Timeline Reference

The reference behind The Timeline.

Skim and scrub

While paused, the preview shows the frame under your pointer, so you can skim the edit without moving the playhead. Click empty track space to move the playhead there, or drag along the ruler to scrub with the preview following live. Overlapping clips can use different parts of the same source file; each clip keeps its own preview position.

Dragging the ruler or playhead pauses playback. Release at the frame you want to edit; the preview settles at that position. During a fast drag or hover, the web preview can show a nearby frame while the requested frame loads. Releasing the playhead returns to an exact seek. The Mac timeline and source viewer also update when you step a single frame, including at slower clip speeds.

For uploaded videos without transparency, the editor can prepare an optimized preview and switch to it once it is ready. The original file stays unchanged.

Tracks

Tracks are horizontal lanes stacked top to bottom. Higher video tracks draw over lower ones. Klipeo has five kinds:

Subtitles are not on a text track. They live in their own captions lane above the tracks.

Which controls a track shows depends on its type. Video and audio tracks get mute and solo. Every track except audio gets hide. Lock is on all five. Solo is the quick way to hear one piece of audio or see one video track on its own without touching everything else. Drag a clip from the assets panel onto a track to place it, or use a media card's Insert at playhead (ripples everything right), Overwrite at playhead, or Append to end of track action.

Mixer and loudness

The mixer button in the preview's transport row opens the Mixer, a floating panel that stays open while you edit. Each video and audio track gets a strip with solo, mute, a volume fader in dB, and pan.

At the top, Loudness measures the mix you hear, the same mix the export writes, to ITU-R BS.1770-4 and EBU R128:

Play the timeline from the start to measure a whole program. Pause holds the readings, and Reset starts a new measurement. Streaming platforms usually expect about -14 LUFS integrated with true peak under -1 dBTP.

Clips

A clip is a piece of an asset on a track. Trimming changes which part of the source shows; it never touches the original file. The main moves:

• Move, drag a clip along its track or to another one.
• Trim, drag the left or right edge inward.
• Split, put the playhead where you want the cut and press S.
• Delete, select and press Delete or Backspace.
• Copy / paste / duplicate, Cmd/Ctrl+C, Cmd/Ctrl+V, Cmd/Ctrl+D.

Select with a click, and add to the selection with Cmd/Ctrl+click. Nudge whatever's selected one frame at a time with , and . (hold Shift for five).

Clips carry an organization label color too. Right-click a clip and open the Label color submenu for a grid of swatches, plus Clear to remove one. Use it to tag your A-roll, your B-roll, and the bits you still need to fix. On media cards the same colors cycle on click instead.

Auditions

A clip can hold more than one take of the same media. Right-click it and open the Auditions submenu. The top of the submenu lists the takes already on the clip, numbered, with the current one marked "(active)"; click another to promote it. Below that, every matching asset in your media panel shows up as Add name, which attaches it as a new take. Only assets of the same type as the clip are offered.

Once a clip has takes, Alt+[ and Alt+] cycle the selected clip backwards and forwards through them, so you can watch each version in place without rebuilding the edit around it.

The right-click menu

Right-clicking a clip gives you the whole per-clip menu. Copy, Paste, Split at playhead, Split all at playhead, and Label color sit alongside these:

Which items appear depends on the clip and on how many clips are selected. The long-running ones show their progress in place, for example "Stabilizing…".

Multicam

A multicam clip is two to four camera angles of the same moment, like Resolve's. Select the clips (the first one you select is angle 1) and choose Make multicam clip from the clip menu. Klipeo lines the other angles up with angle 1 by their sound; an angle whose sound does not match starts with angle 1 and you can nudge it. Each angle sits on its own track, only angle 1 shows at first, and angle 1's sound plays throughout.

Select any angle to see Multicam in the inspector, with every angle playing live at the playhead. Click an angle, or press its number key, to cut to it: Klipeo splits the angles at the playhead and shows only the one you chose until the next cut. Play the timeline and press the numbers as it plays to cut the whole conversation live. Undo reverts each cut.

Audio crossfades

An audio crossfade blends two clips' sound across the cut between them, like Resolve's Cross Fade +3 dB. Right-click the first clip and choose Crossfade into next clip: the clip must meet the next one on the same track. Both clips then sound for a moment across the cut, the first fading down as the second fades up on equal-power curves, so the level holds through the join. The crossfade is one second long, centred on the cut, and uses the media past each clip's edge; if a clip has less than half a second of media past the cut, the crossfade shortens to fit, and if either has none Klipeo says so. A shaded box with a diagonal marks the crossfade on both clips. Choose Remove crossfade into next clip to take it off; moving the clips apart turns it off too. Crossfades play in the preview and the export; a share link cannot render such a timeline, so share an exported file instead.

Compound clips

A compound clip folds several clips into one, like Resolve's. Select the clips, on one track or across several, right-click, and choose New compound clip. They become one clip on the top-most track they came from (or a new track there when other clips would overlap it), and keep their own tracks inside it.

Move, trim, cut, disable, and mute a compound clip like any clip. Trimming its head or tail hides that part of what is inside; splitting it makes two compound clips that each show their part. The preview, the export, and a share-link render play the clips inside exactly as they were, cut to the part the compound shows.

To change the clips inside, select the compound clip and press Decompose in place in the inspector (or right-click it): the clips go back on their own tracks where they played, trimmed to what the compound showed. Compound clips cannot hold other compound clips or timeline regions, and clips on locked tracks stay out. The Mac app's native editor opens a composition with compound clips in the web editor.

World-prompt action lanes

If a composition carries a world prompt, the timeline adds thin lanes above the tracks for its scripted actions: Speech, Gesture, Camera, and SFX. A lane appears only when the world prompt has at least one action on it, so a prompt with no sound effects gets no SFX lane. Each action is a block you can click to send the playhead to its start; muted actions are struck through.

The tools row

Above the tracks sits a row of tool buttons: Select (V), Blade (C), Ripple Trim (B), Roll (Shift+N), Slip (Y), Slide (U), and Spacer (E). Click one or press its key; each button shows both its name and its shortcut.

The same row holds the in/out range on the right: Mark in (I), Mark out (O), and a clear button (Shift+O) that appears once a range exists. Use it to fence off the stretch you're working on.

Ripple and snap

Two toggles change how dragging behaves:

Zoom

Zoom the timeline in to work frame by frame, or out to see the whole edit. Use the zoom slider, or Cmd/Ctrl with + and -, and \ to fit the whole edit to the window. Zoom only changes your view, never the edit.

During playback the timeline follows the playhead: once it reaches the middle of the view, it stays there and the timeline slides under it, so you never have to chase it while zoomed in.

Beyond plain cuts, the timeline also carries zoom, speed, and trim regions, plus markers. Regions get their own page next.