Timeline editor

The timeline editor opens from a Human Timeline Edit stage. When the run pauses for it, select Open editor on the stage, on the run page or on the stage's card in the blueprint canvas. The editor is titled with the stage's name and Timeline editor beneath it. Run takes you back.

It is always dark, whatever theme the rest of Reelcraft uses, and has four areas: the Media panel on the left, the preview and its controls in the middle, the Inspector on the right, and the timeline across the bottom.

Saving, undoing and problems

Everything you change is saved automatically. The top of the page says Saving…, then All changes saved. Undo and Redo step through your changes; typing in a field counts as one step, not one per letter.

• Couldn’t save — retrying on your next change: the save failed. It tries again when you change something else.
• Out of date: the draft was changed somewhere else, such as another tab. A bar says so, with Reload, which continues from the newer version.
• Read only: the run isn't waiting for this stage any more.

Next to the save state, the editor checks your draft as you work and says No problems or, for example, 1 problem. Select it to see what is wrong in plain words, and Show to jump to the clip. The clips involved are outlined in red. See Timeline checks.

Media

The Media panel lists everything the stage was given: pictures, video and audio, each with its name (for example Image Generation · 3) and a picture. Use All, Images, Video and Audio to filter. A tag shows whether a file is In use or used several times (×2).

Select a file to add it:

• pictures and video go at the end of the main video track;
• audio goes on an audio track, creating one if there isn't one, starting at the beginning.

A clip is added with its real length when Reelcraft knows it, and the playhead jumps to it.

Add title adds a title at the playhead, lasting 3 seconds, centred. Edit its words in the inspector.

Preview

The preview plays the timeline as it will be rendered, with the same styles, motion and captions, in the shape of your video. Under it:

• the position and the total length, as minutes, seconds and the frame;
• Go to start, Previous frame, Play or Pause, Next frame, Go to end;
• Mute and Unmute.

Select the picture to play or pause.

Timeline

The tracks run along a time ruler. Video, Audio, Titles and Captions each have their own colour. Pictures and video show as a strip of their frames, with their name and length.

• Move the playhead by selecting the ruler or any empty part of a track, or by dragging along the ruler. It follows playback and is kept in view.
• Zoom with the zoom buttons, the slider, ⌘ or Ctrl + scroll, or + and −. Fit shows the whole timeline again.
• Select a clip to edit it in the inspector.
• Drag a clip to move it in time. It snaps to the edges of other clips and to the nearest tenth of a second, and can't go before 0. A small label shows its start and length.
• Drag a picture past its neighbour on the main video track to change the order: the track lays itself out end to end again. A drop that only half covers a neighbour goes back, so clips never overlap there.
• Drag an edge to trim. The left edge changes where the clip starts and how much of the source is used; the right edge changes how long it lasts. A clip can't be longer than its source allows, and not shorter than a tenth of a second.

Above the tracks:

• Split cuts the clip or title at the playhead into two. The second part carries on from where the first ended, so the picture and sound don't jump.
• Delete removes the selection and leaves a gap.
• Ripple delete removes it and moves everything after it on that track earlier, so there is no gap.

Keyboard shortcuts

Select the keyboard button at the top for this list. Shortcuts don't work while you are typing in a field.

Keys	Does
Space	Play or pause
← →	Step one frame
⇧ ← →	Jump one second
Home, End	Go to the start or the end
S	Split at the playhead
Delete	Delete the selection
⇧ Delete	Delete it and close the gap
[ and ]	Nudge the selection by 0.1 seconds
⌘ Z, ⇧ ⌘ Z (Ctrl on PC)	Undo, redo
+ and −, 0	Zoom, and fit the timeline to the window
Esc	Clear the selection

Inspector

With nothing selected, the inspector shows the Project: the canvas size, the frame rate, the length and how many clips and titles there are. Select an item to see its name and settings. Which settings depend on what it is.

Titles: Text, Style, Position.

Clips and pictures:

• Start (s), Duration (s) and, for video, Trim in (s);

• Volume, for video and audio;

• Fit: Cover, Contain or Fill;

• If the source is shorter: Stop at its end (trim), Loop it, Hold the last frame, Slow it down to fit;

• Fade in (s) and Fade out (s);

• Motion: None, Ken Burns (zoom and drift), Zoom in, Pan, and the Motion strength;

• Transition in and Transition out: how the clip arrives and how it leaves: None, Crossfade, Slide or Wipe, each with a Length (s). The two can't add up to more than the clip, so a length is held to what the other end leaves;

• Apply to all clips: gives every other clip on the same track the same Transition in and Transition out as this one, including None. A clip too short to fit both gets them shortened. Audio is left alone.

• Place in a box: shows a picture or clip in a box on the frame instead of filling it (centred, half the frame), so it can be moved, resized and animated like a graphic. Fill the frame puts it back.

Graphics and things placed in a box (words, drawings and shapes, and pictures or clips in a box, such as the ones Compose Timeline places and rendered motion graphics):

• Words: the Words, Letter size (px), Colour, Font (the theme's Hand and Body fonts, the timeline's library fonts, or Other… to type a family), Weight and Line up. Words in coloured parts also list the Parts, each with its own colour; changing the Words puts them back in one colour;
• Drawing: Colour every line, to give a drawing one colour; Shape: which Shape, and its Colour; Arrow (an arrow between two items): its Bend, Heads and Colour. Move either end and the arrow follows;
• Box: X, Y, Width and Height in pixels of the frame (or the world), Turn (°) and Layer (higher is on top). With a world, Placed: On the screen stays put, In the world moves with the camera;
• Arrival: How it arrives (Draw on, Write out, Type, Pop, Fade, Slide, Highlight or Appear; pictures and clips can pop, fade, slide or appear), how long it Takes, where a slide comes From, the Pen that follows lines being drawn, and for typed words a Cursor;
• Remove moves: drops the small moves an item makes after it arrives.

Delete item removes it. See Timelines for what each setting does.

Captions

Captions are shown a few words at a time, with the word being spoken highlighted. Select the Captions track to change how they look and what they say.

Template is a gallery of looks, each shown as a small example you can compare at a glance. Choosing one gives the captions its whole look: how the text is drawn, how the spoken word stands out, how many words show at once and where they sit. It replaces any tweaks you made under Look, but keeps words you edited.

Template	Looks like
Clean	Readable text on a soft dark box; the spoken word turns yellow
Bold Pop	Large, heavy capitals with a thick black outline
Karaoke	White text on a dark box; the spoken word sits on a purple box
Hype	Huge capitals, thick outline and a hard shadow, in the middle
Neon	Glowing cyan lettering with a hot-pink spoken word
Minimal	Light, quiet text with a soft shadow; the spoken word is underlined
Cinema	Italic serif subtitles like a film, with no highlight
Terminal	Green typewriter text on black; the spoken word is a green block
Sticker	Black capitals on a yellow label; the spoken word flips to black
Comic	Chunky yellow capitals with a drop shadow; the spoken word grows
Newsroom	A solid red band with left-aligned capitals
Glass	A frosted box with crisp white text and an ice-blue spoken word
Highlighter	White outlined text; the spoken word is marked in yellow

Look changes this captions item only, on top of its template:

• Position: Top, Middle or Bottom;
• Spoken word: how the word being spoken stands out: Change colour, Highlight box, Underline, Grow or No highlight;
• Text colour and Highlight, the colour of the spoken word;
• Size;
• Words per page, from 1 to 6;
• Uppercase.

Reset puts the look back to the template.

Templates use only fonts that every Reelcraft install has, so a template looks the same in the editor and in the final video.

Transcript lists the captions page by page, each with the time it starts (select it to go there). The page being spoken is outlined.

• Edit the text of a page to fix a word. If you keep the same number of words, each keeps its timing. Otherwise the page's time is shared among the new words.
• Split page cuts a page in two. Merge with next page joins it to the one after. Delete page removes it, so those words aren't shown.
• Reset to transcript throws away your edits and goes back to automatic pages.

Once you edit a page, Words per page no longer applies to it.

Draft render

Select Render draft to turn your saved timeline into a real video, a little lower in quality so it is quick, and watch it before you submit. Any changes not yet saved are saved first.

• Rendering your draft… shows how long it has been going. A render usually takes a minute or two, and the first one on a new install is slower while Reelcraft fetches the browser it draws with. Cancel render stops it.
• When it's done, the video plays in the window. Open in a new tab opens it on its own, and Render again makes a new one.
• If you've changed the timeline since, it says so: You’ve changed the timeline since this was rendered.

Each editor keeps only its latest draft, and a draft is deleted with its run. It's free: it renders inside Reelcraft. The final video is made by the Render Timeline stage.

Submit timeline

When you're done, select Submit timeline. Reelcraft runs the timeline checks again:

• If they pass, the run continues.
• If they don't, a red box lists what's wrong, for example timeline.coverage: primary video track has gaps, and you stay in the editor to fix it.