The seven tools

All seven are in the Tools menu. Each one opens a dialog, shows you what it is about to do, and only changes the timeline when you accept.

Fit to Length

Also in the toolbar as Fit to Length (Speed). Select clips, open it, and give it a target duration. It works out the speed needed to land the selection in that time.

The dialog reports the current span before you commit. Selected clips and their linked audio scale together, and neighbours stay where they are.

Speed is limited to between 25 and 400 percent. Beyond that the result is unusable in both directions.

Pitch preservation is on by default, which keeps voices sounding like themselves while the speed changes. Turn it off to let pitch rise and fall with speed, which is occasionally what you want for effect.

This is the right tool when a section has to hit a fixed duration. It is the wrong tool for trimming, which is a drag on the clip edge and does not change speed.

Images to Video

Three steps, and the dialog numbers them. Add and order your photographs. Choose the timing and optionally a soundtrack. Add the result to the timeline as editable clips.

Timing is manual, even or single. Even divides the time equally. Manual keeps the full soundtrack and lets you set each photograph's duration. There is a Crossfade setting in seconds, and the crossfades straddle the joins so the total duration is preserved.

Each photograph has to last longer than half the crossfade, and the dialog refuses with an explanation rather than producing something broken.

What arrives on the timeline is ordinary clips. Adjust any of them afterwards.

Silence Auto-cut

Select one clip, open the tool, and it proposes the gaps it would remove.

You review each one and accept or reject it. Only the accepted gaps are split out and ripple deleted, from that clip and its linked lane. Other tracks stay exactly where they are, which matters because rippling one track against a fixed music bed is how a piece goes out of relationship with itself.

If nothing is found, it says so rather than pretending.

Loop Finder

Select one clip. The tool compares the first frame with the final two seconds and reports how close each candidate is, with lower difference meaning a closer match. On audio it snaps to a nearby zero crossing, so the loop does not click.

This is for making a music bed or a background plate repeat without a visible or audible seam.

Waveform Visualizer

Creates an animated waveform video from an audio clip, with its audio, and adds it on a new video lane at the playhead.

It renders in the background. The queue shows progress and Cancel.

This is how you give a podcast clip or a piece of music something to look at on a platform that requires a video.

Freeze Frame

Creates a five second still at the playhead, on a new lane. Its position, colour and crop match the selected video, so it lines up with what was already there. The original video stays in place.

A freeze carries no sound. If the audio has to continue under it, keep that audio on its own track.

Split Export

Exports the full timeline picture and mix during each clip on a chosen track, or between your In and Out markers, as separate files.

The use for it is a long recording that has to become a set of shorter pieces. Put markers on one track at the points you want, and each becomes its own file.

Fades and normalization use the same settings as an ordinary Export. The files run one after another and the dialog reports the format, the number of files and the total duration before you start.