Tracks and Linked Clips
How the track stack works, how to manage tracks, and how linked audio and video clips behave when you edit them.
Understand the track layout
Video tracks sit above a draggable splitter bar and audio tracks sit below it. V1 and A1 are the tracks closest to the splitter, with higher numbers stacking outward. Drag the splitter to give one section more room. When video clips overlap in time, the clip on the higher-numbered track is the one you see in the preview.
Each audio track can show a transcript row directly above it, labeled T1, T2, and so on. Right-click a track header and choose Show Transcript Track or Hide Transcript Track to toggle it.
Use the track header controls
Each track's header, on the left, carries its controls:
- A padlock button on every track: Lock and Unlock. Clips on a locked track can't be selected, moved, or edited.
- Mute and Solo buttons on audio tracks. When one track is soloed, the other audio tracks show as muted.
- A volume slider on audio tracks.
- An eye button on video tracks: Hide and Show.
To rename a track, double-click its name, type the new one, and press Enter. Press Escape to cancel. Two tracks can't share a name, a duplicate is rejected with an error message.
To reorder tracks, drag a track by its name onto another track's row. Video tracks stay in the video section and audio tracks stay in the audio section, a track can never cross the splitter.
To resize a track, drag the handle at its edge. Hold Shift while resizing to resize every track of the same type at once.
Add and remove tracks
Right-click any track header, or the empty space below the headers, and choose Add Video Track or Add Audio Track. New tracks get a name automatically. You can also create a track by dragging a clip past the top or bottom edge of the timeline. See Move, Trim, and Slip Clips.
To remove a track, right-click its header and choose Delete Track. If the track holds clips, a dialog titled Delete track with clips? warns you how many clips will be removed before you confirm.
The timeline always keeps at least one video track and one audio track. Delete Track is greyed out on the last remaining track of its type, and on locked tracks.
Delete Empty Tracks, in the same menu, removes every empty track in one step. It leaves locked tracks alone, keeps one track of each type, and is greyed out when there's nothing to remove.
Edit linked clips as one
A link group ties an audio clip to its video clip. Linked pairs usually come from synced media or from importing footage that has both picture and sound.
While the Linked Selection toggle in the tools strip is on, a linked pair behaves as a single unit:
- Selecting one half selects the other.
- Moving, trimming, slipping, splitting, and deleting all apply to both halves.
Turn Linked Selection off to edit one half on its own. That is the mechanism for every operation, there is no per-clip override.
A locked partner blocks the whole edit. For example, with Linked Selection on, you can't razor-cut a clip whose linked partner sits on a locked track.
Link and unlink clips yourself
Select two or more clips, then right-click one of them:
- Link joins the selected clips into one link group. It appears when the selection doesn't already form a single group.
- Link Overlapping Pairs pairs up clips across two tracks by their time overlap. It's only available when the selection spans exactly two tracks, otherwise it's greyed out with a note explaining why.
- Unlink breaks the link. It appears when at least one selected clip is linked.
Link and unlink are rejected with a message if a locked track is involved. There are no keyboard shortcuts for linking and unlinking.