How to add a clip to the timeline yourself: drag it from the Media tab

Most of the time you describe the cut and the editor builds it. Sometimes you already know the first three shots, or there is one clip that has to go in right there, and describing it is slower than doing it. The web editor now takes the drag: pull a video or an image from the Media tab onto the timeline and it becomes a clip at the cut nearest the pointer.

The drag

Open the Media tab in the left rail. Every tile there is something the project has: the footage you uploaded, with its length in the corner, and the images in the project’s files. Take a tile and drag it. A small card with its picture, its name and its length rides under the pointer, and as you cross the clip row a marker appears on the cut where the clip would land, moving to the nearest cut as you move. Let go and it is in.

A clip lands on a cut, never inside another clip. Drop it between the second and third shots and everything from the third shot onward moves right by its length; drop it at the end and the cut gets longer. If you wanted it inside a shot, drop it on the nearest cut and then split the shot with the razor and move it, which the hand-editing post covers.

What lands

• A video becomes a clip of the whole file, from its first frame to its last. Trim it afterwards by dragging its ends.
• An image, whether a photo you uploaded as footage or a picture in the project’s files, becomes a three-second still on the clip row. (An image tile also has an Add to timeline button, which drops the same three-second still at the playhead.)
• Footage still uploading can be dragged as soon as its length is known. The clip goes in now and plays as the upload lands.

The dropped clip shows on the row at once as a placeholder with “adding …” beside it, then becomes the real bar a few seconds later once the edit has taken it in. That gap is the editor remounting the cut around a new clip; nothing is lost in it, and the placeholder is there so the drop never reads as having failed.

Then make it right

A dropped clip is a whole file, and a whole file is rarely the shot. The hand tools are the same ones the editor’s own changes leave behind: drag an end to trim, press C for the razor and click to split, press A to select everything from a point onward and slide it together, set a speed from the presets. Every move saves a version, so a drag you regret is one step back in the history.

Or hand the rest over. Drag the three shots you are sure of into place, then ask: “put the rest of the clips after these in the order they were shot,” or “the drone shot opens, then what I laid out, then captions.” The editor works from the timeline as it stands, including what you just dragged in, and your clips keep their place.

Getting footage into the Media tab

Press the plus in the Media tab to pick files, or drop them from your desktop straight onto the panel. A video is ready to drag as soon as its length is read, which can be before the upload finishes; its transcript and thumbnails arrive in the background. Photos go in the same way and show as image tiles.

Where it does not apply

• The example edits on the homepage open on their real timelines with no account, but their tiles do not drag: the first change there is sign-up, after which the edit is yours.
• Older projects made before the clip row existed are read-only on the strip; the timeline says so when you drop on it, and the chat is the way to change them.
• The iPhone app has its own timeline; this is the web editor’s drag.

When to drag and when to ask

Drag when you know the order and it is short: an opening shot, a product insert that has to sit on a particular line, a photo at the end. Ask when the order is the hard part: forty clips from a day out, an interview to cut down, anything that has to land on music. The two are not modes. A cut can start with three dragged clips and end with a prompt, and the version history reads as one edit either way.

Try it

Upload a few clips, drag the first into place, and ask for the rest. Creating an account takes a minute; the first edit starts a three-day free trial. The web editor runs on a computer; on a phone, the iPhone app is the way in.