Ending a clip early

Every clip in a film is one leg of a continuous journey, so each one is supposed to end where the next one begins. When it doesn’t, you can fix it yourself: pause on the frame you want, and the film will leave that shot right there.

The rule

Grabbing a frame also ends the clip there. Nothing is deleted, and you still paid for the whole clip.

How it works

1. On the Clips step, press Grab frame under the clip you want to shorten.
2. Scrub the video and pause on the exact moment the shot should end — say 5.0s of an 8-second clip.
3. Leave Also end clip 1 here ticked. It tells you what will happen: clip 1 runs to this frame, and clip 2 opens on it.
4. Press Capture this frame.

The clip card now shows an ends 5.0s tag and the line “Ends at 5.0s of 8.0s in the film.” Your film is three seconds shorter, and that cut is now invisible — both shots meet on the same picture.

Changed your mind? Press Use all of it on the clip card.

Good to know

• Nothing is thrown away. The full clip stays where it is, and the price never changes — this only changes the edit.
• If you send the picture to a different scene instead of the next one, the clip keeps playing in full. The dialog tells you when that happens.
• A clip has to run at least half a second.
• The seconds you cut off the end are not wasted: they are what the cross-fade into the next clip plays over. Cut nothing and that join is a straight cut, which is already smooth.
• Make a new take of a clip and the end point steps aside, because it was measured on footage you’ve replaced. The card offers it back.
• If the clip after it was already made, it will say old join — redo that one so it opens where the film now leaves this one.

Related features

• Trimming on the timeline — the same cut, dragged on the Film step, with both frames of the join on screen.
• Dish films — the whole five-step film pipeline this sits inside.