Playback and navigation

Half of editing is watching. Did the cut land in the right place? Is there dead air before the first word? Which frame does the beat fall on? To answer any of that you need to move around the timeline quickly and precisely. That's what this guide is about.

Your main tool is the playhead: the red vertical line that runs along the timeline. It marks the moment you are looking at, and the frame in the preview is exactly the frame under that line. Dragging it around is called scrubbing: press on the ruler (the time strip at the top) and drag — the frames roll past under your cursor.

Playing and stepping frame by frame

Space plays and pauses. It's the key you'll press more than any other, so keep a thumb on it.

The precise work, though, happens frame by frame. ← and → step the playhead back or forward by one frame; hold Shift and each press jumps 10 frames. Landing a cut on exactly the right frame, finding the one where someone blinked, or nailing the instant a word begins — it's all done with these two keys.

J / K / L — the shuttle

When you're hunting for a spot inside a long take, plain playback is too slow and scrubbing is too coarse. That's why editors have used a shuttle for decades — driving the footage forward and backward, at speed, with one hand.

Forward. Press again to speed up: 1×, 2×, 4×.

L

Backward. Press again to speed up: −1×, −2×, −4×.

J

Stop (pause).

K

So the ladder of speeds runs: −4× … −2× … −1× … pause … 1× … 2× … 4×. L moves you a rung to the right, J a rung to the left, and K drops you straight back to pause. Three fingers, one spot on the keyboard — that's why this trio is so fast.

Jumping: `Home`, `End`, `[` and `]`

You don't have to drag your way everywhere — you can jump to the points that matter.

To the start of the project.

Home

To the end of the project.

End

To the previous clip edge (a cut, or a clip's start/end).

[

To the next clip edge.

]

The play range — `I` and `O`

Most of the time you're working on one stretch of the video, not all of it — say a twenty-second passage in the middle. Rather than replaying from the top each time, set a play range: put the playhead at the beginning and press I (for “in”), then move to the end and press O (for “out”).

• Playback now stays inside that range — reviewing and tweaking one spot over and over gets much easier.
• The export dialog offers the same range: instead of the whole timeline, only that slice becomes a file.
• You can also drag the range edges by their handles on the ruler.

Controlling the view

How far you're zoomed into the timeline decides how precise you can be: zoomed out you see the whole project at a glance; zoomed in, individual frames appear and you can place a cut down to the hair.

Zoom the timeline in and out. The moment under the cursor stays put.

Ctrlwheel

A plain wheel scroll moves the timeline horizontally.

wheel

Fullscreen preview (press again to come back).

F

On a touchscreen or trackpad, a two-finger pinch zooms as well. And if you drag a clip to the edge of the timeline, the view scrolls along with you — no need to drop it, scroll, and pick it up again.