Selecting & Moving Clips
Selecting clips
Section titled “Selecting clips”Click to select
Section titled “Click to select”With the Selection tool active (V), click any clip to select it. The clip highlights to indicate selection.
Multi-select
Section titled “Multi-select”Shift+click additional clips to add them to the selection. Shift+clicking an already-selected clip removes it from the selection.
Rubber band (lasso) select
Section titled “Rubber band (lasso) select”Click and drag on an empty area of the track canvas to draw a selection rectangle. Any clips that fall within the rectangle become selected when you release.
Select All
Section titled “Select All”Ctrl+A selects all clips on all tracks.
Track Select Forward
Section titled “Track Select Forward”Press A to activate the Track Select Forward tool. Click a clip and that clip plus all clips to the right on the same track become selected. Useful for sliding an entire tail of a sequence.
Track Select Backward
Section titled “Track Select Backward”Shift+A activates the Track Select Backward tool. Click a clip to select it and everything to the left on that track.
AE layer sync
Section titled “AE layer sync”When you select a layer in AE’s native Layer panel or timeline, Railcut highlights the corresponding clip automatically. This makes it easy to see where an AE layer lives in your Railcut sequence.
Selecting clips in Railcut does not select the corresponding layers in AE. This is intentional — syncing Railcut’s selection back to AE caused noticeable lag when selecting many clips at once.
Moving clips
Section titled “Moving clips”Drag to move
Section titled “Drag to move”With the Selection tool active, click and drag any selected clip. All selected clips move together, maintaining their relative timing.
Horizontal drag moves clips forward or backward in time. Clips snap to nearby edit points and the playhead when snap is enabled (Shift+S to toggle).
Vertical drag moves a clip to a different track.
Nudge clips
Section titled “Nudge clips”With clips selected, nudge them in time without a drag:
- Alt+→ — nudge 1 frame forward
- Alt+← — nudge 1 frame backward
- Alt+Shift+→ — nudge 10 frames forward
- Alt+Shift+← — nudge 10 frames backward
Nudge uses the same overwrite rules as drag — it does not ripple other clips.
Move Clip Up / Down
Section titled “Move Clip Up / Down”With clips selected:
- Alt+↑ — move selected clips up one track
- Alt+↓ — move selected clips down one track
This moves clips vertically with no horizontal position change.
For clips with linked video and audio (A/V clips), you can move just the video or audio portion independently by Alt+clicking the specific half before pressing Alt+↑/↓.
Editing text layer content
Section titled “Editing text layer content”Double-click any text layer clip to open a text editing dialog. Type or paste your new text content and confirm. Railcut updates the AE text layer in place.
This saves you from switching to AE, finding the layer, and using the character panel just to change a word or two.
Copying and pasting
Section titled “Copying and pasting”Select one or more clips and press Ctrl+C to copy them to the clipboard.
Ctrl+X copies the clips and removes them from the timeline, leaving a gap.
Ctrl+V pastes the clipboard clips starting at the current playhead position. The clips land on the same track type they were copied from. Relative timing of multiple clips is preserved on paste.
Paste Insert
Section titled “Paste Insert”Ctrl+Shift+V inserts the clipboard at the playhead with ripple — existing clips shift right to make room. See Paste Insert for details.
Deselecting
Section titled “Deselecting”Click on any empty area of the track canvas to deselect all clips.