Drag from Project Panel

You can drag footage items directly from the After Effects Project Panel onto the Railcut timeline. This is the primary way to add new clips to your composition.

Basic drag-and-drop

1. In the AE Project Panel, select one or more footage items or other assets
2. Drag them onto the Railcut timeline
3. Drop at the position and track where you want them

Clips land at the time position where you release.

Tip

Snap is active during drag. The clip snaps to the playhead, adjacent clip edges, markers, and track boundaries. This makes it easy to drop clips precisely at exact cut points.

Footage in/out marks

If you set in/out marks in AE’s Footage viewer before dragging a source to Railcut, the dropped clip uses that marked range instead of the full source duration.

Still image duration

When dragging a still image (PNG, JPEG, etc.) onto the timeline, Railcut uses your Still Duration preference to set the clip length. The default is 10 seconds.

To change it: → Settings → Preferences → Still Duration

Enter the duration in hh:mm:ss:ff timecode format. You can type without colons — for example, 500 becomes 00:00:05:00. The duration uses your comp’s current frame rate for the frames component.

Overlay vs. Insert mode

By default, dropping a clip uses overlay mode; the clip overwrites any existing content at the drop position on the target track.

Hold Ctrl while dropping to use insert mode; the clip is inserted at the drop position and all downstream clips shift right to make room.

Track patching — controlling where A/V lands

When a clip has both video and audio, Railcut needs to know which video track and which audio track to place each component on. That’s controlled by the patch system.

In each track header, you’ll see a small patch button labeled V1 when active. Click it to “patch” the video source to that track. When you drag a footage item with a video and audio source, the patches determine where each source lands.

No active patches

If no patches are active, Railcut uses the default behavior: the clip’s video goes to the video track closest to where you dropped, and the audio mirrors it (same track number).

Discarding video or audio

If only the video patch is active (no audio patch), only the video component is placed. The audio is discarded. Useful when you want to drop footage visuals on a track but don’t want its audio.

If only the audio patch is active (no video patch), only the audio component is placed. Video is discarded. Useful for dropping audio-only onto a specific audio track.

Drag onto an empty panel

If Railcut has no active composition loaded (the panel shows “drag footage here to create a new timeline”), you can drag a footage item from the Project Panel onto the empty panel. Railcut will:

1. Create a new After Effects composition sized to match the footage
2. Add the footage as the first layer
3. Open the new comp in the Railcut timeline

This is the fastest way to start a new edit from scratch.

Note

Only footage items with video can be used to create a new comp from drag. If you drop a folder, precomp, or audio-only item onto the empty panel, Railcut will show an error asking you to select a footage item with video.