Editor & Preview

The Studio editor lets you trim, reorder, transition, reframe, caption and mix your scenes. Every save is an immutable version, and every preview is rendered from that version by the same renderer that produces your final export.

Versions, not autosave

The editor works on a local draft. Nothing changes on the server until you press Save version, which records an immutable timeline version. Your original scene clips and audio are never modified; a version only describes how they are cut together.

Unsaved draft is shown in the header while you have edits that are not in any version. Leaving the page with unsaved edits asks you to confirm first.
Undo / redo step through your local edits since the page loaded. They never rewrite saved versions.
Saving while another save is still in flight is safe: the editor retries the same request and then saves your newest draft on top of the version that came back.
A cut can only use this project's media. Footage, stills and audio you bring in from your library are saved by their place in that library, not by the link your browser happened to be given — those links expire, and a saved version has to keep working long after. Saving is refused if a clip points at media that belongs to another project. Media uploaded to one project stays with it; to use the same footage in a second film, upload it there too. Media your saved cut uses cannot be deleted from the library while the cut still uses it — the Clips page refuses and tells you which file and what to do. Take it out of the cut, save, and then it is yours to delete. If media does go missing some other way, the editor names the clip that lost it and asks you to restore it or replace the clip — it will not quietly drop the shot.

Laying in your own audio

Under the audio tracks, the editor lists the audio in this project's library — the files you uploaded on the Clips page. Pick one and it becomes a new, separately mixed track.

Only audio that has finished preparing is offered. A file still being processed has no known length yet, and placing it would put a clip of no duration in your film.
The length comes from the file, not from a number you type. What you hear is what the renderer uses.
Nothing here is uploaded. Add audio on the Clips page of the same project, and it appears in this list once it is ready — press refresh if you have just uploaded it.
There is no longer a box for typing an audio address by hand. A typed link is not something we can check belongs to you, and links your browser is given expire, which would break a saved version later.

Rendered preview

Render preview asks the worker to render the saved version you are looking at, for the output you have selected, at a reduced resolution (a 960-pixel long edge) and bitrate. It is not a browser approximation: the preview goes through the exact render plan the export uses, so trims, transitions, overlays, captions, reframes and audio ducking are the same edit, within one output frame. Only the picture size and the encoding differ.

Status

Queued → Rendering → Ready

The request returns immediately and the editor polls. Previews are never rendered inside a page request, so a slow render cannot time out your browser. A preview that fails tells you why and can be requested again.

Cache

Reused, not re-rendered

The same version and output always map to one preview. Asking twice, or reopening the editor later, shows the finished render instead of queueing another one.

Truth

Stale previews are labelled

A preview always names the version it was rendered from. If you have unsaved edits, or you are looking at a newer version than the preview, the player says so and offers to render the current version. It never presents an old render as your current edit.

Player

Shot navigation

Clicking a shot seeks the player to where that shot actually starts in the rendered film. After a crossfade that is earlier than the sum of the clips before it, because the transition overlaps them; the composed duration shown under the player accounts for this.

The safe-areatoggle overlays the selected output's title-safe region on the preview so captions and overlays can be checked against the frame they will be delivered in.

Vertical and square cuts

Each output aspect in your export settings (16:9, 9:16, 1:1) is rendered as its own master from the same timeline. A clip that has no reframe of its own is filled: scaled to cover the frame and cropped around the centre, so the 9:16 version of a landscape film is a real vertical cut rather than the wide picture sitting between black bars. Select a clip and open Multi-aspect reframe to change that for one output: Fit keeps the whole picture and letterboxes it, Subject anchor crops around a point you choose, and Manual croptakes an exact rectangle. On the output that matches the clip's own aspect these are the same picture.

Auto-frame subjects, in the same card, does the anchoring for the whole cut: a few frames of every clip are shown to the model that reads your footage, and each clip's vertical and square crop is anchored on the person or object it finds. Crops you placed by hand are left alone, and clips it could not read are listed so you can anchor those yourself. Like every edit it only changes the draft until you save.

Title card and end credits

A title card is a full-frame card that names the film: a title, an optional subtitle, and how long it holds (1 to 15 seconds, 3 by default). End credits are pages of text that play after the last shot, over black or over a backdrop you designed. Both are set in the editor, in the Title card & end credits panel just below the caption and text tracks. Neither generates anything, cuts a shot or costs a credit: they are ordinary text tracks on your timeline, so they show in the rendered preview, go through undo and redo, and become part of the version you save.

Placement

Before the first shot

The card sits on a lead-in of its own — black, or the backdrop you designed — and the whole film is pushed later by exactly the card's length. No picture is covered and nothing is trimmed. Removing the card pulls the film back to where it was.

Placement

Over the first shot

The card is laid on the opening picture instead. The film does not get longer, but the opening frames are under text. This placement needs at least one shot on the timeline and the card cannot outlast the picture it was asked to cover.

Length

Credits extend the film

Credits are paged, not scrolled: five lines to a page, about 1.5 seconds per line and never less than 3 seconds a page. The film grows by exactly that much after the last shot. The panel tells you how long your typed lines would run before you apply them; the timeline that comes back is the authoritative answer.

Optional, paid

A designed backdrop

Either card can sit on a picture instead of black. Design a backdropasks the project's image model for one still in the film's own look — the same world and light as the shot it borders, described from what the project already recorded, or from a line you type — and lays it under the card. The type is still set by the renderer, so re-titling the card never buys another picture. This is the one thing in the editor that spends: one image, on the model shown on the button, at that model's list price. Asking again for the same backdrop returns the one you already bought. Clicking twice buys one picture, not two: the second click waits for the first. A project with no shots yet is told so before anything is spent, because a card needs a film to sit against. The type is laid over a soft dark scrim when it sits on a backdrop, so the words read whatever the picture turns out to be; over black, where the outline is enough on its own, there is no scrim and the card stays clean.

Provenance

Crediting the models

With Credit the models that made this filmon, a line is added for each model recorded in the project's own generation artifacts, ahead of your typed lines. Only what was actually recorded is credited; a model the project merely preferred is not, and a project with nothing recorded and nothing typed is refused rather than given an empty card.

A title left empty uses the project title. If your project is bound to a brand kit, the card and credits use the kit's typeface and colour; otherwise a readable white default is used. Applying a card twice replaces the first one, and Remove gives you back a timeline without it. Either way nothing is saved until you press Save version, so a card is one more edit in your draft, not a change to any earlier version.

A backdrop needs the title card before the first shot; over the first shot the picture is the backdrop already. Under the credits it runs for exactly as long as the pages do. Use black insteadtakes it off the timeline without deleting the picture, which stays in the project's history and is reused if you ask for it again. Only a backdrop this project designed can be placed on one of its cards. Come back tomorrow and the card still shows the backdrop it carries: the picture itself is private, so the editor asks for a fresh, short-lived view of it each time you open the project.

Regenerating a shot after you have saved a cut does not change the cut. Your saved version keeps the take it was made with, and that is the take that exports — a newer take is something you can move onto deliberately, not something that happens to your film while you are not looking. When one exists, a Newer takes panel appears in the editor naming each regenerated shot, and telling you before you decide whether the trim you made on that shot still fits the new one. Use the newer takes moves the shots across and leaves everything else — positions, transitions, captions, the title card and end credits — where you put them; a trim that no longer fits is shortened to the new take rather than left running past its end. It changes your draft only, costs nothing, and the version you saved is untouched until you press Save version. The only time a saved cut is rebuilt is when a shot can no longer be accounted for at all (planning replaced the scenes it came from); your title card and end credits come across when that happens, backdrops included.

Regenerating a shot after you have saved a cut does not lock the editor. Saved versions keep the takes they were cut with, and you can go on trimming, titling and saving on top of them; only a source the editor never handed you is refused. Moving a saved cut onto the newer takes is a separate step, not yet offered in the editor.

Captions and titles are separate decisions

Your export bundle carries one caption setting: burned_in, sidecar, both or none. It governs caption tracks only. Titles, lower thirds, the title card and end credits are graphics with no sidecar file to live in, so whenever their track is visible they are burned into every deliverable, whatever the caption setting says.

Stated plainly: captions set to sidecar no longer hide titles. Until this change that setting made a visible title vanish from the picture without a word of warning. A saved timeline in that shape renders its title on the next assembly, and that film changes accordingly. Caption tracks still follow the setting exactly: with sidecar they go into the .srt and .vtt files and stay off the picture, with burned_in they are on the picture and no sidecar is written, and with both you get both. A film whose only text is a title card is not given an empty caption file.

Captions for the film itself, timed to your narration or source audio, are not part of the title card panel and are not something the editor produces yet. Narration takes are placed per shot but carry no per-word timings, and an audio-driven project's word alignment is on the source-audio clock rather than the editor clock, so honest film-level captions are a separate, later piece of work.

What a preview is not

It is not a deliverable. Final files come from Assembly & Export and carry their own technical checks.
It costs no credits and calls no generation provider; it only re-cuts media you already have.
It does not show unsaved edits. Save a version first, then render.