Quick Start

This guide walks you through your first editing session in Railcut. By the end, you’ll have cut your first clip, trimmed an edit, and navigated the timeline with keyboard shortcuts.

Before you start

Make sure you’ve:

• Installed Railcut
• Activated your license
• Opened After Effects with a project loaded

Note

Railcut only reflects your AE timeline when you’re actively working inside its panel. To keep AE running smoothly, Railcut pauses all updates while you’re working in another panel. Railcut will blur and dim with a “Resume Sync” indicator — move your mouse back over it and Railcut picks up right where it left off.

Step 1 — Open a composition

In After Effects, double-click a composition in the Project Panel to open it in the viewer. Railcut automatically loads the active comp and its contents. You’ll see your layers appear on the timeline as clips.

Note

Railcut always reflects the composition that’s currently open in the AE Composition Viewer. If you switch comps in AE, Railcut updates automatically.

Step 2 — Get oriented

The Railcut timeline has a few key areas:

• Toolbar — tools and controls docked on the left edge of the panel (click and drag to move it to the right side)
• Track controls — Track names, patching, targeting, lock, visibility, mute and solo controls
• Timeline — the main editing canvas where clips live

Step 3 — Play your timeline

Press Space to start a playback. Press Space again to stop.

Use arrow keys to step one frame at a time. Shift+Arrow jumps 10 frames.

Note

The live playhead movement during playback is an estimate of Ae’s playhead position. Unfortunately, there’s no way to track Ae’s playhead live. You can disable this setting in the menu.

Step 4 — Make your first cut

1. Press the C key to activate the Razor Blade tool
2. Click on a clip at the point you want to cut
3. Press V to return to the Selection tool

Or, move the playhead where you want to cut and press Ctrl+K. This splits the clip(s) at the current time position on any targeted tracks.

Step 5 — Trim an edit

Hover over the in or out point of a clip. The cursor changes to a trim cursor. Drag to trim.

For a faster ripple trim:

• Move the playhead to where you want to trim
• Press W to ripple-trim the nearest out point to the playhead
• Press Q to ripple-trim the nearest in point to the playhead

Ripple trimming automatically shifts downstream clips to fill the gap. No manual cleanup needed.

First-time setup tips

Set your keyboard shortcut preset. Click the → Keyboard Shortcuts… and pick the preset that matches your NLE background: Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, or Final Cut Pro.

Enable waveforms. Click the → Settings → Cache and check Show Waveforms. On your first comp load, Railcut extracts waveform data from your audio layers. This takes a few seconds but is cached for future sessions.

Enable thumbnails. In the same Settings → Cache panel, check Show Thumbnails to see frame previews on your video clips.

Try snap. Snap is on by default. Clips snap to edit points, the playhead, and each other. Toggle it with Shift+S if you need sub-frame precision.

You’re ready

From here, explore the rest of the docs to learn about ripple editing, rate stretch, audio waveforms, and the full keyboard shortcut reference.