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Move around a source

Finding the frame is most of marking. Every key here can be changed in Settings › Remap Hotkeys…, except U and Esc, which are fixed, and each transport button's tooltip shows its current key.

Play and shuttle

Key Does
Space Plays at normal speed, or pauses. Pressed at the end of the video, or of the loop, it plays again from the start.
L Plays forward. Each tap while playing goes to 2x, 4x, 8x, then back to normal speed.
K Pauses, and puts the speed back to normal.
Ctrl+F Full screen: the viewer across the whole screen with everything else hidden. Esc or Ctrl+F comes back. The button at the right end of the transport does the same.

Voices keep their pitch at speed, and scrubbing is silent. There is no reverse shuttle: J is unbound on purpose, because reverse playback stutters badly enough to be worse than not having it. To come back down from 8x on the keyboard, tap L once more.

When you pause, the playhead settles on an exact frame, so the number shown is the frame you are on. When playback reaches the end of the video it stops on the last frame and stays there.

Step and jump

Key Button Goes to
Left or Right The step buttons One frame back or forward
Shift+Left or Shift+Right Shift-click a step button Ten frames back or forward
Home or End The jump buttons The video's first or last frame, whatever the playback range
Alt+Left or Alt+Right The marker buttons The nearest marker: a shot's in or out point on this video
Shift+Alt+Left or Shift+Alt+Right Shift-click a marker button The previous or next shot's in point, selecting that shot

That last row is worth its own sentence. It lands the playhead on each shot's in point and selects the shot as it goes, so reviewing a batch is jump, Del, jump, without touching the mouse.

Reviewing a batch without the mouse: the next-shot hotkey lands on each shot and selects it, ++delete++ removes it, and the next shot is already selected

In the shot list, clicking a shot, or moving to it with Up and Down, jumps to its in point, loading its video first if another one is showing. Clicking the shot you are already on jumps back to its in point after you have scrubbed away.

The source timeline

The timeline under the viewer has three parts. A shelf along the top holds the playhead's time, written the same way as the ruler. Under it is the ruler. Below that, every shot on the loaded video is a rounded band.

The source timeline spanning a whole video, with a band for each marked shot, taking turns between two grays, the playhead, and the transport buttons and playback range fields below it.

The source timeline: every shot as a band, with the transport and playback range fields underneath
Do this Does
Click or drag the ruler Moves the playhead there, following the pointer while you hold the button.
Click a shot's band Selects the shot. Ctrl-click or Shift-click adds it to the selection.
Double-click a shot's band Jumps to the shot's in point without changing the selection.
Click empty space Clears the selection and moves the playhead there. U clears the selection too.
Shift-drag Draws a new shot. See Drag a shot out instead.
Drag a band, or one of its markers Moves the shot, or that edge. See Adjust a shot.
Right-click a shot's band Split Shot at Frame 1234, with the playhead's frame number, splitting there. See Organize shots.
Right-click anywhere on it Show Times as Frames or Show Times as Timecode. See Reading the ruler.
Scroll Steps one frame per notch.
Hold Shift and scroll Steps ten frames per notch.
Hold Ctrl and scroll Pans by a tenth of what is visible.
Hold Alt and scroll Zooms 1.2 times per notch, keeping the frame under the pointer in place.
Middle-drag Pans.
Hold Alt and middle-drag Zooms around where you pressed: right to zoom in, left to zoom out, doubling every 150 pixels.

Interest points have gestures of their own; see Edit points.

Nothing snaps on the source timeline: edges and points land on the frame under the pointer. Snapping, and its N key, belong to the reel timeline; see Snapping.

Bands take turns between two grays along the timeline, so neighbors always differ. The selected shot's band has a green outline, and a restricted shot's band is hatched. Settings › Timeline Colors… offers other ways to color the bands, by rating, in six soft hues, or one hue per shot, and sets how light they are; see Timeline colors.

Reading the ruler

The ruler shows where you are in the video in one of two ways. Right-click anywhere on the timeline to switch between them:

  • Timecode, the default: MM:SS:FF, or HH:MM:SS:FF with Display hours on. The last pair is the frame within that second, so at 24 fps it counts 00 to 23.
  • Frames: a plain running frame count, with nothing else.

The choice is shared with a reel's timeline, and with the Show times as buttons in a reel's settings, so a time means the same thing everywhere.

The marks come in three heights, so the scale reads without being looked up:

Mark Is
Tall, labeled with the time A whole second
Medium, labeled with a number A frame within that second, like 06 12 18
Short, unlabeled A single frame

Which of them appear depends on how far in you are zoomed. Frame numbers appear once there is room for them, and single frames get their own mark once each frame is a few pixels wide.

When frame numbers appear

Frame numbers are drawn once at least three of them fit between two seconds, so a lone number halfway along never shows. They always land on whole frames: at 25 fps they step by 5, never by 12.5.

The playback range

The playback range narrows the timeline to a section of the video. It is a view, not an edit: it changes nothing about the source or any shot, and it lets a long film be worked in sections.

The row under the timeline holds it. The outer numbers are the whole video, the two fields inside them are the range, and the bar between the fields is the range slider. (If you know Maya, it is laid out the way Maya's range slider is.)

  • Drag the slider's middle to move the range, or either end to resize it.
  • Double-click the slider to show the whole video, and double-click again to get your range back.
  • Type a frame into either field and press Enter.
  • Scroll over the slider as you would over the timeline. Zooming there centers on the playhead.

Slider drags, double-clicks and typed fields are undo steps; zooming and panning with the wheel or the middle button are not. The range goes back to the whole video whenever a video loads, and is not saved.

Detect Shots… can work on the playback range alone; see Detect shots.

Loop

The loop button in the transport, or Ctrl+L, cycles through three modes:

Mode Playback
Loop: off (plays the whole video) Runs to the end of the video, ignoring the playback range.
Loop: playback range Wraps from the end of the range back to its start.
Loop: the shot the playhead is in Wraps back to the in point of the shot the playhead was in when you last played, clicked or jumped.

The button's color changes with the mode, and its tooltip names it. A loop wraps only when playback runs off its end: scrubbing in from before the range does not jump you forward, and with no shot under the playhead, shot mode has nothing to loop. Each shot selects tab keeps its own mode, starting at off.