Where everything gets its moment.
Images run along the top lane, audio along the bottom. An item's width is its duration, so the timeline is a picture of what is on screen when.
The mode switch sits in the control bar, beside the zoom slider.
| Mode | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Standard | The normal view. Time runs left to right at whatever zoom the slider is set to. |
| Magnified | The same timeline over a far wider zoom range — about fifteen times — for placing a boundary precisely. |
| Reorder | Drops the time axis and lays the items out as tiles of equal size. |
Reorder mode is for changing the order of things, which can be awkward on a time axis when items are wildly different widths and difficult to see when there are hundreds of them.
Click to select, ⌘-click to add or remove one, ⇧-click to extend the selection. Drag to move; the neighbours shift to show where the item will land. Delete removes what is selected.
The eye button turns on a preview that follows the pointer, so you can see what a tile holds by hovering rather than by selecting it.
The zoom slider is inert here — tiles are a fixed size, so there is nothing to zoom.
The blue line marks where you are. Move the mouse across the timeline and the playhead follows it. During playback, it follows playback time.
The arrow keys move it too, which is what you want for anything exact — see the shortcut reference for the full set, running from hundredths of a second up to jumping between pages.
⌥⌘G goes straight to a page number or a time.
The playhead carries labels telling you where you are in the item you are on. T cycles how much they show:
| Level | Shows |
|---|---|
| None | Nothing. The line alone. |
| Minimal | The item's number. |
| Concise | Also how far into the item you are, and how much of it is left. |
| All | Also the item's total duration. |
Both lanes get their own set, so you can read the image and the audio positions at once. The line itself is always drawn.
Drag an item's trailing edge to change its duration. What happens to everything after it depends on the resize mode.
For an exact figure, or to set several items at once, use Set Duration from the item's context menu: it takes a range of item numbers and one duration to give them all.
Two keys retime the current item against wherever the playhead sits, which is what you want when matching pages to a recording rather than typing in numbers.
| Key | Meaning | Moves |
|---|---|---|
| ↓ | End the current item here | The end of the item you are on |
| ↑ | Start the current item here | The end of the item before the one you are on |
Both set the same boundary; they differ in which side of it they move. Holding ⌥ flips the resize mode for that one keystroke without changing the project's setting.
When an item's duration changes, something has to give. The resize mode decides what.
| Mode | What happens |
|---|---|
| Cascading | Everything after the item slides along, keeping its own duration. The project gets longer or shorter. |
| Absorbing | The next item takes the change on itself. Nothing beyond it moves, and the project's total length is unchanged. |
Cascading suits laying a project out for the first time: what you have not timed yet keeps its shape and waits its turn. Absorbing suits correcting one boundary in a project that is already timed, where you do not want a small fix shifting everything downstream.
The toolbar button shows which mode is on and switches it. It is also under View › Timeline Resize Mode, and each item carries the mode's shape at its trailing edge — a chevron for cascading, a bar for absorbing.
Absorbing has one limit, and it applies to dragging: it cannot shrink the next item below a workable width on screen. When a drag would do that, the resize cascades instead, whatever the mode says.
That limit is a width rather than a duration, so zooming the timeline in lets you drag to shorter times. Set Duration takes a typed figure and is not bound by it at all, which is the way to enter something shorter than dragging will allow.
Right-click any item on the timeline.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Set Duration | An exact duration, for one item or a range. |
| Duplicate | A copy immediately after. Also D. |
| Copy | Copies a range of items to another position. |
| Move | Move a range elsewhere, or swap the item with its left or right neighbour. |
| Remove | Deletes one item or a range. |
| Insert | An empty item, or an asset from disk, before or after this one. |
| Change Color | Empty items only — sets what the gap shows. |
| Transitions | Fades and crossfades. See below. |
| Replace Asset | Appears only when the item's file could not be loaded, so a moved or renamed original can be pointed at again. |
An empty item is a deliberate gap — a held colour where no image is shown. Useful for a pause before the first page, or a beat between sections.
Images, audio and empty items can all be faded. On an image it is the picture that fades; on audio it is the level.
| Transition | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fade In | Eases the item in over the seconds you give it. |
| Fade Out | Eases it out at the end. |
| Crossfade | Overlaps this item with the next, one giving way to the other. Offered only where there is a neighbour to cross into. |
Each takes a duration in seconds, capped at what the item can accommodate, and each can be applied to a range of items rather than one at a time. A checkmark in the menu shows which an item already has, and each has a Remove alongside it.
An audio fade can be shaped. The curve picker appears only for items on the audio lane — an image fade is always linear.
| Curve | Character |
|---|---|
| Linear | A constant rate throughout. |
| Studio (S-curve) | Eases in and out of the fade, so it starts and finishes gently. The usual choice for audio. |
| Exponential | A perceptually even ramp — most useful on level changes, where linear can sound as though it drops early. |
Fade In and Fade Out take a From and a To percentage as well, again on audio only.
An audio fade need not run all the way from silence to full: a fade-in from 30% starts partly up and rises, and a fade-out to 40% ducks the track without silencing it — which is how you bring music under a narration rather than removing it.