Editor

The Editor is a timeline for the clips you make — from any engine, from a storyboard or from nothing. Trim and split, move sound for J-cuts and L-cuts, add music, titles and transitions, then render one file or hand the cut to Premiere, Resolve or After Effects.

Opening a timeline

• On the Editor tab, Pick a sequence to cut lists every sequence that has clips — click one.
• From Storyboard: step 3 Edit, Open in Editor on the board list, or Re-cut in the Editor on the film screen.
• The last timeline you had open comes back when you return to the tab. Switching to another tab does not close it; ⋯ → Close does (nothing is deleted).
• A new, empty or copied version of a sequence is a draft — see Saving, drafts and versions.

The layout

The header — the sequence’s name, the draft chip, whether it is saved (unsaved changes, saved · revision N), the View group (below), Undo, Redo, Save, Render with its ▾, and ⋯ (Drafts and versions, Media pool, Auto-edit, Storyboard, Close).

The media pool (left) — This Sequence, Other sequences, Generations, Images and Sound. Click a row to watch it in the Source monitor; + puts it at the end of the sequence; drag it onto the track to insert it where you drop it. On Sound, + puts the sound on an audio track at the playhead; on a video row, ♪ puts only its sound there — see Audio tracks. Add black adds that many seconds of black at the end, Add title puts a title at the playhead, Filter by name searches (⌘F).

The monitors — Source on the left, Program on the right. Program plays the timeline. Under it, left to right: ▶ / ⏸, the speaker (mutes the preview only), the time, and what is under the playhead (the clip’s name, its trim, source if it has no proxy yet); a chip counts clips that finished rendering but are not on the timeline and opens the Inspector. Source plays a clip before you cut it in: click a clip in the pool, or drag a clip onto it — from the media pool or from the timeline (dragging a shot from the track onto the Source monitor loads it there and leaves the timeline exactly as it was). Until something is loaded it says Drop a clip here to preview. Add to timeline places the clip; × hides the monitor. The Inspector opens beside the monitors when you ask for it and holds the clip’s properties (below) and Rendered but not on the timeline, with Place for each clip that finished but was never put on the track. Nothing on this screen resizes itself: the monitors and the panels change only when you press a toggle, and what you chose is remembered in this browser.

The tracks, top to bottom:

The tool row — directly above the tracks: the clip bar on the left (icons; hover one for its name, what it does and its key), and on the right Snap (to the beat grid), zoom − / slider / +, the i (the preview is approximate at cuts; the render is exact — it turns amber when it has a note for you) and Keys. Drag the timeline’s top edge (just below this row) up for taller tracks; double-click it to reset; each mode remembers its own height.

View — the group of switches in the header decides what is on the screen. Each one is highlighted while its panel is showing; click to hide it, click again to bring it back:

• Source — the Source monitor on the left.
• Inspector (⌘I, or double-click a clip) — the properties panel on the right.
• Sound (⇧A) — Sound mode: every sound lane at full height, the picture small. See Picture mode and Sound mode.
• Panels (`) — the app’s left column: the tabs, the media pool and the queue. Hide it to give the cut the whole window.
• Full screen (the corners, F) — the Program monitor fills the screen; Esc or F brings it back.

In a narrow window the group shows icons only. Every icon button in the Editor shows its name, what it does and its key a moment after you point at it (or tab to it).

Selecting

• Click a clip to select it. Click an empty part of the track to select nothing (and move the playhead there).
• ⇧-click selects the range from the selected clip to this one. ⌘-click adds one clip or drops it.
• ⌘A selects every clip. ⎋ Esc clears the selection — and with nothing selected, closes the timeline.
• With several clips selected, the clip bar acts on all of them, as one undo step; the inspector shows the properties of the one you clicked last. A locked clip in the selection is left alone and named in a message.

Moving, trimming and splitting

• Drag a clip to move it. Drag a selected clip and the whole selection moves together, sound included.
• Drag the edge of a clip to trim it. ⌘ while dragging ripples: everything after it slides too.
• Clips snap to the beat grid while Snap to beat is ticked (N toggles it). ⌥ while dragging ignores the grid for that drag. Sound strips and overlays snap to cuts.
• ⌥⇧-drag reorders instead of moving; right-click → Move earlier / Move later swaps a shot with its neighbour.
• ⌥← ⌥→ nudges the selection one frame (with ⇧, ten).
• Split (S ⌘K ⌘B) cuts the shot under the playhead — not the selection — into two.

The clip bar

The row of icons directly above the tracks holds the actions you use all day, in four groups: edit (Split, Lift, Ripple delete, Duplicate), sound (Unlink / Link, Resync, Mute, Delete sound, Clear points), Lock, and Face Fix ×2. Hover an icon for its name, what it does and its key. Left of them, the readout names what is selected (3 clips selected).

Every button is always there. When it cannot act, it is greyed out and its tooltip says what would make it work. When the pane is too narrow, the tail of the row moves into a More menu, with the names written out — as they are in the right-click menu.

When the pane is too narrow, the last buttons move into More ▾. Right-click a clip for the same actions at the pointer; right-click a hole for Close this hole and Generate a shot here….

The inspector (Advanced)

The panel beside the Program monitor holds the properties of the selected clip — the settings you change occasionally. It is closed until you open it: Inspector in the View group, ⌘I, or a double-click on a clip; press again to close it. Whether it is open is remembered in this browser. It has three sections:

• Clip — Speed, 0.25× to 4× (0.5x, 1x, 2x buttons); the clip’s slot on the film changes and everything after it moves. Retake renders a new take of a storyboard shot — see Replace a shot with a retake.
• Sound — Fade in / Fade out in seconds, and Add point at playhead for the level line.
• Effects — Brightness (−0.5 to +0.5, Reset), picture Fade in / Fade out (Clear), and Zoom (1× to 3×, Reset) with Across and Down to reframe the zoomed picture.

Select the mark between two clips and the inspector shows the Transition; select a title and it shows the Text.

Sound

Linked and unlinked

A clip’s sound starts linked: it moves with its picture, shows dimmer, and cannot be dragged on its own. Unlink sound frees it. An unlinked strip can be dragged, trimmed at either end, faded at its corners and shaped with level points — and it can drift out of sync, which is what Resync is for.

J-cuts and L-cuts

A J-cut starts the next shot’s sound before its picture; an L-cut lets a shot’s sound run on under the next picture. Both are made the same way: unlink the sound, drag or trim the strip under the neighbouring shot, then Link sound to keep that offset.

Two sound lanes: crossfades

A1 has two lanes, Clip sound A and Clip sound B. A new timeline lays its shots’ sound on them in turn — the 1st shot on A, the 2nd on B, the 3rd on A — and a shot you add later goes on the lane its neighbour is not on. Sounds on one lane play one at a time (if two overlap there, the later one cuts the earlier one off); sounds on different lanes overlap and play together. That is what makes a sound dissolve: pull the end of one shot’s sound under the start of the next and fade both.

• Alternate A/B on the Clip sound B head — or right-click any shot or sound → Alternate sound lanes — lays an existing timeline’s sound A, B, A… in film order. Nothing moves in time; one Undo puts the lanes back.
• Drag a sound up or down to move it to the other lane — linked sounds too, since changing lane does not move them. Right-click a sound → Move sound to lane B / Move sound to lane A does the same.
• Everything else works the same on both lanes: unlink, trim, J-cut and L-cut, fades, level points, Mute, Resync, Duplicate, snapping (a dragged edge also snaps to the other sounds’ edges).
• The preview plays both lanes, the render mixes them under the same safety limiter as the music (and Duck under dialogue follows sound on either lane), and the export puts Clip sound B on its own audio track, right after the first.

Picture mode and Sound mode

The Editor has two layouts and one switch between them — Sound in the View group, ⇧A, or the ▾ on the A1 Clip sound A head; all three are the same control.

• Picture mode (the default) — the picture is big. A1, A2 and every audio track are thin strips that show where each sound sits and what colour it is. A thin strip is a picture, not a control: click it to select it (the clip bar’s sound verbs — mute, delete, unlink, resync, duplicate — all work on the selection), double-click it for sound mode. The timeline sits at the height you last dragged it to, as low as its thin lanes allow.
• Sound mode — the sound is big and the picture is small. Every sound lane is at full height with its grips, corner fades, level line and points; the timeline takes the height and the Program monitor drops to its smallest size. Press the switch again for the picture.
• Nothing changes the split by itself. No hover, click, selection, playback or timer moves a lane or a monitor — only the switch. Each mode remembers its own timeline height, and the mode itself is remembered in this browser, not in the film.

When sound drifts: Resync

An unlinked strip that is not under its own picture shows a label with the offset, such as +0.25s. Click the label, or select the clip and press Resync sound (⇧R), to slide it back. It stays unlinked, so you can move it again.

Muting

• Mute sound on the clip bar is a decision about the film: that clip is silent in the preview, the render and the export.
• 🔊 in the transport (⇧M) only silences what you hear while editing. The film is not changed.

Level points and fades

On an unlinked strip:

• Drag a strip’s corner handle inward for a fade.
• Click the yellow line to add a level point, and drag it up or down to set the level. Double-clicking the strip adds one too, and Add point at playhead in the inspector puts one exactly there.
• ⇧-click or right-click a point to remove it; Clear points removes them all.

The music track

• Open ▾ on the A2 Music head, give the soundtrack’s path or Change…, then Prepare: it builds the waveform and finds the beat, which gives the timeline its beat grid.
• The mode menu: under the clips mixes the music under the clips’ own sound; replaces clip sound uses the music alone — any dialogue in the clips is lost.
• Level sets the music’s volume, 0–100%.
• Duck under dialogue (off by default) steps the music back wherever a clip’s own sound is playing. If you have drawn your own fades or level points on the music, they drive it instead, and the head says “off — your own level line is driving the bed”.
• The music strip drags, trims, fades and takes level points exactly like a clip’s sound.

Audio tracks

Under A2 Music are the audio tracks — A3, A4 and on. A track holds any number of sounds; sounds on different tracks play together (a laugh on A3 over a sting on A4 over the music), and sounds on the same track play one at a time and never overlap.

• + Add audio track (under the track names) makes an empty one. Each track’s head has its name (click to rename), M to mute the whole track, a level slider, and × to remove the track with its sounds (Undo brings it back).
• Put a sound on a track: open Sound in the media pool — this sequence’s own audio folder and every sound file in the outputs (.wav .m4a .mp3 .aac) — and press + (it lands at the playhead) or drag the row onto a track. ♪ on a video row, or dragging a video onto a track, takes its sound only. ♪ beside + Add audio track is Add sound file…: paste the path of any sound on this Mac; a file outside the outputs is copied into the sequence’s audio folder so the preview can play it.
• Drop a sound on the dashed row under the last track and it gets a track of its own.
• A sound on a track works like an unlinked clip sound: drag it (up or down onto another track too — onto the dashed row makes a new track), drag either end to trim it, drag a corner to fade it, click the yellow line for a level point. It snaps to cuts, to the other sounds and to the beat; ⌥ while dragging ignores them.
• The clip bar acts on it: Split cuts the selected sound at the playhead, Lift / Delete sound take it off, Ripple delete also closes the gap on that track, Duplicate, Mute sound, Clear points, Lock. ⇧-click / ⌘-click selects several. Right-click it for the same verbs. Unlink and Resync stay grey — a sound on a track has no picture to link to.
• The inspector shows the selected sound’s Level, Fade in / Fade out and Add point at playhead. The level you hear is the sound’s level times its track’s level.
• Everything plays in the preview, mixes into the render under the same safety limiter as the music, and exports: each audio track becomes its own audio track in Premiere / Resolve and its own layers in After Effects, with trims, levels, fades and mutes editable there.

Room tone

Room tone is background noise — room noise, atmos, an ambience bed — that runs under the whole sequence on its own audio track, so a cut never drops to silence or jumps from one room to another. It is made for the sequence each time, in about a second, on the CPU.

• Add it: media pool → Sound → the Room tone card, or ♪ beside + Add audio track → Room tone…. Pick a sound and press Add room tone. It lands on its own track (named Room tone), locked, from the first frame to the last.
• From this film (the default) listens to the quiet moments of your own clips — the room between the lines, tape hiss, hum — and makes a continuous bed of that sound. When the clips have too little quiet sound it says so on the card and Quiet room stands in.
• Other sounds: Quiet room, Living room, Office, TV studio, Kitchen, Car interior, Outdoors day, Night outside, City street, Rain, VHS tape, Big hall, Plane cabin.
• New take makes another version of the same sound — a new one every click. Use this sound swaps to what the picker shows, at the same level. Rebuild makes it again from the sequence as it is now (after a re-cut). Remove takes it off (Undo brings it back).
• Level is in LUFS: −38 by default — a bed you stop hearing, about 20 dB under dialogue that sits around −16, that still fills every gap a cut would drop to silence. −27 is clearly there. The track head’s level slider is the same control in percent. Every change is one Undo step.
• It follows the sequence. Trim, add or delete shots and the bed stays as long as the sequence; when the sequence outgrows the sound file, a longer one is made in the background. A bed you split or moved by hand is left alone — to dip it somewhere, unlock it (Lock on the clip bar) and add level points.
• Automatic cuts — the Editor’s first cut of a Storyboard, Auto-edit…, and Storyboard’s automatic film — get a From this film room tone by default. Turn Add room tone to automatic cuts off on the card to stop it. A music-video cut (the song replaces the clips’ sound) and clips with no quiet sound get none.
• It plays in the preview, mixes into the render and exports as its own audio track, like any other track. The file lives in the sequence’s audio/room_tone/ folder.

No clicks at cuts. The render also puts a 12 ms fade on the start and end of every clip’s sound, so a hard cut between two sounds cannot click. It is too short to hear as a fade. The preview does not do this, and an exported project leaves it to your editor.

Titles, cards and black

• Add title (media pool) puts a 3-second title on V2 Overlay at the playhead. In the inspector: the text, Size, Colour, Align, Across / Down position and Box behind, plus fades. Drag it to move it, drag its edges to change its length; ⌫ removes it.
• A card — press ▣ on a still in the media pool to lay it over the picture at the playhead. A black background is removed automatically; Keep original puts it back.
• Black — Add black appends a black clip; Lift leaves one where a shot was.

Holes

A hole is empty space on the picture track — made by dragging a clip away from its neighbour. It shows its length and fill it. Click it to open Fill this hole: write the shot, choose Length and Pass (Draft or Delivery), and Queue the shot. When it lands, it waits under Rendered but not on the timeline — press Place.

Holes close when you render. The render joins shots end to end, so a hole closes up and everything after it moves earlier. Render asks before it does that. Use black if you want the gap kept.

Transitions

1. Click the mark between two clips.
2. In the inspector, choose Kind: None — a hard cut, Dissolve or Fade through black, and a Length (up to 2 seconds, and no more than half the shorter clip).
3. Remove takes it off again (⌫ with the cut selected).

A transition borrows extra picture from beyond each clip’s trim, so the cut does not move and neither does the sound. If a clip has no picture to spare, the transition is refused with a message saying which side is short — trim that clip in, or shorten the transition. The preview only approximates a dissolve; the render is exact.

Saving, drafts and versions

• Save (⌘S) is the only thing that writes your draft. The button lights up when there are unsaved changes. Between saves your edits are kept as a backup, and when one is newer than your last save the Editor offers it as an unsaved snapshot — Restore it, Discard or Later.
• If saving keeps failing, a red bar says SAVING IS FAILING with Try again.
• Undo / Redo (⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z) go back 80 steps. Switching drafts, Auto-edit and swapping in finished shots clear the undo history.

Drafts — open them from the draft chip or ⋯ → Drafts and versions…:

• A sequence can have several drafts. Copy starts a new draft from this one, Empty starts a blank one; each draft in the list has Open, Copy, Rename and Delete.
• Your saves of this draft lists every save with Restore. Type a name and press Keep to mark a save you want to keep for good — old unnamed saves are pruned, kept ones never are.
• If the same draft was saved from another tab, the Editor asks: Load theirs or Keep mine.

Render and deliver

Render (⌘E) saves first, then assembles the timeline into one file and opens it on the Storyboard film screen.

▾ → Deliver as chooses what the file is; the choices are remembered, and the Render button names them (Render · 1080p):

Export for Premiere / Resolve / AE (in the same menu) writes a folder with an FCP7 XML (for Premiere and Resolve), an After Effects script and the media, and shows it in Finder. Sound comes out as separate stems, not the mixed track — the clips’ sound (lane A, then lane B as its own track when it is used), the music, and one audio track per A3, A4, … (room tone included). Cuts, trims, speed, fades, mutes and reframing travel into the project as editable settings; titles do not, and transitions arrive as plain cuts.

Auto-edit… (⋯) re-cuts the sequence from scratch and throws away this arrangement — it asks first.

Common jobs

Cut a scene out

1. Put the playhead where the unwanted part starts and press Split (S ⌘K ⌘B).
2. Move to where it ends (↑ ↓ jumps between cuts, ← → steps frames) and Split again.
3. Click the piece in the middle.
4. Ripple delete (⇧⌫) to close the gap — or Lift (⌫) to leave black in its place.
5. Save.

Fix sound that drifted

1. Find the strip with an offset label (+0.25s) on A1 Clip sound.
2. Click the label — or select the clip and press Resync sound (⇧R).
3. To stop it drifting again, press Link sound.
4. Save.

Make a J-cut

1. Select the incoming shot and press Unlink sound (⇧L).
2. On A1 Clip sound, drag that strip’s left end earlier, under the end of the previous shot (hold ⌥ to ignore the grid). The picture does not move.
3. Optional: drag a corner handle for a short fade in.
4. Press Link sound to keep the offset — the message confirms Linked at ….
5. Save.

For an L-cut, do the same with the outgoing shot and drag its strip’s right end later.

Crossfade two shots’ sound

1. Check the two shots’ sound sits on different lanes (Clip sound A and Clip sound B). If not, press Alternate A/B on the Clip sound B head, or drag one sound to the other lane.
2. Select the outgoing shot, press Unlink sound (⇧L) and drag its sound’s right end later, under the next shot — it snaps to the next sound’s start and to the cut.
3. Drag the right corner handle of that strip for a fade out, and the left corner handle of the incoming sound for a fade in over the same seconds. (The incoming sound can reach back the same way: unlink it and drag its left end earlier.)
4. Play across the cut — both sounds play together while they overlap.
5. Save.

Smooth the sound between cuts

1. Media pool → Sound. The Room tone card is at the top.
2. Leave From this film picked (or choose a room) and press Add room tone. A Room tone track appears under the other sounds, as long as the sequence.
3. Play across a few cuts. Too loud or too quiet? Move Level (−38 LUFS is the default). Not the right texture? New take, or pick another sound and press Use this sound.
4. Save.

Replace a shot with a retake

1. Select the shot. Retake works on shots that came from a storyboard.
2. In the inspector’s Clip section press Retake.
3. In Retake this shot, edit the prompt if you want, choose Draft or Delivery, and Queue the retake.
4. When the new take finishes, the Editor says New take of … is ready: Use it swaps it in with the same cut and timings; Keep the old one leaves the timeline as it is (the new take stays in the media pool).

When shots from the board have been finished at the delivery pass since you cut, the Editor offers Use the finished versions the same way.

Deliver 1080p

1. Press ▾ beside Render.
2. Under Deliver as, choose H.264, 1080p and Clean (or a grain).
3. The button now reads Render · 1080p. Press it, or ⌘E.
4. If the timeline has holes, decide whether to let them close.
5. The film opens on the Storyboard film screen when it is done.

Keys

The same list is behind the Keys button above the tracks.

Editor — mouse and modifiers

Hold the modifier while you click or drag.

Click	Select a clip · click an empty part of the track to select nothing
⇧Click	Select the range from the selected clip to this one
⌘Click	Add one clip to the selection, or drop it
Drag	Move a clip — or the whole selection, sound included · drag a clip’s edge to trim · the music strip drags and trims the same way
⌘Drag	Ripple — everything after the clip slides too
⌥Drag	Ignore the beat grid while dragging
⌥⇧Drag	Reorder instead of move
Right-click	The clip bar’s buttons at the pointer, plus Move earlier / Move later · on a hole: Close this hole or Generate a shot here
Click / ⇧Click	Level points, on an unlinked sound: click the yellow line to add one · drag it to set the level · ⇧-click it, or right-click it to remove it
⌥Scroll / ⇧Scroll	Over the track: ⌥ + scroll (or a trackpad pinch) zooms · ⇧ + scroll pans
Drag / Double-click	The timeline’s top edge: drag up for taller tracks · double-click to reset · ↑ ↓ when it is focused