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 anywhere else. Railcut will dim with a “Resume Sync” indicator; move your mouse back over the panel 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 on tracks.

Note

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

You can also create new compositions by dragging and dropping assets from the Project panel directly onto Railcut when no timelines are open. This will behave the same way as when you drag assets to the New Comp button in the Project panel.

Step 2 — Get oriented

The Railcut timeline has a few key areas:

• Toolbar — tools docked on the left edge of the panel (click and drag to move it to the right side)
• Timecode — displays the current time of the active timeline
• Timeline controls — Snapping Toggle, Markers, Settings and Update Messages
• 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 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 After Effects’ playhead position. You can toggle this behavior on or off in Settings → Preferences.

Step 4 — Make your first cut

1. Press the C key to activate the Razor 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 if nothing is selected, or all selected clips under the CTI.

Step 5 — Trim an edit

With the select tool active, hover over the in or out point of a clip. The cursor changes to a trim cursor. Drag to trim.

For a 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 tip

Set your keyboard shortcut preset. Click the → Keyboard Shortcuts and pick the preset that matches your NLE background: Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, and even After Effects. You can customize any of the keyboard shortcuts and save them as a new preset.

You’re ready

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