Ripple Editing

Ripple editing is a trimming mode where removing or trimming a clip automatically shifts everything downstream to fill the gap. It keeps your sequence tight without manual cleanup.

What “ripple” means

In a normal trim, you shorten a clip and leave a gap. In a ripple trim, the moment you shorten a clip, every clip to the right of the edit point slides left by exactly the amount you trimmed. No gap. No holes.

The same concept applies to deletion: ripple delete removes a clip and closes the gap.

Ripple Trim Next Edit — W

Press W with the playhead positioned where you want to trim.

Railcut finds the nearest clip out point at or before the playhead on targeted tracks. It trims that out point to the playhead and ripples all downstream clips left.

Use this to trim a clip shorter from its end. Move the playhead earlier than where the clip ends, press W, and the clip snaps to the playhead while everything after it slides left.

Ripple Trim Previous Edit — Q

Press Q with the playhead positioned where you want to trim.

Railcut finds the nearest clip in point at or after the playhead on targeted tracks. It trims that in point to the playhead, then shifts the trimmed clip and all downstream clips left so no gap is introduced.

Use this to trim a clip shorter from its beginning. Move the playhead later than where the clip starts, press Q, and the clip’s head is trimmed while everything shifts to stay together.

Ripple Edit tool — B

Press B to switch to the Ripple Edit tool. Now dragging any clip edge ripples:

Drag a left edge left → extends the clip’s in point backward, pushing upstream content
Drag a right edge right → extends the clip’s out point forward, pushing downstream content
Drag a left edge right → trims the clip’s in point, shifts downstream clips left
Drag a right edge left → trims the clip’s out point, shifts downstream clips left

The Ripple Edit tool is your go-to for hands-on trimming during fine editing.

Ripple Delete — Shift+Delete

Select one or more clips and press Shift+Delete. The clips are removed and all clips to the right shift left to fill the gap.

Ripple Delete a gap — right-click

Right-click on any empty gap on the timeline. Choose Ripple Delete from the context menu. This closes the gap by shifting all clips to the right of the gap leftward.

The gap must not be “blocked” — if a locked clip on another track would create a collision, the ripple delete is disabled and a note appears in the context menu.

How ripple interacts with locked tracks

Locked tracks are not rippled. When you ripple-trim or ripple-delete on one track, clips on locked tracks stay exactly where they are. Only unlocked tracks participate in the shift.

This is useful when you have a music track or narration track you want to keep in sync and don’t want ripple operations to disturb it. Lock that track and ripple freely on everything else.

Lift and Extract

Two related operations work on the work area instead of clip selection:

Lift (;) — removes the work area range from targeted tracks, leaving a gap
Extract (’) — removes the work area range from all tracks, closing the gap (ripple)

These are useful for removing a defined range of time from your sequence. Set the work area with I / O or X (Mark Clip), then lift or extract.