Sequences & keyboard
Managing sequences, sequence settings and retiming, the clip clipboard, saving, and all thirty-six keyboard shortcuts.
Reference
- Panel
- Sequence
- Workspace
- Edit
A project's edit can hold more than one sequence — a rough cut and a fine cut, a full film and a trailer, one per reel. This page covers switching between them, what the settings sheet changes, copying clips from one to another, saving, and the keyboard.
The sequence menu
The editor's title is the sequence menu. Tap it to switch sequences or to act on the current one.
Every sequence in the project, with a checkmark against the open one. Tapping switches.
Adds an empty sequence and switches to it.
Renames the current sequence.
Copies the current sequence, clips and all, and switches to the copy. This is the safe way to try a different cut.
Opens the settings sheet, below.
Removes the current sequence. The last sequence cannot be deleted — a project's edit always has one.
Switching sequences is not undoable
Switching is a change of view, not an edit, so it deliberately takes no undo step. It does clear the cached preview frames, because those belonged to the timeline you just left.
Sequence settings
The sequence's name, as shown in the menu.
12 · 15 · 24 · 25 · 30 · 48 · 50 · 60.
HD 1920 × 1080 · HD 1280 × 720 · 4K 3840 × 2160 · Square 1080 × 1080 · Vertical 1080 × 1920 · Custom. Choosing a preset fills in Width and Height.
The frame size in pixels. Apply is disabled below 16 in either direction.
The sheet also reports the sequence's Duration in frames and seconds, and its Tracks count.
Changing the frame rate retimes the cut
Every clip keeps its length in seconds. Start, duration, keyframes, transitions, markers, the playhead and the in/out range are all rescaled to the new rate, so a 24 fps cut moved to 30 fps still plays for exactly as long. The sheet says so as soon as you change the rate, because the alternative — keeping frame counts and silently rescaling the timings — is the thing editors fear here.
Copy and paste
Clips can be copied and pasted, including into another sequence.
A copied clip remembers which lane it came from — as the nth video track or the nth audio track, plus its offset from the group it was copied with — rather than a track it could not find in a different sequence. So a copied selection lands in the right lanes wherever it is pasted, and its clips keep their spacing relative to one another.
| Paste | What it does to what is already there |
|---|---|
| Paste (⌘V) | Overwrites, clearing only what each pasted clip actually covers, lane by lane. |
| Paste Insert (⇧⌘V) | Ripples every unlocked track to make room, exactly as an insert edit does. |
Linked audio and video survive the trip: pasting re-links each group so the pair still moves together, but with fresh identities, so a pasted clip is never confused with the one it was copied from.
Saving
The editor autosaves — immediately for anything undoable, and on a short delay for the scrubbing and dragging that would otherwise write on every touch event. The Save control in the toolbar is the honest answer to "is my work on disk?":
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Save, in the accent colour | There are changes not yet written. Tapping writes them now. |
| Saved, greyed | Everything is on disk. Its tooltip gives the time of the last write. |
Anything still in the delay window is flushed when you close the editor, when it leaves the screen, and when the app is backgrounded, so closing can never lose the last few seconds.
The keyboard
With a hardware keyboard attached, the editor takes 36 shortcuts. They follow the conventions of the editing applications they come from, so J‑K‑L, I/O and the ripple keys are where a Premiere or Final Cut editor expects them.
Transport
| Shortcut | Command |
|---|---|
| Space | Play / Pause |
| L | Play |
| K | Pause |
| J | Step back |
| ← · → | Step back / forward one frame |
| ⇧← · ⇧→ | Back / forward ten frames |
| ⌘← · ⌘→ | Go to start / end |
| ↑ · ↓ | Previous / next edit point |
Tools
| Shortcut | Command |
|---|---|
| V | Selection tool |
| C | Razor tool |
| S | Toggle snapping |
| ⌘L | Toggle linked selection |
Marks and cutting
| Shortcut | Command |
|---|---|
| I · O | Mark in / mark out |
| ⌥⌘X | Clear in/out |
| M | Add marker |
| ⌘K | Cut all tracks at the playhead |
Editing
| Shortcut | Command |
|---|---|
| ⌫ | Delete |
| ⇧⌫ | Ripple delete |
| ⌘C · ⌘X · ⌘V | Copy · Cut · Paste |
| ⇧⌘V | Paste insert |
| ⌘D | Duplicate |
| ⌘A · ⇧⌘A | Select all · deselect all |
Document and view
| Shortcut | Command |
|---|---|
| ⌘Z · ⇧⌘Z | Undo · Redo |
| ⌘S | Save |
| ⌘E | Export sequence… |
| ⌘= · ⌘- | Zoom in / out |
A text field wins
While you are typing — renaming a sequence, editing a value in the Clip Inspector — the field takes plain keys, so J, K, L, V, C, S, I, O and M type letters instead of running commands. Shortcuts with ⌘ still work. Finish editing the field and the keyboard returns to the timeline.