TImeline Tips and Tricks

Timeline Tips

The Flixier timeline comes with powerful features that are usually part of desktop video editors. These features are super helpful in a variety of situations, making your editing way simpler if you spend a couple of minutes learning them.

Here is a rundown of the most important ones:

Tracks

In video editing, tracks are horizontal layers on a timeline where audio and video clips can be placed and edited. Tracks are essential for organising and separating different types of media in a video project.

For example, in a typical video project, you might have one track for your main video footage, one track for background music, and one or more tracks for sound effects or text. You can add or remove tracks as needed, depending on the complexity of your project.

Tracks allow you to edit individual clips without affecting other clips in the same project. For example, you can adjust the volume or add effects to a specific audio clip without changing the volume or effects of other audio clips in your project. Similarly, you can trim or adjust the timing of a video clip on one track without affecting other clips on different tracks.

To access track options, check the expand arrow on the far left side of your timeline toolbar, right next to the Settings button. This will reveal the track headers. Here, you can lock (padlock icon), hide (eye icon), mute (speaker icon), or delete (trash can icon) entire tracks. You can also reorder tracks by dragging them up and down. 

Ripple Split

Sometimes, when editing, you may want to add something in the middle of a complex video that has a lot of assets overlapping on different tracks in the timeline.

Instead of cutting each clip manually, you can hold down the SHIFT key on Windows or the Option key on MacOS, and use your left mouse button to move the playhead to the left or right. Ripple Split cuts the clips into two parts and moves the rest of the timeline to the right to create a gap.

Ripple Move

The Ripple Move function allows you to move an asset on the timeline along with every other asset to the right of it. This helps you move assets while maintaining their position relative to each other on the timeline.This feature is especially useful when you want to create a gap in the timeline but you have a lot of clips in it and moving them manually will take a lot of time. 

To do a ripple move, select the clip in the timeline and hold down the SHIFT key, and use your left mouse button at the same time to drag the clips to your right.

To do a ripple move on multiple tracks, hold down the SHIFT key on Windows or the Command key on MacOS using the left mouse button to select multiple clips on different tracks. You can also click and drag on an empty space in the timeline to draw a yellow selection box over multiple clips at once.

Once you have selected them, hold down the SHIFT key or the Command key and move the clips to the left or right by clicking and dragging with the left mouse button.

Delete Gaps

If you end up with an unwanted empty space between clips on your timeline, you don’t need to manually drag everything over to fix it. Simply hover your mouse over the empty space and click the Delete this gap button that appears. This will instantly snap the right-hand clips over to close the space.

Advanced Clip and Selection Menus

Right-clicking on your timeline opens up a variety of powerful quick actions depending on exactly where you click:

Single Clips: Right-clicking the main body of a video clip gives you a list of quick actions. You can Extend video, Generate from frame, Freeze current frame, Replace media, Add keyframe (shortcut K), Arrange your visual layers, Detach audio, Retry loading, Generate subtitles, Ripple delete (Shift + Del), or standard Delete (Del).

Clip Edges: If you right-click specifically on the end edge of a video clip, you get a streamlined menu to quickly Extend video or Generate from frame.

Multiple Clips: If you use the click-and-drag selection box to highlight multiple clips, right-clicking opens a special menu. From here, you can Ripple Delete Selection, Export Selection directly, or Save as New Project, which is perfect for quickly extracting a short highlight from a massive editing timeline.

Empty Spaces and Gaps: If you end up with an unwanted empty space between clips, you don’t need to manually drag everything over. You can just hover over the empty space and click the delete icon that appears to delete that specific gap. Right-clicking an empty space reveals a gap management menu where you can Delete this gap, Delete all gaps to the right, or instantly clean up your project by selecting Delete all empty tracks.

Timeline Settings

The Flixier timeline settings can be accessed by clicking the Settings text button located on the left side of the timeline toolbar, right next to the timecodes. Clicking this will open a menu with the following options:

• Object Size: This slider allows you to change the vertical size of each timeline track. Making the tracks smaller can help keep things visible when you’re working on complex projects where you need to fit a lot of tracks on the timeline.
• Auto in-between transition and Default in-between transition: These settings allow you to choose whether you want a transition to be added automatically when two clips overlap on the same track in the timeline. You can also use the dropdown menu to choose which transition (like Fade) you want Flixier to apply by default.
• Show Waveforms: Check this box to display the audio waveform along with the video thumbnails and audio tracks on the timeline. 
• Show Object Names: Check this box to toggle the names of media objects on and off in the timeline.
• Snap Objects: This system helps you easily align clips in the timeline relative to other clips or to the playhead. Check or uncheck this box to enable or disable the snapping feature.

Timeline View and Audio Gain

‍On the far right side of the timeline toolbar, you will find a few essential tools to manage your view and audio levels:

• Zoom Slider: Use the slider or the - and + buttons to zoom in and out of your timeline for precise editing.
• Fit to Timeline: Click the expanding arrows icon to adjust your zoom level so your entire project fits perfectly within your screen view.
• Audio Gain Meter: Click the green toggle icon on the far right to open a vertical Audio Gain meter on the edge of the screen. This visual tool helps you monitor your project’s overall audio levels to ensure your sound is perfectly balanced and avoids distortion.

Groups

You can organise entire tracks under a single group to keep your timeline clean. To create a group, click the “+Add”  button above your track headers (next to the Cut and Delete buttons) and select Add Group from the dropdown menu. You can then drag a track directly into the created group.

A benefit of using groups is that you can adjust the timing of all the tracks in the group at once. For example, if you want to move a section of your project earlier in the timeline, you can select the group and drag it to the left. This will move all the tracks in the group earlier in the timeline.

You can also collapse groups meaning that you can hide tracks you don’t want to see making it easier to work with more complex timelines.