields at the top of the inspector: Start (s) and Duration (s). Type a value and press Enter.
Park the playhead where you want the cut, select the clip, and do one of these:
B.Splitting works on every kind of clip: video, audio, text, image overlay, effect and tracking. The playhead has to be more than 0.1 seconds inside the clip, otherwise nothing happens. Both halves keep the original settings, except that the fade out stays on the second half and the fade in stays on the first, so the cut itself plays cleanly. Keyframes on an effect clip carry over to the half they belong to. A split tracking overlay starts its motion afresh on the second half.
Backspace or Delete (or the Delete button) removes the selected clips and leaves a gap.Shift + Backspace (or right-click and Ripple delete) removes them and pulls later clips on the same track back to close the gap.Cmd / Ctrl + D, or the action bar button) places a copy of each selected clip directly after the original, on the same track.Cmd / Ctrl + C) and Cut (Cmd / Ctrl + X) put the selection on the editor's clipboard.Cmd / Ctrl + V) drops the clips at the playhead, keeping their spacing, onto the first unlocked track of the matching kind.The clipboard lives in the editor only. It is not your system clipboard and it empties when you leave the page.
Video and audio clips have a Speed (x) field in the inspector's Timing section, from 0.25 to 4. Changing speed keeps the same stretch of source media and changes the clip's length to match, so a 4 second clip at 2 becomes 2 seconds long.
Video, audio, text, image overlay and tracking clips can fade in and out. Effect clips cannot.
A visual fade can be at most half the clip's length, and never more than 5 seconds. On a video clip, the fade applies to its picture and its own audio in the export. For fades between two clips, see transitions.
A video clip carries its own sound. To edit that sound separately, detach it:
The two clips stay linked: dragging one moves the other. To break that link, right-click either clip and choose Unlink audio, or use Unlink audio in the video inspector. After unlinking, they move independently. More on mixing in audio.
Markers are quick visual notes on the timeline, handy for lining up cuts with a beat or a line of dialogue.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
M | Add a marker at the playhead, or remove the one already there |
Shift + M | Clear all markers |
I | Set the range in point (green line), or clear it if you press it again at the same spot |
O | Set the range out point (red line), or clear it the same way |
The area between in and out is shaded so you can see the section you are working on.
Markers and the in and out range are saved with the project, and they come back when you reopen it.
When an in or out point is set, export covers only that range. With just an in point, export runs from there to the end, and with just an out point, from the start to there. Clear both to export the whole timeline. The export dialog tells you when a range is in use. See exporting.
Snapping is on by default. While you move or trim a clip, its edges pull toward nearby points within about 8 pixels:
A dashed line shows what you snapped to. Toggle snapping with the magnet button in the timeline header or press S.
Cmd / Ctrl and scroll over the timeline. It zooms around your cursor.The readout between them shows the zoom in pixels per second, from 12 up to 480 (the default is 60).
Each track header has small toggles:
Select a video clip to see:
| Section | Controls |
|---|---|
| Timing | Start, Duration, Speed |
| Transform | Zoom / Scale (0.1 to 5x), Rotation (-180 to 180 degrees), Pos X and Pos Y (-1 to 1) |
| Opacity | 0 to 100% |
| Fade | Fade In, Fade Out |
| Audio | Mute clip audio, Detach audio to track, Volume, Equalizer |
| Effects & Filters | Quick per-clip effects, see effects and overlays |
Position is relative to the frame. At 1x scale, 0.5 on Pos X moves the clip half a frame width to the right.
| Section | Controls |
|---|---|
| Transform | Size (0.1 to 4x), Rotation, Pos X and Pos Y (0 to 100%, where 50% is centered), Opacity |
| Effects | Blur (0 to 20), Grayscale, Invert, Sepia (0 to 100), Hue (0 to 360), Saturation (0 to 300), Brightness and Contrast (0 to 200) |
| Glitch & distortion | An animated overlay effect, see real-time overlay effects |
| Fade | Fade In, Fade Out |
Text, audio, effect and tracking clips have their own inspectors, covered on text and titles, audio and effects and overlays.
The classic slow push-in on a photo is done with a Transform effect clip over a video track.
1.5x scale.Zoom In grows the image by up to 50% over the length of the effect clip, and Zoom Out does the reverse. The pans drift sideways by a fifth of the frame width. For full control, use keyframes instead, described in keyframes. A keyframed property overrides the preset for that property.
Note: An effect clip processes every video track underneath it for as long as it runs, so one Transform clip moves all visible video layers at once.