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Holds and shortening

Every clip has a Holds for value: how long it plays on the reel. It starts at the shot's full marked length, and you can set it shorter. This page answers which part of the shot you keep when you do.

How it works

Select a clip and Selected Clip Settings shows Holds for. Under the shot's name, a line reads its project and how much of the shot there is, such as Domino Danger · 00:02:04 available. Click it and type a shorter value, or drag across it a frame at a time. With Show times as set to Frames, the field counts frames. The full length button beside it, "Full Length: play this shot in full, however long it is", puts the clip back to the whole marked shot.

Shortening never moves the shot's own in and out points. The reel picks which stretch of the shot to play, and When shortening, under Reel Settings, decides how:

Setting Keeps
Keep the start of each shot The first frames. The default.
Keep the middle of each shot A centered stretch.

It is one switch for the whole reel. Flipping it never changes the reel's length, only which frames play.

Holds for typed shorter on the first clip, which keeps the start of its shot; then When shortening switched to Keep the middle, and the same clip plays its middle instead

Edges you drag keep their frame

Dragging a clip's edge on the reel timeline is more specific than the switch: the frame you trimmed to stays where you put it. A clip you trimmed by hand keeps its frames when you flip When shortening, and the full length button clears that, so the clip follows the switch again.

When a clip's right edge is lengthened into the next clip, the next clip loses its start and keeps its end.

Where interest points come in

Interest points do not steer an ordinary shortened clip. They decide where a clip starts in two cases.

  • A replacement. With Start replacements at the marked interesting point on, which is the default, a longer shot that replaces a clip and keeps its screen time starts at its first interest point rather than at its head. It slides back only as far as it needs to fit. This holds when the clip being replaced was not trimmed by hand, and only for a shot with interest points inside its marks.
  • A draft reel built with Trim to interest range. See Start a reel.

A clip that starts at an interest point keeps that start when you flip When shortening.

Start at the first interest point

Not built yet

The third When shortening choice is not built.

When shortening gains a third choice, Start at each shot's first interest point. A shortened clip then starts at its shot's first interest point rather than at its first frame, sliding back only as far as it needs to fit, and a shot with no interest points keeps its start. Like the other two choices, it applies to the whole reel and never changes the reel's length.

What this means when you…

  • …shorten a clip: you get its start, or its middle, per When shortening.
  • …flip the switch: every shortened clip picks its frames again, except clips you trimmed by hand and clips that start at an interest point.
  • …shorten a card: a card has no footage to run out of, so its Holds for has no ceiling. See Cards.
  • …type a hold longer than the shot: the problems list names the clip and how long its shot really is, and export waits until you fix it. ShotWork never pads a shot with a frozen frame. Dragging an edge stops at the shot's last frame instead.
  • …type a hold shorter than one frame: it is flagged the same way.
  • …move a shot's in or out point after trimming its clip by hand: if the frame you trimmed to no longer fits inside the shot, the clip is flagged until you choose the full length button and trim it again.
How a shortened clip picks its frames

A hold of N seconds becomes N times the source frame rate, rounded to whole source frames. Each clip resolves with one of four anchors. The two reel-wide ones keep the head, or the middle, with an odd leftover frame kept at the end so the incoming cut is never clipped. Two are set on one clip only: keep the tail, set when the clip before it lengthens into its start, and start at the first interest point, set by a replacement or a draft reel. An edge dragged by hand also stores the exact frame it was trimmed to. Clip positions on the reel are converted from exact start times, so rounding never builds up over a long reel.