The parts of the window

Seven regions, each with one job. Knowing which one owns a given decision saves most of the hunting.

Menu bar

Along the top: File, Edit, Clip, Track, Add, Timeline, Export, Tools, View, Help. Every command in the program is reachable from here, and a greyed out item tells you why it is greyed out when you hover it. That is worth using. "Copy clips first" and "Add your video first" are more useful than a dead button.

Toolbar

Below the menus. Select and Razor sit together as a pair, because they are modes rather than actions. Then Platform preset, Crossfade, Captions, Fit to Length (Speed), Add Title, Split, Delete, Ripple Delete, Undo, Redo, Open Project and Export.

The toolbar carries the things you reach for constantly. Everything else lives in the menus.

Media Bin

On the left. Open Media brings files in. The bin tells you what a file is before you commit to it: duration, dimensions, codec and frame rate.

Your first import lands on the timeline automatically. After that each entry gets two buttons. Add to Timeline appends it to the end. Add on New Audio Track puts an audio file on a lane of its own at zero, which is what you want for a music bed. You can also drag a file from the bin directly onto a lane to choose where it goes.

Preview

In the centre. It composites in real time and never starts an encoder, so playback does not stutter while you work. Safe Zones draws the title and action safe boxes over it, and those boxes follow whichever Platform preset you have chosen. Grid draws thirds.

Graphics and titles can be dragged directly on the preview to position them.

Timeline

Below the preview. Tracks run down, time runs across. Video tracks stack and higher ones cover lower ones. Audio tracks sum, so everything on them plays at once.

Each track header carries Mute, Solo and Lock, a name you can change by double clicking, and Rename, Move Up, Move Down and Remove Track. Drag the bottom edge of a header to make that lane taller.

Properties

On the right, and it changes with what you have selected. A video clip shows position, scale, rotation, opacity, crop, colour and transitions. An audio clip shows gain, fades, EQ, normalization and ducking. A title shows its text, font and alignment. With nothing selected it shows project settings: canvas size, frame rate, sample rate and the final mix normalization.

The panel can be docked left, right or along the bottom, and the layout is remembered in your data folder.

Status bar

Along the bottom, and it is more useful than it looks. It reports what just happened in plain words, and during a drag it reports what will happen if you let go. Dragging a clip edge shows the new duration and the new source point before you commit to them.

When an action seems to do nothing, read the status bar. Most of the time it has already told you why.

Queue

Export → Show Queue. Exports, transcriptions and waveform renders all run in the background and report here, with progress and a Cancel button on each row. You can keep editing while something renders.