Selecting & Moving Clips

Selecting clips

Click to select

With the Selection tool active (V), click any clip to select it. The clip highlights to indicate selection.

Multi-select

Shift+click additional clips to add them to the selection. Shift+clicking an already-selected clip removes it from the selection.

Marquee 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 Clip at Playhead

Press D to select all clips on targeted tracks that the playhead is currently over.

Select All

Ctrl+A selects all unlocked clips on all unlocked tracks.

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 all tracks become selected. Useful for sliding an entire tail of a sequence.

Hold Shift to isolate the selection to a specific track.

Track Select Backward

Shift+A activates the Track Select Backward tool. Click a clip to select it and everything to the left on all tracks.

AE layer sync

When you select a layer in AE’s timeline, Railcut highlights the corresponding clip automatically. This makes it easy to see where an AE layer lives in your Railcut sequence.

Sync selection to AE: Click the sync icon in the toolbar to toggle automatic selection sync. When enabled, selecting clips in Railcut also selects the corresponding layers in AE. You can also use the Push Selection command using Shift+G to sync once.

Moving clips

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

With clips selected, nudge them in time with keyboard shortcuts:

Alt+→ — nudge 1 frame forward
Alt+← — nudge 1 frame backward
Alt+Shift+→ — nudge 10 frames forward
Alt+Shift+← — nudge 10 frames backward

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.

Working with linked video and audio

Clips with both video and audio sources are linked by default. Selecting or moving one side selects and moves its linked partner with it, so normal edits keep video and audio together.

To work with only one side of an A/V pair, hold Alt while selecting or using most edit tools:

Alt+click the video half to select only the video portion
Alt+click the audio half to select only the audio portion
Alt+drag a linked side to move only that side and create a split edit
Alt+trim, Alt+slip, Alt+slide, Alt+rate stretch, or Alt+razor to apply that tool to only the side you clicked

This is useful for creating J-cuts and L-cuts, removing unwanted camera audio, slipping dialogue independently from picture, or keeping one side of a clip anchored while adjusting the other.

When a linked video/audio pair is out of sync, Railcut shows a sync badge on the clip with the offset amount. Move the offset side back into alignment to clear the badge.

Unlinking and relinking

Right-click a linked A/V pair and choose Unlink to separate the video and audio into independent clips. You can also use Ctrl+L as a shortcut.

To link compatible clips together again, select the pieces, right-click, and choose Link (or use Ctrl+L). Linked clips select and move together.

Double-click actions

Text layer — opens a text editing dialog to change the layer’s content
Footage clip — opens the source file in AE’s Layer panel for frame-level inspection
Precomp clip — opens the precomp in AE’s composition viewer

Precompose clips

Select two or more clips, right-click, and choose Precompose Clips. Enter a name for the new precomp and confirm. Railcut creates the precomp in AE, positions it in the timeline at the correct location, and replaces the original clips with the new precomp layer. The precomp duration matches the span of the original selection.

Copying and pasting

Copy

Select one or more clips and press Ctrl+C to copy them to the clipboard.

Cut

Ctrl+X copies the clips and removes them from the timeline, leaving a gap.

Paste

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

Ctrl+Shift+V inserts copied clips at the playhead with ripple. Existing clips shift right to make room. See Paste Insert for details.

Right-clicking a clip (or a selection of clips) opens a context menu with additional operations.

Label color

A row of color swatches at the top of the context menu sets the label color. This matches AE’s label system. Changes apply to all selected clips at once.

Select Label Group

Select Label Group selects all clips on the timeline that share the same label color as the right-clicked clip. Useful for quickly grabbing all clips of a given type.

Fit to Comp Width / Height

Fit to Comp Width scales the clip so its width matches the comp. Fit to Comp Height scales it so its height matches the comp. Only applies to video layers. Useful for quickly fitting footage that arrived at a non-standard size or aspect ratio.

Disable / Enable

Disable turns off the clip’s visibility and audio without removing it from the timeline. The clip appears dimmed. Enable restores it. This maps directly to AE’s layer enable/disable toggle (the eyeball for video, or layer enable for audio).

Lock / Unlock

Lock locks the individual clip against editing — it can’t be moved, trimmed, or overwritten by other clips landing on its track. Locked clips show a lock indicator. Unlock releases them.

This is different from track locking (in the track header), which locks the entire track.

Rename

Rename opens a text field to give the clip a new name. This renames the underlying AE layer. You can also press Enter with a clip selected to rename it directly.

Link / Unlink

Link and Unlink connect or separate compatible audio/video clips. Use these when you want clips to travel together as a pair, or when you want to edit the video and audio independently.

Group / Ungroup

Group keeps selected clips together for selection and movement while preserving their timing. Ungroup removes that relationship. Group outlines can be shown, hidden, and recolored in Settings → Preferences.

Blending Mode

Blending Mode changes the selected video clip’s AE blending mode directly from Railcut.

Precompose Clips

Precompose Clips (available when 2 or more clips are selected) creates a new precomp from the selection. See Precompose clips above.

Speed / Duration

Opens the Speed/Duration dialog for adjusting playback speed. See Rate Stretch for details.

Deselecting

Click on any empty area of the track canvas to deselect all clips.