Selecting and moving material

Once material is on the timeline, you rearrange it: select clips, move them, copy and paste, and delete what you don't need - all while keeping picture and sound in sync. This article covers selecting and shifting segments around the timeline.

Selecting clips and segments

• Click a segment to select it.
• Ctrl/Cmd-click to add or remove individual segments.
• Shift-click to select everything between the last segment you clicked and this one.
• Selected segments are highlighted so you can act on several at once.

A selected segment can be copied, moved, deleted, or have effects applied to it.

Clip Link: what counts as one clip

Clip Link decides whether a clip travels with the clips it is linked to on other tracks - picture and its sync sound. With it on, clicking one selects them all, so they move, delete and trim as one. With it off you get only the clip you clicked. Alt+click gives you the opposite of whichever way the button is set, for a single click.

Clip Link sits with Snapping in the timeline header, and toggles with Ctrl/Cmd+M.

Grouped tracks are unaffected by it: grouping tracks says they are one thing, so a stereo pair or a stereoscopic L/R pair always travels together.

A chain icon on a clip tells you it has a link partner. Turn it off with Show Clip Links in Timeline settings if you would rather not see it.

How clips become linked

Links are a remembered property of the clips, not something worked out on the fly, and Lightworks creates them as you edit:

• Anything you lay into a sequence in one action is linked. Drop a clip with picture and sound and you get one linked group.
• Clips laid down together that don't overlap stay separate, and material laid over clips already in the sequence never joins their group - so a cutaway doesn't become part of the clip beneath it.
• Copying a clip gives the copy its own links, so it isn't tied to the original. Cutting and moving a clip keeps its links, because it's the same material in a new place.
• Splitting a clip splits its group. The half after the cut becomes a clip in its own right; the half before it keeps the original links. That's what lets you take a section of picture away from its sync sound. Every route that splits works this way - the Cut tool, Split, an insert or replace landing mid-clip, delete and remove. Merge Redundant Cuts puts a split clip back together (see Timeline tools and commands).
• Sequences made before this behave as they always did: clips with no saved link still pair up by matching source.
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Linking and unlinking clips yourself

To link clips that Lightworks didn't link for you - a piece of music to a shot, a subtitle to the line it belongs to - select them and say so:

1. Select two or more clips.
2. Right-click and choose Link, or press Ctrl/Cmd+L.

Unlink separates them again, and Ctrl/Cmd+L does both - it links the selected clips, or unlinks them if they're already linked to each other.

Links don't need clips to overlap, so several subtitles can be linked to one clip, and to each other.

Tip: Link is the answer whenever two things must stay together but Lightworks has no way of knowing it - a sound effect and the action it lands on, a lower-third and the person it names.

Selecting across tracks

To work with material on several tracks together, use the Selection tool. With it active, a click selects the clicked clip and everything after it, so you can grab a whole section of the sequence in one move - then drag or nudge to move it all.

Because the tool takes a block of the sequence rather than a clip, it spans every unlocked track - video, audio and subtitles - and Alt is what narrows it to a single track. Nothing else restricts it: selecting material is not an edit, so track state, Clip Link and Track Sync have no bearing on it. Lock a track where it should not be selectable at all.

Select all segments with Ctrl/Cmd+A - it selects every real segment in the sequence and sensibly leaves black (empty) segments out.

Moving clips

• Drag selected segments to a new position; snapping helps them land on cuts, markers, or the playhead.
• Nudge the selected clip frame by frame with , and .. (The arrow keys continue to nudge the playhead.)
• As you drag, the viewer shows the frame at the drop point so you can place material precisely.

Note: You can turn off nudging clips with , and . in Timeline settings if you would rather those keys did something else.

Copying and pasting

Lightworks has a full timeline clipboard:

Copy works from your selection when there is one, and from the marked region when there is not. Copying a marked region also clears the marks, as cut and delete do; turn that off with Clear Marks After Copy in Timeline settings if you would rather they stayed.

Paste places material at the playhead, on the tracks it came from. Which tracks the clipboard holds was settled when you copied, so track targeting has no say at the other end. A paste that inserts follows Track Sync like any other insert: with it on, a track with nothing to receive is given black at the edit point so the whole timeline stays in step; with it off, those tracks stay where they are. Locking a track is the one thing that keeps it out of a paste, and a locked track keeps its place in the layout so nothing lands on the wrong track.

If every track is disabled or locked, the clipboard commands tell you so rather than appearing to do nothing.

Deleting, ripple delete, and remove

There are two ways to take material out, and the difference is what happens to the gap:

• Delete removes the material and closes the gap, pulling everything after it earlier.
• Remove removes the material but leaves a gap (black or silence) in its place.

Use delete to tighten a cut; use remove when you need to preserve the timing of everything downstream.

Delete closes exactly what you deleted, and every track moves by the same amount or not at all. The amount is the most that every targeted track can give up as black; where another track has content at the same position there is nothing for it to give, so it stays put and the sequence keeps its length rather than that track being dragged out of step.

Delete and Remove from a segment's right-click menu both take the clip's linked clips with it, exactly as the keyboard commands do. Alt+click the segment first where you want only the one you clicked.

To take black out on one track alone, right-click it and choose Delete black segment - see Timeline tools and commands for how that differs from closing a gap across the whole sequence.

Activating and deactivating segments

Sometimes you want to silence or hide a clip without removing it from the timeline - trying a cut without a shot, or muting a line while you audition an alternative. Deactivating a segment does exactly what the track header hide and mute buttons do, but for an individual clip:

• A deactivated video segment is hidden from the output; a deactivated audio segment is muted.
• The segment stays in place, keeps its trims and effects, and shows a Deactivated label so you can see at a glance that it's switched off.

To toggle:

• Right-click a segment and choose Activate or Deactivate. With a selection, the command applies to all selected segments.
• Or press Alt+D to toggle the segment (or selection) between active and deactivated.

Reactivate the segment the same way to bring it back exactly as it was.

Keeping picture and sound in sync

Moving material is where sync is most easily lost, so Lightworks helps you keep it. Two separate controls are involved, and it is worth knowing which does what:

• Clip Link decides what counts as one clip, so picture and its sync sound select and move together. Leave it on for normal editing.
• Track Sync decides how far sync is maintained on the tracks that aren't being edited when material moves - trims and inserts. It lives with the master track buttons above the track headers (see Trimming).
• Group tracks whose clips must always stay locked together, such as a stereo pair (see Syncing picture and sound).
• Sync indicators on the timeline warn you if clips drift out of sync, so a slip is easy to spot and fix. An offset is only meaningful between linked clips from the same source, so that is where it is reported.

Tip: If you need to move picture without its sound (or vice versa), Alt+click the clip - that inverts Clip Link for one click - or switch Clip Link off while you work.