Tracks and layers

The one rule that matters

Video tracks stack. Higher ones cover lower ones, wherever they have a clip. Audio tracks sum. Everything on them plays at once.

That single difference is the whole logic of the timeline. A title on a track above your footage appears over it. A music bed on a second audio track plays with the dialogue rather than instead of it.

Adding a track

Track → Add Video Track or Track → Add Audio Track.

Add on New Audio Track in the Media Bin does both jobs at once: it makes the lane and puts the file at zero on it.

Titles and shapes make their own track when you add them, so you do not have to think about it.

The track header

Down the left of the timeline. Each one carries:

• Mute, which silences that track without removing anything.
• Solo, which silences every other audio track so you can hear one thing on its own. This is how you check whether a noise is in the dialogue or in the music.
• Lock, which makes the track ignore edits. Locked tracks are skipped by splits, deletes and drags.
• Rename, or double click the name. Naming tracks costs ten seconds and saves you from hunting through four identical lanes later.
• Move Up and Move Down, which is how you change what covers what.
• Remove Track.

Drag the bottom edge of a header to make that lane taller. A tall audio lane shows more waveform detail, which makes editing dialogue by eye much easier.

Ordering for effect

If a title is not appearing, it is almost always on a track below the footage. Move it up.

If a graphic is covering something it should be behind, move it down.

The same applies to a watermark, which is why Add Watermark pins it to a dedicated track that stays above everything else for the length of the project.

Linked video and audio

A camera file arrives as picture on a video track and sound on an audio track, linked. Dragging either one drags both, which is what keeps them in sync.

Right click either half to unlink. Do that when you want the sound to start before the picture, or to continue past it. Relink when you are done, or something will slide out of sync later and you will not find out until the export.

Volume per track

Select a clip on an audio track and Properties shows both a track volume and a clip gain. They multiply. Track volume is for the whole lane, which is the right control for a music bed. Clip gain is for one piece of audio that was recorded too quietly.