Every block on the timeline is a clip. This section covers everything you can do to one in DOTV's editing bay: change which stretch of the source it uses, reorder it, cut it in two, change its speed, set its volume, move the picture around in the frame. One thing up front that saves a lot of work: none of it is destructive. A clip only records which seconds of the source to take and how fast to play them; the AI-generated source stays whole, and a clip you've trimmed short can always be dragged back out.
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.
Selecting a clipClick once to select it: a white outline, with white handles at both ends. Click empty track space to deselect.
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The selected clip is outlined in white, with a handle at each end and its sound underneath.
Select: click it. It gets a white outline and a white handle at each end. Click empty track to deselect.
Change which stretch it uses: drag either end. Dragging inwards says "use only the middle part of this"; dragging outwards takes it back, as far as the head and tail of the source.
Reorder: hold the whole clip and drag left or right. It drops into whichever slot you land on, and the ones after it shift along.
A clip bottoms out at 0.1 seconds; drag past that and it stops moving.
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.
The three trim buttonsAll three cut at the playhead: the left one drops everything before it, the right one drops everything after it, and the middle one splits the current clip in two.
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The three buttons at the left of the toolbar. The cut always lands on the playhead.
Button
What it does
When to use it
Trim left
Throws away everything before the playhead
Cutting off a useless opening
Split
Cuts the clip under the playhead into two, in place
You want to slot something into the middle, or delete just a stretch of the middle
Trim right
Throws away everything after the playhead
Wrapping up the end
The second half of a split carries no transition — a transition describes how a clip joins the one before it, and the second half runs straight on from the first, so it should not come in again (see 7.4).
Cut in the wrong place? ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows) takes it back, ⌘⇧Z does it again. One drag counts as one step, so you never have to undo pixel by pixel.
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.
Speed, on the right of the toolbarIt changes the selected clip (or the one under the playhead if nothing is selected). Clicking it opens the panel below.
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The Speed button opens this panel.
It changes the selected clip (or the one under the playhead if nothing is selected). The panel says it two ways, and either one works:
Rate, 0.25x to 4x, with the six common steps (0.5 / 0.75 / 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 2) one click away.
Duration — how many seconds you want this clip to run in the finished cut.
The two are reciprocals: the stretch of source is fixed, so change the rate and the duration follows, and the other way round. A speed change moves the pitch too (slow it down and the sound goes deeper), the same as in the editors you are used to.
The strip under each clip is its sound, and the height of the waveform is the volume:
Hold and drag up or down to set this clip's volume; the percentage shows at the top right while you drag.
Double-click the strip to mute the whole thing.
Both of these carry into the finished cut. Do not confuse them with the speaker at the far left of the track — that one only mutes the preview (see 7.2).
The Crop button in the toolbar governs the picture itself, and it switches the box between two meanings — see 7.5:
Off (the default): the box on the picture is Transform — drag the corners to scale, drag inside to move, deciding how big this clip is in the finished frame and where it sits.
On: the box becomes Crop — marking the part of the source picture that stays.
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.
Original and previz side by sideTwo 16:9 pictures, half the frame each, playing at once: the original on the left, the previz on the right. The output ratio becomes 32:9, so there are no black bars.
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The original fills the left half of the picture and the previz the right, both playing at once.
"Put the original and the previz together to compare" is one of the most requested things in this bay, and the main track runs one clip after another: put both on it and all you get is "the original first, the previz second". To compare them you need an overlay clip — it does not take a main-track cell: it plays along with the main track from a given second of the finished cut, sitting in one part of the picture (left / right / top / bottom / one of the four corners, or a proportional box, which is what picture-in-picture uses). The two halves in the screen above come from exactly this: the left is the main-track clip, the right is the previz overlaid on it.
The usual way in is to say a word to the Agent ("put the original and the previz side by side to compare"); once it has laid it out you see the result here:
Only the main-track clip is on the timeline — the overlay takes no track cell, and its position cannot be dragged; for its few seconds it simply comes up over the picture.
An overlaid clip makes no sound (sound only runs on the main track) and is not counted into the length of the finished cut.
The finished ratio follows the layout: two 16:9 pictures side by side give 32:9, each taking half the frame and filling it exactly, with no black bars (see "How big the output is" in 7.5).
Six overlays at most at one time (a little more headroom than a 2x2 grid). It cannot be changed in the editing bay: it takes no track cell and has no handles to drag — where it sits and how long it runs were decided when the Agent built it. To move a half somewhere else, or change the stretch it plays, say a word to the Agent to lay it out again (the original and the previz are both nodes in its hands, so laying it out again is quick).
Try it in DOTVReading only goes so far: open DOTV and make an AI video with the feature this section covers.