Canvas background and timecode

The Appearance section of the Document tab sets three things for the whole project: the colour behind your clips, how times are written, and how big a new clip starts.

Where: Document tab ▸ Appearance
Agent tools: set_canvasadd_clip

Control	What it does	Default
Background	The colour behind every layer.	Black, opaque
Timecode	How the project shows a time.	Frames
Fit new clips to canvas	Scales down a new clip that’s bigger than the canvas.	On

A change to Timecode or Fit new clips to canvas is one undo step.

Set the background colour

Click the Background swatch and pick a colour in the Colors panel. The colour sits behind every layer, so it shows wherever no clip covers the canvas.

To put a colour on the timeline as a clip instead, see Backgrounds.

Make the background transparent

Lower the opacity in the Colors panel. The swatch shows a checkerboard behind the colour, and the Background row of the Document summary reads Transparent, or the colour with its opacity.

Most export formats can’t carry transparency, so while the background isn’t fully opaque, the section adds a note about the formats that can.

The note says	When
“Transparent — kept by 4 export formats.”	Three or more formats keep it, so the note counts them. They’re HEVC with Alpha (MOV), VP9 with Alpha (WebM), ProRes 4444 (MOV) and Animated PNG.
“Transparent — needs an alpha format.”	Frame Job can’t name the formats yet, which can happen on a project with nothing on the timeline.

See Transparent exports.

Choose a timecode format

Timecode sets how times are written everywhere the project shows one, including the toolbar, the ruler, the inspector, markers and the transcript.

Choice	Looks like
Frames	`HH:MM:SS:FF`
Milliseconds	`HH:MM:SS.mmm`

Frames doesn’t drop frames, so at 29.97 fps the count runs slightly behind the clock over a long timeline.

The count starts at zero, and there’s no start-timecode setting. Frame Job doesn’t read a file’s source timecode, and an export has no timecode track. To put the timecode in a file, burn it in.

Fit new clips to canvas

This decides how big a new clip starts. It’s on by default.

Setting	A clip bigger than the canvas	Any other clip
On	Starts at Fit scale: scaled down until all of it shows.	Starts at 100 %, its native size.
Off	Starts at 100 %, so it runs past the edges of the canvas.	Starts at 100 %.

A clip counts as bigger when either its width or its height is larger than the canvas. Fit never scales a clip up, and changing the setting leaves clips already on the timeline as they are. To fit or fill one clip, see Position, scale, rotation and opacity.

Reset the section

Reset on the Appearance header puts all three back to their defaults: opaque black, Frames and on. It’s offered only while one of them differs, and it’s one undo step.

With an agent

set_canvas sets all three, and anything it doesn’t name keeps its value.

Argument	What it takes
`background`	Four numbers from 0 to 1, `[r, g, b, a]`. Three numbers, or one outside the range, fails and nothing changes.
`timecode_frames`	`true` for Frames, `false` for Milliseconds.
`fit_new_clips`	`true` or `false`, as the checkbox.

add_clip follows Fit new clips to canvas as the app does. See Tools: tracks, markers and canvas.