Editing clips
Once actions are on the timeline, timing is a drag away. Slide clips on a frame-accurate grid, trim their edges, copy and paste, stretch steps, and tune parameters inline, all with full undo.
Moving and resizing clips
A clip on the timeline is the span between two actions: its opening action (a Reveal, Play Video, or Play Audio) and its closing action (a Hide or Stop). Dragging edits those actions directly:
- Drag the clip body to slide the whole clip in time. Both the opening and closing actions move together by the same amount, so the clip keeps its length.
- Drag an edge to retime just one endpoint. Each clip has a thin grab zone at its left and right edge; the left edge moves the opening action, the right edge moves the closing one. Chapter Studio clamps the drag so the opening can never pass the closing.
While you drag, a live tooltip rides above the timeline showing the exact time
(→ 5.20s for a body drag, or start 4.10s /
end 7.30s when resizing an edge), so you can land on a precise beat without
guessing from pixels.
Note. On video and audio clips, edge drags do a little more: the edges can trim or slip the clip's source range. See video trimming & consolidating.
Crossing step boundaries
Clips aren't fenced inside their step. Drag a clip (or an edge) across a step boundary and Chapter Studio moves the underlying action into the destination step for you, converting between a step-start action and a scheduled action as needed. You think in seconds; Chapter Studio keeps the step structure bookkeeping straight underneath.
Each completed drag records exactly one undo entry. A long, fiddly drag is still a single ⌘Z away from being undone, never a stack of micro-steps.
The frame grid and snapping
Every drag lands on the frame grid, so two clips you meant to butt together actually touch instead of sitting a fraction of a frame apart. On top of the grid, snapping magnetizes a dragged edge to step boundaries, neighboring clips and the playhead.
The snap control in the timeline header says which state you're in, in words: Snap or Free. Press N to toggle it, or hold ⌘ during a drag to bypass snapping for just that one gesture. With snapping off you still move frame by frame, never by fuzzy pixels.
Two details you'll feel more than see: a fade or modifier attached to a clip travels with it when you drag the clip body (hold ⌥ to leave the attachments where they were), and a video clip's right edge has a gentle detent at the end of its media, so landing exactly on the last frame is easy and dragging past it is deliberate.
Copy and paste
⌘C and ⌘V work on the timeline the way they should. Copy one clip or several; paste lands at the playhead, preserving the clips' relative spacing, as one undo entry. Select keyframes on an animation lane instead and the same commands copy poses, which you can paste onto a different object, even one that has never been animated (its track is created for you). See keyframes & auto-key.
The status bar confirms what happened ("Copied 3 clips", "Pasted at 00:00:12:04"), and with nothing selected on the timeline, ⌘C still copies text in whatever field you're editing. The timeline clipboard is internal to Chapter Studio; it doesn't replace what you copied in another app.
Tip. There's a transform clipboard too, separate on purpose: Edit ▸ Transform offers Copy Transform and Paste Transform (⌘⌥C/⌘⌥V), plus Copy Position, Copy Rotation and Copy Scale individually, for lining scene objects up without touching the timeline.
The clip context menu
Right-click any clip for quick operations:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reveal in Inspector | Selects the clip's source step and asset so the inspector jumps straight to its actions. |
| Duplicate at +0.5s | Copies the opening action half a second later, handy for echoing a beat or building a repeated pattern. |
| Delete Opening Action | Removes the action that opens the clip. The clip disappears from the timeline (its closing action, if any, no longer has anything to close). |
Retiming steps on the ruler
The steps themselves can stretch, too. Every interior step boundary on the time ruler is a draggable handle: pull it left or right to shorten or lengthen the step that ends there. Steps are clamped to a minimum of 0.1 seconds, so you can't accidentally collapse a beat out of existence.
The clip inspector
Select an asset within a segment (clicking one of its clips is the quickest way) and the right-hand inspector leads with a card listing every action in the segment that targets that asset, in time order. Each row shows the action's glyph and label, a one-line parameter summary (like "opacity 0.5 · 0.50s"), and its absolute time, plus a jump button that selects the source step and a delete button.
Rows for the most-tuned actions carry an expand chevron that opens compact inline controls, so the common adjustments never need a dialog:
| Action | Inline controls |
|---|---|
| Reveal | Fade-in duration slider |
| Fade | Opacity + duration sliders |
| Scale | Multiplier + duration sliders |
| Move | Duration slider |
| Play Audio / Play Video | Volume slider + loop toggle |
| Fade Audio | Target volume + duration sliders |
Everything else still shows its summary row, and any action can be opened in its full parameter form, including the raw-JSON view, from the inspector. See the actions reference for what each action exposes.
Tip. The clip inspector is the fastest way to audit an asset's whole arc through a segment: every reveal, move, fade, and hide in one scrollable list, each one click from its source step.
Undo is everywhere
Every edit described on this page — clip drags, edge trims, boundary drags, inline slider changes, context-menu commands — flows through the same undo stack. ⌘Z undoes, ⇧⌘Z redoes, and the history runs deep, so experiment freely: the timeline is a safe place to try a timing idea and walk it back.