The Document tab

The Document tab holds what belongs to the project as a whole rather than to one clip: its size, its frame rate, its background and its markers. The canvas you set here is the fixed frame every clip is composited into, and every export starts from its size.

Where: Inspector ▸ Document
Agent tools: set_canvasget_project

The inspector's Document tab. The Document section reads Resolution 960 × 540, Frame rate 30 fps, Duration 00:00:05:07, Tracks 5, Background Black and Colour SDR — Rec. 709. Below it are the Canvas section with its Preset, Width, Height, Resize clips proportionally, Dynamic Range and Blending rows, and the Frame Rate section with Rate and Duration.

Open the tab

Click Document at the top of the inspector. Selecting a clip on the timeline moves the inspector to the Clip tab, so come back here when you’ve finished with the clip.

What’s in the tab

The tab has five sections, from top to bottom.

Section	What it’s for
Document	A read-out of the project. See below.
Canvas	Canvas size, then the project’s dynamic range and blending.
Frame Rate	The project frame rate and the timeline’s length.
Appearance	The background colour, timecode format and Fit new clips to canvas.
Markers	Every marker in the project, in time order.

The Document summary

The first section tells you what the project is before you change anything. Its rows are read-only and update as you work.

Row	What it shows
Resolution	The canvas size in pixels, such as `1920 × 1080`.
Frame rate	The project’s real rate, such as `29.97 fps`, even when the Rate popup can’t list it.
Duration	The timeline’s length, in the project’s timecode format.
Tracks	How many tracks the project has.
Background	`Black`, `White`, a `#RRGGBB` value or `Transparent`. A colour that’s only partly opaque also shows its opacity as a percentage, such as `#336699 · 50%`.
Colour	`SDR — Rec. 709` or `HDR — Rec. 2100 HLG`.

How changes behave

You can undo any change you make here to the project. The exception is Resize clips proportionally, which is a preference on this Mac rather than part of the project, so undo doesn’t touch it.

The tab always shows the whole project. With a nest open it keeps working, and it changes the project rather than the nest. A nest keeps the size it was made at, whatever you do to the canvas.

With an agent

set_canvas changes the size, rate, background, timecode format, Fit new clips to canvas, dynamic range and blending in one call. It must name at least one of them, and anything it doesn’t name keeps its value. It works on the whole project, so a call addressed to a nest fails, while a call made with a nest open through set_scope changes the project, as the tab does. get_project reads the settings back. See Tools: tracks, markers and canvas.