Cut footage and build the graphics around it.

Placing media opens a source preview beside the placement settings. Play it with Space, step with the arrow keys, and press I and O to mark the part you want. Loop the marked range to hear an answer through a few times, and read the audio peak and RMS level as it plays. Source time runs independently of the composition, so auditioning doesn't move your playhead.

Then decide where the range goes: which composition (or a new one), at what time, on which video and audio tracks, and whether to bring in video and audio, video only or audio only.

Place

Adds the media at that time. Existing clips stay where they are and may overlap.

Insert

Makes room on the chosen tracks. Everything after that point moves later.

Overwrite

Replaces that interval on the chosen tracks and leaves material outside it in place.

The Edit workspace has two layouts. Assembly puts the source monitor next to the timeline for cutting; Compositing gives the Stage, layers and Properties more room. Press Ctrl+K to search every command by name, and Alt+1 to Alt+4 to move between Create, Edit, Animate and Deliver.

The difference between these tools is what happens to the clips around the one you drag. Pick the tool that leaves the rest of a working sequence alone.

Blade C

Click a clip to cut it at that frame. Ctrl+B splits selected clips at the playhead.

Ripple trim B

Drag an edge to trim, and the following clips on that track move to close or open the gap.

Roll N

Moves the cut between two touching clips, keeping their combined duration.

Slip Y

Changes which source frames a clip shows while its position and length stay fixed.

Slide U

Moves a clip along the track and trims the neighbours on either side to fit.

Rate stretch R

Drag the end of a media clip to change its duration and playback speed together.

For keyboard trimming, Q and W trim the selected clip's start or end to the playhead, and Shift+Q or Shift+W do the same as a ripple. Paste insert (Ctrl+Shift+V) makes room for copied clips; paste overwrite (Ctrl+Alt+V) replaces the range they land on. Ripple delete (Shift+Delete) removes clips and closes the space they leave.

Up and Down jump between edit points. Composition and layer markers label a beat, a music hit or a note for later, and the working range, which you can set straight from the selected clips, limits playback and export to the section you are working on.

Clip timing lives in the Time menu on a timeline clip, so a speed change doesn't mean rebuilding the edit around it.

Hold video frame at playhead

Freezes the clip on the current frame for its whole duration. The clip keeps its length and its audio.

Reverse playback

Plays the clip backwards without changing its duration.

New speed ramp

Replaces the clip's timing with a ramp: Constant speed, Accelerate, Decelerate, or Ease in and out.

Edit source-time curve

Opens the clip's Source Time keys in Animate, where you can shape variable speed and freezes key by key.

Audio that is retimed with its clip changes pitch with it, and separate audio clips are left as they were. Reset source-time curve returns the clip to its base speed without changing its duration.

The Stage is where you position, scale and rotate layers, move their anchor points, crop the source and draw new shapes and text. Drag guides out of the rulers; they snap, lock and clear from the guides menu and never appear in the export.

Align and distribute works on rendered bounds, against the composition, the selection or a primary object you keep fixed. When the layers are animated, choose whether the arrangement applies at the playhead or shifts the whole animation.

Blend modes

Seventeen, from Multiply and Screen to Overlay, Soft Light, Difference and Luminosity, set per layer.

Adjustment layers

Apply an effect to everything beneath them, such as a grade across a whole montage.

Solids and guide layers

A solid is a quick background or colour field. A guide layer shows in preview only, which suits a reference frame or a safe-area template.

Nested compositions

A composition can sit inside another as one clip, which Ape can set up for a vertical or square version of a cut. Open the clip to edit its contents; vector, text and shape layers inside can stay sharp when you scale it up.

Views

Switch the Stage between the rendered output, the selected layer's source, and a scene view you can move around in without changing the output camera.

Crop

Drag the source rectangle or type exact pixel values. Shift locks the aspect ratio, and the original media stays intact.

Press T and click to add text, then type on the Stage; press F2 or double-click to edit it again, Ctrl+Enter to apply and Esc to cancel. Search installed fonts by name, and set size, colour, line height, a paragraph box with horizontal and vertical alignment, a backdrop behind the words and a drop shadow.

Text stagger animates a line glyph by glyph or word by word, without keyframing each piece. Choose which words take part, forward or reverse order, and whether they enter or exit. Each unit can start offset, scaled, rotated, transparent or shifted in colour, and settles with the ease you pick: Linear, Ease in, Ease out, Ease in/out, Overshoot or Hold. Delay, duration and cycle count set the rhythm.

Text can also be extruded and lit in 3D, and captions can be generated from a transcript and kept in step with it. See linked captions.

Draw rectangles (R), ellipses (E) and paths with the Pen (G). A shape layer can hold a group of different shapes, each with its own position, rotation and depth, which keeps a diagram or an icon together as one layer.

Fills

Solid, linear or radial, with gradient stops you can add, move and recolour.

Strokes

Width, dash pattern and offset, line caps, joins and miter limit.

Path trim

Start, end and offset reveal part of an open path. Animate the end to draw a line on, or the offset to send a dash along it.

Repeater

Copies the shape with a step in position, scale, rotation and opacity: a row of dots, a fan of blades, a fading trail.

Path operations

Simplify a hand-drawn path, resample it to even spacing, or round its corners by a radius.

Copy Path and Paste Path

Reuse a contour from one shape in another.

The Roto tool isolates a subject inside a clip, with masks that track through the shot. It has its own page. Track mattes do a different job: they let one layer decide where another is visible.

Any visual layer can take its visibility from other layers, using their alpha or their brightness. Stack several mattes on one layer and combine them with Add, Subtract, Intersect or Difference. Each can be inverted, and you can hide the source layer, set its opacity, expand or contract the edge by a number of pixels, and feather it. For a feather that varies around the edge, place feather points along the path and set a radius at each.

A title revealed by a wipe, footage that shows only inside a line of large type, or a luma matte cut from a light leak all start here.

Animate shows the Graph editor with three views of the same keys: Value for the numbers, Speed for how fast they change, and Dope Sheet for timing across many properties at once. Each key sets how it leaves for the next one: Hold, Linear, Ease in, Ease out, Ease in/out, Overshoot, Smooth through, or Custom Bézier with handles you edit.

Smooth through matters for camera moves with several waypoints, because it keeps the move going through the middle keys instead of pausing at each. The Speed view shows whether a move stalls where it shouldn't.

Copy, cut and paste

Paste keys at the playhead or back at their original times. Relative timing is kept.

Distribute evenly

Spaces the selected key times evenly between the first and the last.

Stagger keys

Delays each later group of selected keys by a further number of frames. Keys that share a frame move together.

Align to playhead and Reverse

Line up one key per property on the current frame, or play a selection of keys backwards.

Motion paths

A moving layer shows its path on the Stage. Drag a point to change the route, retime it, or change its interpolation there.

Live drivers

Make one value follow another: a follower with a response time, a damped spring with mass, stiffness and damping, or a small-angle pendulum. Add a Transform Controller to a layer to drive its position, scale, rotation or opacity this way.

Puppet turns an image layer into a mesh you pose with pins. Choose Create mesh in Properties; a smaller spacing gives more detail but more to animate. Press P, click to add pins, and drag a pin to bend the image around it. Shift-drag over a region, such as a face or a logo, to protect it from bending.

Each pin's position is keyed in Properties like any other value, and pins can also rotate or control which part overlaps in front when limbs cross. If you retouch the source image, Rebuild mesh redraws it from the current frame and keeps the pins, protected regions and animation.

It suits cutout characters, an illustrated flag or tail that should sway, and small deformations in artwork that has to move without being redrawn.

Turn on 3D for a layer and it gains a Z position, rotation on X and Y, and a depth scale. Place photographs, cutouts and type at different distances and a moving camera produces real parallax: a foreground branch sweeps past while the mountains behind barely move.

Extrusion

Give text and shapes depth, a bevel and bevel segments.

Materials

Base colour, metallic, roughness, diffuse and specular, with switches for responding to lights, lighting both sides, and casting or receiving shadows.

Lights

Ambient, directional and point lights, with intensity, direction, position and range.

Cameras

Perspective or orthographic, focal length in millimetres, sensor width, near and far planes.

Depth of field

Set an aperture and a focus distance, then key the focus distance for a rack focus between two layers.

Motion blur

A camera's shutter angle adds blur to fast movement.

A composition can hold several cameras, with one driving the output at a time. Pilot a camera to fly it through the scene view, align a camera to the view you have found, and edit its path on the Stage.

Audio clips show their waveforms on the timeline. Set a clip level, drag fades in and out at either end, or put the playhead where a fade should end and choose Fade in to playhead. Gain keyframes lower a music bed under a voice-over and bring it back afterwards, with Hold, Linear, ease or Overshoot curves between keys.

Place Media shows peak and RMS levels while you audition, and the export includes the composition's audio mix.

Scopes show a histogram, a waveform and an RGB parade of the preview, measured from the camera output, the scene or a layer's source.

In Deliver, choose the composition, H.264 or HEVC in an MP4, and the output colour: SDR in BT.709, or HDR in BT.2020 using PQ or HLG. HDR export uses 10-bit HEVC. Export the whole composition, the working range or a custom range, at the composition's frame rate or another you choose, then open the folder when it finishes.

For heavy footage, prepare proxy or optimised media from the Project panel. OpenEXR images import with a choice of which colour channels to use.