Editing is the act of placing marked source material onto the timeline and arranging it into a sequence. Lightworks gives you a small set of core operations - insert, replace, overwrite, delete, remove, and split - that you can drive from the viewer buttons, the keyboard, or directly on the timeline.
The editing model
Most edits follow the same rhythm: choose your source, mark what you want, target the timeline track and position, and perform an edit. The marked source section lands on the targeted tracks at the playhead. This is the heart of three-point editing (see below).
Both sides use the same control: enable or disable tracks (V1, A1, and so on) on the source to choose which of its tracks take part in the edit, and on the sequence to choose where they land. The source's monitor buttons only affect what you see and hear - they don't change what gets edited in.
Insert edits
An insert edit pushes existing material aside and drops your clip in, lengthening the sequence. Everything after the insert point moves later in time. Use insert to add a shot without overwriting what's already there.
Replace and overwrite edits
A replace (overwrite) edit lays your clip over whatever is at the playhead, keeping the sequence the same length. The new material replaces the old in place. Use replace to swap a shot, drop a cutaway onto a higher track, or lay audio under existing video.
Tip: Insert changes the timing of everything downstream; replace does not. When sync matters, replace is usually the safer choice.
Three-point editing
Three-point editing means you set three of the four possible in and out points, and Lightworks works out the fourth:
- Mark in and out in the source, and an in on the timeline - the clip lands at the timeline in point with its marked length.
- Mark in and out on the timeline, and an in in the source - the source fills exactly the marked timeline gap.
This is the precise, repeatable way to drop material to length - ideal for filling a gap or matching a music beat.
Editing with the source and sequence viewers
Load and mark a clip in the source viewer, target your tracks, then click Insert or Replace to edit it into the sequence shown in the sequence viewer. The playhead advances so you can build a cut clip by clip. This viewer-driven workflow is covered end to end in Quick start: create your first edit.
Adding clips from bins and drag-and-drop
You don't have to go through the source viewer:
- Drag a clip from a bin straight onto the timeline. As you drag, the viewer shows the frame you're dropping on, so you can place it precisely.
- Drop into a Drop Zone - the strip of space above the video tracks or below the audio tracks - and Lightworks makes the tracks the material needs, above the top video track or below the bottom audio track. As many tracks as it needs are created in one action, source grouping comes with it (so a stereo pair arrives as a stereo pair), and one undo puts everything back.
- Dragging respects snapping, so clips align cleanly to cuts and the playhead.
- A drop that inserts makes room on every track, so nothing is left behind and the sequence stays in sync. Lock a track to keep it out.
Edit operations on the timeline
The core operations sit as buttons on the timeline toolbar, and work on the marked region:
| Operation | What it does |
|---|---|
| Insert | Adds material and ripples the rest of the sequence |
| Replace | Overwrites material in place, keeping the same sequence length |
| Remove | Removes the marked region and leaves a gap (black) |
| Delete | Removes the marked region and closes the gap, shortening the sequence |
| Split | Adds a cut at the playhead without removing anything |
Insert keeps the other tracks in sync: the tracks sitting out the insert are padded with black at the insert point so they keep their alignment. Tracks that are taken out of the sync group stay where they are, the same as every untargeted track with Sync off. (see Trimming).
Delete never knocks a track out of sync. Every track moves by the same amount by deleting any gap at the same point: the tracks you deleted from close up, and every other track closes by the same length. Where another track has less black than the clip you deleted, the delete closes only by the amount available across all tracks. Where it has no black at all, nothing closes. If you want to close the remaining gap left behind by a delete operation, select the gap and delete it. Note that this will cause other tracks to go out of sync, though.
Editing with the clipboard
Lightworks also has a timeline clipboard, which is often the fastest way to rearrange material:
- Cut to clipboard - cut the marked region out onto the clipboard. Cut is Delete plus a clipboard copy.
- Copy to clipboard - copy without changing the sequence. Copy works from your selection when there is one, and from the marked region when there is not a selection.
- Remove to clipboard - remove the marked region (leaving a gap) and keep it on the clipboard.
- Clipboard Insert / Clipboard Replace - edit the clipboard contents back in at the playhead, as an insert or an overwrite.
- Clipboard Insert & Next / Clipboard Replace & Next - the same, then the playhead moves to the end of what was pasted, ready for the next. These are the ones on the keyboard:
Ctrl/Cmd+VorFto insert,Alt+Ctrl/Cmd+VorGto replace.
Paste lands on the tracks the material came from. Which tracks the clipboard holds was decided when you copied, so track targeting has no say for a paste. A paste that inserts keeps the other tracks in sync like any other insert: a track with nothing to receive is given black at the insert point so the whole timeline stays in step. Locking a track is the one thing that keeps a track out of a paste.
Mark a section, cut it, park where it should go, and insert - a clean way to re-order scenes without dragging. If every track is locked, the clipboard commands say so rather than appearing to do nothing.
Working with gaps and black
A gap is empty space on a track; on video it reads as black, on audio as silence. Gaps appear when you remove material, and when you deliberately want a hole in the video or audio.
Right-click a gap and you get two choices, which do different jobs:
- Delete gap across all tracks closes the gap right through the sequence, so it can only go as far as every unlocked track has black to give up. Where another track holds material over the gap there is nothing for it to give, so the option is greyed out - closing it would drag that track out of step with the rest.
- Delete black segment removes the black on that track, exactly as it would remove a clip: the range goes and the timeline closes up behind it. This is the one to reach for when the gap across all tracks is greyed out.
Insert gap does the opposite, from the right-click menu of a clip or a gap. It puts five seconds of black in at the playhead, as any insert would: all tracks take the gap, splitting a clip if the playhead is over one, and the other tracks get black at the same point so nothing falls out of sync. Locked tracks are left alone. Insert Gap is also a keyboard command, although no default keyboard shortcut is assigned.
Note: Taking black out on one track alone makes that track shorter than the others, so anything after it on that track moves earlier. That is usually what you want when tightening a single audio track, but check the result if that track needs to stay in sync with your video.
Delete Gaps, in the Clean Up menu in the timeline's Tools side menu, does the same job across a whole sequence or marked region (see Timeline tools and commands).
Undo and redo
Every edit is undoable. Use undo to step back through your changes and redo to step forward again. Combined with Lightworks' continuous auto-save, you can experiment freely - there's no way to lose the project, and any edit can be reversed.