Timeline
Adding media to the timeline, playing and scrubbing, trimming, splitting, rearranging, snapping, nudging, copying, levels, zoom and undo.
The timeline is the bottom half of the project window: the tracks, the clips on them, the playhead and the transport bar above. This page covers getting media onto it and every edit you make there by hand. What a selected clip's sidebar holds is on Clips; the tracks themselves are on Tracks.
Add media
Drop video, photos or audio from Finder or from the Sources sidebar onto the timeline. Or use Import… (⌘I), at the foot of the Sources sidebar and in the File menu, for video, photos and sound. A file from outside the video and its libraries is copied into the video. See Sources.
Where a drop lands:
- On a row of the right kind, at the time under the pointer. Video and photos go to video tracks, audio to audio tracks.
- On a row of the other kind, or a locked one, the nearest unlocked row of the right kind.
- Below the last track, a new track.
- One file dropped on a placeholder replaces it. See Placeholders and templates.
Consecutive files follow each other. Import… places at the playhead on the active track of the file's kind. Photos become 3-second clips that you can stretch to 60 seconds.
Play and scrub
Space plays and pauses. Click or drag in the ruler or in empty track space to scrub. ← and → step exactly one frame (1/60 s), ⇧← and ⇧→ a second, Home and End jump to the start and end. The viewer shows the frame under the playhead.
The transport bar holds the same controls: Go to Start, Previous Frame, Play, Next Frame, Go to End, the time as current / total, Split at Playhead, Delete Selection, and the zoom slider with Zoom to Fit. While a voiceover records it shows the input level and Stop.
Select
Click a clip to select it. Its sidebar opens on the right. Esc or X deselects. Esc pressed again closes the track panel.
Trim
Drag either edge of a clip. While you drag, the viewer shows the exact frame at that edge. On a magnetic track the clips after it move to close or open the gap.
To change which part of the file plays without moving the clip, use Edit Range…. See Clips.
Split and delete
S or ⌘B splits at the playhead: the selected clip when the playhead is inside it, else the active track's clip at the playhead, else the video clip under the playhead. ⌫ deletes the selection. On a magnetic track the clips after it close the gap.
Rearrange
Drag a clip along its track. On a magnetic track the neighbours slide out of the way and the clip snaps into its new order. On a free track it lands at the nearest spot that fits. Drag a clip up or down to move it to another track of the same kind.
Drag a clip through the middle of a placeholder and it takes the placeholder's spot. See Placeholders and templates.
The right-click menus
| Where | Items |
|---|---|
| A clip | Split at Playhead, Duplicate, Show in Sources, Edit Range…, Replace with File…, Delete Clip |
| A missing clip | The same, plus Relink… and Choose from Sources |
| A subtitle bar | Merge with Next, Split in Half, Duplicate Bar, Delete Bar |
| Empty track space | Add Placeholder Here, Add Text Here (on a text row), Zoom to Fit |
A locked track's menu says so and offers nothing else. Edit Range, Replace, Show in Sources and relinking are on Clips and Sources; the bars are on Captions.
Snap
N toggles snapping (View › Snapping). With it on, drags and trims snap to the start of the piece, the playhead and every other clip's edges.
Nudge
On a free track, ⌥← and ⌥→ move the selected clip by one frame, ⌥⇧← and ⌥⇧→ by a second. Clips on a magnetic track are ordered rather than positioned, so they do not nudge.
Copy, paste, duplicate
⌘C copies the selected clip. ⌘V pastes it at the playhead on the active track of the same kind. ⌘D puts a copy right after the original and selects it. Duplicate works for clips, placeholders, texts and subtitle bars.
Levels
Hover a clip with sound and a level line appears across it. Drag the line up or down. It runs from 0% to 150%, snaps at 100%, and turns yellow when it is not at 100%. A clip not at 100% wears a speaker badge with its percentage. The same value is the Level slider in the clip's sidebar; each track has a level of its own on top. See Tracks and Voiceover and music.
Detach Audio (⇧⌘D) copies a video clip's sound onto a new audio track and silences the video clip, so picture and sound cut separately. See Clips.
Zoom and pan
Pinch or ⌘-scroll to zoom the timeline, or use ⌘= and ⌘-. ⇧Z fits the whole piece. You can zoom in until single frames show: the ruler then draws a tick per frame and reads minutes, seconds and frames, the playhead stands at the start of the frame it is in, and moves, trims and splits land on frames. A clip or caption bar too short to see is still drawn wide enough to grab, with an orange stripe along its top, so a stray sliver can be found and fixed. Two-finger scroll pans. Drag the bar above the tracks to change the height of the tracks area; it scrolls when tracks overflow.
Undo
⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes. Every edit is an undo step, including each commit an agent makes. See How an agent edits.