Close gaps and insert time

Closing a gap pulls everything after it back to meet what’s before it, on every unlocked track, so the timeline stays in sync. Opening room does the opposite.

Menu: Clip ▸ Close Gap
Where: Double-click an empty stretch of a lane
Agent tools: close_gapinsert_time

Double-click a gap

Double-click an empty stretch of a track’s lane. Everything after the gap, on every unlocked track, moves left by the gap’s length. It’s one undo step, named Close Gap.

This only works on a lane. Above the first lane or below the last there’s no track, so there’s nothing to close.

Close the gap under the playhead

Move the playhead into a gap and choose Clip ▸ Close Gap. It has no shortcut.

It works on the current track: the selected clip’s track or, with nothing selected, the front track. The result is the same as a double-click. The command is available when the timeline has clips.

What moves

A gap is the empty stretch between two clips on that track. A gap before the first clip closes back to the start of the timeline.
Every clip on an unlocked track that starts at or after the far side of the gap moves left. A clip on another track that spans that point stays where it is.
A moved clip’s linked partner moves too, when its track is unlocked.
Markers don’t move.
A clip that ends up overlapping the one before it, within the overlap rule, gets a Cross Dissolve.

When a gap won’t close

A gap closes completely or not at all. Frame Job beeps, moves nothing and gives the reason at the foot of the inspector when:

What’s wrong	What to do
The playhead is on a clip, not in a gap	Move the playhead into the gap, or check the current track.
No clip follows the gap on that track	There’s nothing to pull back.
The track is locked	Unlock it. Its clips are the ones that would stay behind.
Closing it would push clips into an overlap the overlap rule forbids, on any track that moves	Trim or move those clips first.
A linked clip would go before the start of the timeline	Happens when a sound leads its picture, as in a J-cut. Trim the front of the sound so it leads by less.

Insert time

Inserting time opens empty room. Every clip on an unlocked track that starts at or after a point moves later by a length, and so does every marker at or after that point, unlike a ripple.

Clips that span the point stay put, so nothing is cut. To open room inside a clip, split it first.

Inserting time has no menu item or gesture of its own. An ⌥-drop insert and Freeze Frame both do it as part of their edit, and an agent can do it directly.

Open room by hand

Move the playhead to where the room should start.
Press ⌥⌘A (Edit ▸ Select After Playhead) to select every clip that starts at or after the playhead.
Drag the selected clips later, or press ⇧. to nudge them 10 frames at a time.

This differs from inserting time in two ways: it also moves the selected clips on locked tracks, and it leaves markers where they are. Start the drag on a clip on an unlocked track, because a clip on a locked track can’t be grabbed.

With an agent

close_gap takes a track and a time inside the gap, and stops for the same reasons as the menu item. insert_time takes the point to open room at and how much room to open. See Tools: cutting and deleting.