Adding actions
Every beat in a chapter is an action. In Chapter Studio you author them the fast way: drag a chip from the action library onto a track at the moment you want it to fire.
The action library
The library is the horizontal strip of chips between the segment tabs and the time ruler. Chips are grouped by category (Scene, Add, Video, Audio, and Effects), and each chip is tinted to match the timeline section it lands on, so you can see at a glance where a chip belongs.
Two conveniences keep the strip manageable as you learn the catalog:
- Search. Type in the filter field to narrow the strip to matching chip names.
- Collapse. Click a category header to fold the whole group down to a count chip, keeping the categories you use most within easy reach.
The full catalog of all 18 actions, with every parameter, is in the actions reference.
Drag, drop, snap
Pick up a chip. Press and drag any chip out of the library strip.
Drop it on a track. Aim for the track of the asset or channel you want the action to target, at the horizontal position matching the time it should fire.
Let the snap help you. Drops within a few pixels of a step boundary snap to that boundary exactly, so you never have to pixel-hunt the start of a step.
Fine-tune in the inspector. The moment the drop lands, Chapter Studio selects the new action's step and target so the inspector on the right is already showing its parameters. Adjust and move on.
Boundary drops vs. mid-step drops
Where a drop lands relative to step boundaries decides when the action fires:
| Drop position | Result |
|---|---|
| Exactly on a step boundary (or snapped to one) | A step-start action, which fires the instant that step begins. |
| Anywhere inside a step | A scheduled action, which fires at an offset into the step, matching the exact time you dropped it. |
Both kinds show up identically as clips or markers on the timeline, and you can slide either to a new time later (see editing clips).
Section rules
Drops are section-aware: Scene, Add, and Video chips land on Scene tracks, Audio chips on Audio tracks, and Effects chips on the Effects section. If you drop a chip on a section that can't accept it, the track flashes red and nothing is added. The drop is simply rejected, with no cleanup needed.
Tip. The chip's tint tells you its destination before you drag: blue chips are Scene-bound, green audio chips head for the Audio section, and violet effect chips for Effects.
Dropping on an empty section
Every section renders even when it has no tracks yet (an empty section shows a dashed dropzone), so a fresh segment is never a dead end. What happens next depends on the section:
- Scene: there's no implicit target, so Chapter Studio opens a picker listing every scene-eligible asset in your project. Choose one and it becomes the action's target, creating that asset's track in the same gesture.
- Audio: Chapter Studio auto-creates a fresh channel with a generated name like
channel_1,channel_2, and so on, and drops the action there. You can rename it any time; see audio channels. - Effects: effect actions carry their own track identity, so the drop inserts directly with no dialog.
The Add chips (Add Asset, Add Image, Add Particle) always open a picker on drop. They exist to bring something new into the scene, then reveal it at the drop time.
Note. Snapping to a step boundary is your main placement feedback during a library drag. Once the clip exists, dragging it shows a live time readout — clip drags are the precision pass.
The same flow on Vision Pro
Chapter Vision has the identical drag-to-timeline flow: action chips and asset rows in the left rail drag onto the floating timeline panel, with the same section routing, the same empty-section dropzones, and the same pickers. Authoring muscle memory transfers directly between the Mac and the headset; see the spatial timeline.