The Presto timeline

 

The timeline shows the audio and video clips for each track, and the layout sequence

 

The timeline shows the tracks and clips in your sequence. 

Video tracks are grouped together in the upper section of tracks, listed upwards from V1.  Audio tracks are grouped together in the lower section of tracks, listed downwards from A1.  The height of the audio tracks section is fixed.  The height of the video tracks section adjusts as you adjust the horizontal splitter above the timeline, or as you adjust the overall window size.

The position of the playhead is shown in the upper left of the time line in units of:
hours:minutes:seconds;frames.

Setting the In and Out Points

You can control the part of the project that gets rendered by marking the in and out point:

• To set the In point, place the playhead at the in point, and use Edit > Mark In or keyboard shortcut I
• To set the Out point, place the playhead at the out point, and use Edit > Mark Out or keyboard shortcut O
• To clear the in and out points, use Edit > Clear In and Out or keyboard shortcut Option-X
• You can move the playhead directly to the in point using View > Go To In Point or keyboard shortcut Shift-I
• You can move the playhead directly to the out point using View > Go To Out Point or keyboard shortcut Shift-O

The area outside the in-out region is colored dark grey on the timeline ruler, as illustrated above. Only the light grey region will be rendered.

Timeline Editing Operations

The timeline supports a number of editing operations:

• Move and scrub the playhead by clicking and dragging on the ruler. 

• Zoom in with the "+" button on the lower left.  Zoom out with the "–" button.  Zoom-to-fit with the Fit button.

•  The View menu lists additional timeline commands and their keyboard shortcuts:
  
  
  

• The icons above the ruler show the layout sequence, and the green bar below each icon shows the extent of the timeline that the layout applies to.  See here for detailed help on editing the layout.

• You can edit the in or out point of any clip by dragging one end of the clip. Where there is no gap between clips, you can drag the clip transition point (which simultaneously adjusts the out point of the left clip and in point of the right clip). This is especially useful for editing slide transition timing.
  
  Note:

• you cannot move or delete clips that are not on the slide track (for help on creating your sequence so that it is ready for use in Presto see these pages: FCP Premiere Pro)

• You cannot edit Mask track clips, because these are automatically managed by Presto to match the layout timing
  

• You can move or delete selected slide clips. Click on a clip to select it.  Shift click on another clip on the same track to extend the selection.  You can only select multiple clips that are on the same track, and only contiguous selections are supported.

• For manual slide placement, select one or more slides in the slide viewer and drag them to the slide track.  Hold hown Option while dragging for fit-to-fill.

• The small icons at the head of each track enable or disable the track.  A darker icon indicates a disabled track that will not be included in playback.  Ligher icons indicate enabled tracks.  Click the icon to change its enabled state.

• Each audio track has a volume control slider. The number at the right end of the slider is the gain in dB (so a gain of 0 means no change to the original audio volume; negative values are quieter, and positive values are louder). NOTE: multi-track audio sources (such as stereo audio) have their enable and volume controls ganged together. Changing any one of them will apply the same change to all related audio tracks.

• Right click on the timeline for a menu of additional options:
  

  
  

  • Apply Default Layout: re-applies the default layout to your presentation

  • Refresh Layout: refreshes the layout key frames that are generated based on the layout sequence; try this if your layout appears messed up

  • Show Layout Key Frames: shows the location of the layout key frames (which become motion key frames in the sequence exported to Final Cut Pro)

  • Exclude From Processing: when checked, excludes the selected presenter or screen clip(s) from Presto's automatic processing; this is useful when there are sections of the video that it is  not appropriate or necessary to apply the processing to, but you need to identify these sections and split them into separate clips prior to exporting the project from FCP to Presto.

Next topic: Using the View Panel