Clip Inspector
Every control for the selected clip — motion, opacity, audio, speed, shape, the effect stack, masks, stabilisation and auto-roto.
Reference
- Panel
- Clip Inspector
- Workspace
- Edit
The Clip Inspector holds everything about one clip: how it sits in the frame, how opaque it is, how fast it runs, what effects are on it, and what masks it.
It shows the clip's name at the top and then only the sections that apply. A video clip gets motion, opacity, effects and masks; an audio clip gets volume and speed and nothing else; a shape clip gets its own geometry section.
The inspector edits one clip at a time. With nothing selected — or with more than one clip selected — it shows "No Clip Selected". There is no multi-clip editing.
Motion
Video clips only. Each row carries a stopwatch, a label, a slider and a numeric readout.
Horizontal offset from centred, as a fraction of the frame's width.
Vertical offset from centred, as a fraction of the frame's height.
Size multiplier. 1 is native size. Scaling is uniform — there is no separate horizontal and vertical scale.
Rotation in the frame.
There is no anchor point: a clip always transforms about its centre.
Opacity
How much of the clip reaches the composite. Video clips only.
Audio
Audio clips only. These replace the Motion and Opacity sections.
Linear gain.
Silences this clip without removing it. Distinct from muting the whole track.
Speed
One of five fixed rates — 0.25×, 0.5×, 1×, 2×, 4×. The current rate is the tinted button.
Speed changes how fast the clip consumes its source, not how long the clip is. The clip keeps its span on the timeline and nothing ripples: at 2× it reads twice as much footage across the same frames, and at 0.5× it reads half. A clip set fast enough can run past the end of its media. To change a clip's length, trim it.
Arbitrary and reverse speeds are not available.
Effects
Each clip carries its own effect stack, applied in the order the effects were added.
Adds an effect at the end of the stack, with its parameters at their defaults. The menu is grouped into families.
The circle at the left of an effect's row. A disabled effect stays in the stack and is skipped by the render.
The cross at the right of an effect's row. Removes the effect immediately, with no confirmation.
Each effect's own parameters appear as sliders beneath its name, and colour-carrying effects show colour wells. The parameters, their ranges and their defaults are the same as the canvas effects of the same name — see Effects.
Effects on a clip cannot be reordered. The stack order is the order you added them; to change it, delete an effect and add it again.
Available effects
The clip stack offers twenty-nine effects across five families:
| Family | Effects |
|---|---|
| Color | Brightness / Contrast, Hue / Saturation, Exposure, Levels, Gamma, Vibrance, Temperature, Black & White, Sepia, Invert, Posterize, Threshold, Solarize, Tint, Fill |
| Stylize | Sharpen, Find Edges, Emboss, Mosaic, Scanlines, Vignette, Outline (Stroke) |
| Blur | Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur |
| Distort | Twirl, Bulge, Ripple |
| Keying | Chroma Key |
Five canvas effects — Curves (RGB), Gradient Map, Glow, Drop Shadow and the Transition effect — are not available on a clip and do not appear in the menu. Transitions between clips are placed from the timeline instead; see Sequence.
Effect parameters cannot be keyframed.
Mask
Video clips only.
None, Rectangle or Ellipse. Choosing a shape creates the mask; the remaining controls appear once one exists.
The mask's left edge, as a fraction of the frame's width.
The mask's top edge, as a fraction of the frame's height.
The mask's width, as a fraction of the frame's.
The mask's height, as a fraction of the frame's.
Softens the mask's edge, as a fraction of the frame's diagonal. 0 is a hard edge.
Keeps what the mask would have cut and cuts what it would have kept.
The mask can also be repositioned by dragging its dashed outline on the program monitor. The outline moves it; the sliders size it.
Setting the shape to None discards the mask
None does not hide the mask, it deletes it — the position, size, feather and invert settings go with it. Choosing a shape again starts from the defaults.
Masks are not keyframed.
Keyframing from the inspector
Six properties can be animated: Opacity, Volume, Position X, Position Y, Scale and Rotation. Nothing else — not speed, not masks, not effect parameters.
The stopwatch at the left of each row turns animation on and off:
The stopwatch, while the property is static. Turns the property's current value into a keyframe at the playhead. From then on, dragging the slider sets a keyframe at the playhead instead of changing the static value.
The stopwatch, while the property is animated. Removes every keyframe on that property at once, without confirmation, and returns the property to its static value — which may not be the value shown a moment earlier.
Keyframes are stored relative to the clip, so they travel with it when it moves.
Keyframes set here interpolate linearly. Easing is not exposed in this panel, and neither is stepping between keys or deleting one at a time — for that, use the keyframe rubber band on the Sequence timeline, where a diamond can be dragged or double-tapped away.
The stopwatch keys at the playhead's current frame whether or not the playhead is over the clip.
Shape
Shape clips only, in place of nothing else — a shape clip still gets Effects and Mask.
Rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Polygon, Star or Line.
The first of the two swatches.
The second of the two swatches.
Outline thickness, as a fraction of the frame's height. 0 draws no outline.
Corner rounding, as a fraction of the shorter side. Rectangles only.
Corner count. Polygons and stars only.
The ratio of inner to outer radius. Stars only.
The shape's left edge, as a fraction of the frame's width.
The shape's top edge, as a fraction of the frame's height.
The shape's width, as a fraction of the frame's.
The shape's height, as a fraction of the frame's.
The two colour wells are unlabelled and are distinguished by order: fill first, stroke second.
Stabilize
Video clips only. Steadies a shaky camera by solving a smooth virtual camera path and correcting each frame onto it.
Turning it on the first time analyses the clip's motion — one pass, on the device. A spinner replaces the toggle while it runs. Once the analysis exists, the toggle turns the correction on and off without re-analysing.
How calm the virtual camera path is. Higher is calmer and crops more. The analysis is already done, so this slider is free — it re-solves the correction rather than re-reading the clip. It appears only after a successful analysis.
Stabilisation reads the clip's own footage, so it applies to imported video only. On a shot or an image clip the section appears but the toggle does nothing.
Auto-Roto
Video clips only. Builds a per-frame mask that follows the subject, on the device.
Person isolates a person and needs a real iPad. Dark areas and Bright areas key on brightness instead.
The brightness cut. Appears only for the Dark areas and Bright areas engines, and only before tracking — it cannot be adjusted afterwards.
Runs the track. A spinner shows while it works.
Once a track exists the section changes to show what was produced — its frame count and the engine used — and three controls:
Whether the tracked mask affects the picture.
Cuts the subject out instead of keeping it.
Discards every tracked frame immediately, with no confirmation. Getting the mask back means tracking again.
Like stabilisation, auto-roto reads the clip's footage and applies to imported video only.