Cutting Clips

Cutting a clip in Railcut splits it into two pieces at a specified time.

Add Edit — Ctrl+K

Move the playhead to the point where you want to cut. Press Ctrl+K.

If clips are selected, this splits the selected clips at the playhead. If nothing is selected, it splits clips on targeted tracks that the playhead intersects. Locked tracks are skipped.

Tip

Track targeting works like Premiere: each track header has a targeting indicator. Click a track header to toggle targeting on or off. Untargeted tracks are protected from Ctrl+K cuts.

Add Edit to All Tracks — Ctrl+Shift+K

Press Ctrl+Shift+K to split clips at the playhead on all tracks, regardless of targeting. This cuts everything the playhead crosses.

The Razor Tool — C

Press C to switch to the Razor Tool. Click anywhere on a clip to split it at that point. The split happens at the exact click position (snapping applies if snap is enabled).

On linked A/V clips, Razor splits both sides together. Hold Alt while clicking to split only the side you clicked.

Shift+Razor — split all tracks

With the Razor tool active, Shift+click to split clips at that point on all unlocked tracks simultaneously. This is the Razor equivalent of Add Edit to All Tracks — one click cuts everything the cursor crosses.

Locked tracks are skipped.

Linked A/V cuts

Linked video/audio pairs stay together when you cut them. Hold Alt with the Razor tool to cut only the video or audio side of a linked pair. This is useful for split edits where one side needs to start or end earlier than the other.

Edit On-the-Fly

You can use Ctrl+K during playback. Railcut captures the key and sends the split command at the current playback time. Playback may lag a bit on each cut, so they won’t be 100% accurate, but it’s a fast way to mark edit points while watching the preview and listening to audio.

Join Through Edits

Right-click directly on the edit point between two clips (where one ends and the other begins) to get the Edit Point Context Menu. If the two clips are from the same source and the source content is continuous across the cut (a “through edit”), you’ll see a Join Through Edits option. This merges the two clips back into one, removing the cut point.