Timeline and cuts

Reading the timeline

The ruler runs along the top; click anywhere on it to move the playhead. Below it, the clip row shows the recording as a filmstrip with the audio's waveform over it. A fresh recording is one clip. Under the clips, the zoom row holds the zooms. See Zooms.

Hold Command and scroll, or pinch on the trackpad, to zoom the timeline in and out.

Playback

Space plays and pauses. The transport also has Go to start and Go to end, and the time shows the playhead against the edited length, which shrinks as you cut.

Trimming

Drag either end of a clip to trim it. The filmstrip moves with the edge so you can see the frame you are cutting to.

Splitting and removing

1. Move the playhead to where the cut should be.
2. Press S to split the clip there, or use the slice tool below.
3. Click the part you want gone and press Backspace.

The clips either side close up, and the finished video runs straight through. Right-clicking a clip offers Split here at the pointer and Delete clip.

The slice tool

The timeline starts out on the select tool, which is everything above: pick a clip up, drag an edge, scrub inside it.

Press C, or click the scissors at the far left of the transport, to pick up the slice tool instead. Every bar on the timeline is then cut where you click it — a clip, a zoom, or a text. The bar under the pointer shows the cut before you make it: the part that would come away is washed red, and nothing lights up where the cut would leave a piece too short to be worth having.

Press V or Esc to put it down and go back to selecting.

Cutting by the words

If the recording has captions, the caption editor is another way to cut: select a run of words and press Backspace, and the footage they were spoken over is removed. See Captions.

Undo

Command + Z undoes any of this.