The Movie Window
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The Movie Window, where you build your movie from the raw materials in the Album, occupies the bottom half of the screen in Studio’s Edit mode. To access the Movie Window, first switch to Edit mode if you are not already there:
The Movie Window title bar contains several important controls and displays. The toolbox buttons at the left of the title bar open the Video toolbox and the Audio toolbox, which are discussed here.
Next to the toolbox buttons is the button for the Project Bin, represented by a folder icon. This button also serves as a target for material dragged to the Bin from the Album and from Windows Explorer.
To the right of the Bin button is a text area where the project file name is displayed. Status and warning messages are also displayed in this area when required.
The next controls relate to clip markers, which are like bookmarks attached to clips in your project. In a new project, the only visible clip marker control is the Add Marker button. When you add your first marker, more controls appear.
The Add Marker button (top) creates a new clip marker at the Timeline scrubber position. After you add a marker to your project, controls for naming and selecting them become visible (bottom). See Clip markers for full information.
Further still to the right are the Audio scrubbing, Clip split and Clip delete buttons, then three view selection buttons (see Movie Window views), and finally a compact version of the Volume and balance tool’s output level meter.
By default, your project’s audio is previewed during playback only. Studio’s audio scrubbing feature, which is turned on and off by the loudspeaker button, provides audio preview when you are scrubbing through your movie as well.
Audio scrubbing makes life much easier when making editing decisions that depend on sound cues.
Split clip/scene button – the razorblade
Click this button to split the currently-selected clip in the Movie Window, or the currently-selected scene in the Album.
No information is lost. If the item is an Album scene, it is split at the indicated point into two shorter scenes. If the item is a clip in the Movie Window, it is duplicated and automatically trimmed to the split point.
The razorblade button can be used in conjunction with the track-locking buttons in the Movie Window’s Timeline view to carry out special operations such as insert editing, and edits in which the audio leads or lags behind the video.
Splitting a clip: The placement of the edit line in the original clip determines the split point. When you apply the razorblade tool, Studio duplicates the clip and trims away the portion after the split point in the first copy and up to the split point in the second.
Delete Clip button – the trashcan
This button deletes the currently-selected content in any of the Movie Window views. By default, when video clips on the main video track of your project are deleted in any view, the gap in your movie that would otherwise be created by the deletion is automatically closed up, and clips on other tracks are removed or shortened as required to keep everything in sync.
If you delete clips on other tracks, the default behavior is that gaps between them are not automatically removed, so the timing of other clips is not affected.
If you press the Ctrl key while clicking the delete button, or pressing the Delete key, the default behavior for the current track is reversed. That is, on the main video track, Ctrl+Delete leaves a gap when the clip is removed, while on the other tracks, the gap on the track is closed up. In neither case are other tracks affected.
You can also access the delete operations through the right-button context menu for clips on the Timeline.
The delete options on the right-button menu for Timeline clips are not the same for clips on the main video track (L) as for those on other tracks (R). The menus summarize the context-dependent keyboard shortcuts.
Positioning: edit line, scrubbers
The current position is the frame showing in the Player when you are working with a clip in the Movie Window. In the Timeline view, it is indicated by the edit line. The current position can be changed by moving either the Timeline scrubber (to which the edit line is attached) or the Player scrubber.
When the Clip properties tool is open, a third scrubber, the trim scrubber, is available for adjusting the current position within the clip during trimming.