Trim, split & cut
Remove the parts you don't need — trim the ends, split into segments, and cut out dead spots.
Most takes have a slow start, a fumble in the middle, or a long tail. Playback gives you three ways to tighten them up, all non-destructive and all undoable with ⌘Z.
Trim the ends
To shave footage off the start or end, enter Trim mode from the transport bar (⇧⌘T). The stage swaps to Apple’s familiar QuickTime-style trimmer with yellow handles — drag them inward to set the window you want to keep, and commit.
Trimming the ends is reversible: re-enter Trim later and drag the handles back out to restore footage you removed. Nothing is thrown away, just hidden.
Split into segments
Move the playhead to a moment and press C to split the clip there. Splitting turns one clip into independent segments — useful when you want to treat two parts differently, for example giving one half a different speed.
- A split shows up as a marker on the timeline; you can rejoin the two sides by removing it.
- Right-click a segment → Remove Segment to cut that whole segment out. The footage after it slides back to close the gap.
Cut out the middle
To remove a stretch from the middle of a take — a dead pause, a mistake — select the range and cut it. Playback closes the gap so the take plays continuously, and everything downstream stays correct: your zooms, captions, and other effects ripple to follow the footage they belong to rather than drifting out of place.
If an effect lived entirely inside the part you cut, it’s removed with it (an ⌘Z brings it and the footage back together).
Audio follows along
When you trim, split, or cut, the audio comes with it. Your narration and system audio are joined back-to-back across each seam, so the sound always matches the shortened video — no drift, no gaps.
Tips
- Rough-cut first, then polish. Get the take down to the right length before fussing with zooms and captions — less to re-align later.
- Split before speeding up. To fast-forward just one stretch, split it into its own segment first, then change that segment’s speed.
- Let Playback find the dead air. Instead of hunting for silent gaps by hand, try Trim Silence to cut them all at once.