Limits

The hard numbers, in one place. Each section gives an area’s ceilings and links to the page that explains them. For what to do when you hit one, see Troubleshooting.

Project size

A project holds at most
Clips	4,096
Tracks	64
Markers	1,024
Media files	1,024
Levels of nesting	8

Clips and tracks inside nests count towards the same totals.

An edit that would go past one of these isn’t made, and an alert names the limit, for example “too many clips: 4097 (max 4096)”. A project file already past a limit won’t open, the message names the limit, and the package isn’t rewritten.

A recording that needs a new track can’t be added to a project at its track limit. Its files stay on disk and the note names them.

Files in a project have one more limit: a .cube LUT can be at most 32 MiB.

Canvas and layers

Limit	Value
Canvas width and height	Even numbers, 16 to 16,384 px
Scale	1 to 1,000 %
Shape width and height	1 to 20,000 px in the fields. A drag on the canvas stops at 4 and 20,000 px.
Filters on one clip	4
Obscure regions on one clip	4
An obscure region’s width and height	1 to 20,000 source pixels in the fields
Gradient stops	2 to 8
Preview zoom steps	Fit, 50%, 100%, 200%

Scale is uniform for pictures. Only a shape’s box and a text clip’s wrap width can be stretched on one axis.

The Crop, Corner Radius and Chroma Key sections show only for video, image and still clips. On a matte track, a text, shape or graphic clip can still be cropped on the canvas. A nest clip can’t take a blend mode, and Add Blurred Background isn’t offered for one.

Timeline and editing

Limit	Value
Overlaps	On one track, a clip may overlap at most one neighbour on each side, and each overlap may be at most half the length of the shorter clip
Shortest clip after a trim or roll	1 frame
Timeline zoom	0.35 to 4,000 points per second, 42 by default
Snapping radius	8 points, on the timeline and on the canvas

A media clip can’t be trimmed, rolled or slipped past either end of its file. Every time you set lands on the project’s frame grid. See How edits work.

Markers live on the main timeline only. Inside a nest you can’t add one, step to one or jump to one, though the Document tab can still rename, chapter and delete them. Only an agent can change a marker’s colour.

Speed

Limit	Value
Slowest rate	×0.1
Fastest rate	×1000
Fastest rate with sound	×12, with Keep pitch on or off
Freeze frame length, when none is given	2 s
Speed Ramp… Hold	None, 25%, 50% or 75%, 50% by default. An agent can use any hold from 0 to 0.9.

Frame Job asks before an edit takes a clip with sound past ×12. On a ramped clip, one rate above ×12 anywhere silences the whole clip. See Sound at high speed.

With Keep pitch on, a ramp’s sound can lag the picture by up to about 24 ms after a steep slow-down. See Sound on a ramp, and Speed at a glance for how the rates fit together.

Audio

Limit	Value
Clip volume	Up to 3200 % (about +30 dB). The slider covers 0 to 400 %, and the field takes the rest.
The volume line	+30.1 dB to −60 dB
Track volume	Up to +12 dB (×4)
Synchronize Audio drift correction	Up to 0.2 % from ×1
Match Audio	Matches with the EQ’s five shelves and bands

The gate, the leveller and the de-esser need a measured clip. A clip shorter than 0.4 s, or too quiet to measure, plays and exports without them. An export waits up to five minutes for a measurement still running, then stops and names the clip.

A file with more than two channels is measured from a two-channel mix of it. The Loudness Meter reads only the first two channels of a track with more.

See How audio works.

Captions

Limit	Value
Longest file AssemblyAI takes	10 hours
Vocabulary terms	1,000
Caption import	SubRip and WebVTT.

AssemblyAI uploads and bills each whole media file. Two media entries over the same file are uploaded and billed separately.

Captions are burned-in text clips, never a switchable subtitle stream.

A clip played in reverse, a clip with its audio off, and a clip whose media is missing or silent can’t be transcribed. See What can be transcribed.

Colour

Limit	Value
Points on a curve	2 to 16
`.cube` LUT	3D only, size 2 to 65, file up to 32 MiB
HDR10 peak override	1 to 10,000 cd/m²
SDR reference white in an HDR project	Fixed at 203 cd/m²

An adjustment clip can’t go inside a nest, take a transition or overlap another clip on its track. Blur, sharpen, pixelate and blend modes aren’t available on it.

The Color tab needs every selected clip to be gradable, so deselect text, shape, graphic and nest clips first.

Qualifiers exist only on adjustment clips. There is no Offset wheel.

Export

Limit	Value
Custom size	16 to 8,192 px on each edge
Animated GIF or PNG	600 frames: 48 s at GIF’s 12.5 fps, or 24 s at APNG’s 25 fps
Loudness target	At most 40 dB of gain. A target further above the mix lands quieter than asked.
Master limiter	Can’t be turned off. 0 dBTP is its loosest ceiling.
24-bit sound	WAV and AIFF only. The sound is never dithered.
AV1 and VP9 file size	The rate is a soft cap. Very detailed footage can come in up to about 1.25 times over it with AV1, and 1.15 times with VP9.

ProRes 4444, HEVC with Alpha and VP9 with Alpha (WebM) won’t export at a custom size of a different shape from the canvas. VP9 with Alpha (WebM) is 8-bit SDR only.

On an M1 or M2 Mac, Frame Job can’t play or re-import its own AV1 file.

Queued jobs run one at a time. A queued AV1 or VP9 job waits while those already running would use more than a quarter of the Mac’s memory with it. See The Export Queue.

Graphics

Limit	Value
Largest graphic	8,192 px on a side
Property values on one clip	64
Options on one property	32
Characters in a string property	4,096
Kept versions of each module	The last 10
Files watched for your saves	The first 16 module, font and picture files one by one, as well as the folders that hold them
Memory for drawn frames	A quarter of the Mac’s memory

In a folder with more than 16 files, a save that rewrites a later file in place may not show until something else in the folder changes.

Recording

Limit	Value
Camera frame rate	One of the camera’s formats, at that format’s highest frame rate
Camera layouts in the panel	Five. A corner layout is always the bottom-right one.
Length shown in the menu-bar item	Sized for up to 9:59:59. A longer recording shows a wider label.

There’s no global shortcut to stop a recording, so use the menu-bar item or the File menu.

If the screen is locked or every display is asleep, nothing can be recorded until one wakes. See When a recording stops on its own.

Assistant and agents

Limit	Value
Compaction threshold	20,000 to 900,000 tokens, 300,000 by default
Clear old tool results	Past 150,000 tokens, when it’s ticked
Wait for a launched copy to be ready for calls	60 seconds
Wait for `get_media_analysis`	60 seconds

If Frame Job launches but isn’t ready within 60 seconds, the call says so, and later calls in that client session don’t launch another copy.

Agent calls run one at a time, and any call waits while you hold the mouse down mid-drag. See How an agent reaches Frame Job.

get_media_analysis keeps what it covered in its 60 seconds, then stops and says how much that was. See What the Assistant can do for the Assistant’s own limits.

Settings

Limit	Value
Background render’s Start after	1 to 60 seconds, 5 by default
Inspector width	280 to 440 points
Timeline height	140 points to 60 % of the window

Converting on import needs ffmpeg and ffprobe. Frame Job looks on your PATH, then in /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin, /opt/local/bin, /usr/bin and /bin. For an install anywhere else, run this in Terminal:

defaults write com.kgalligan.FrameJob RCFFmpegPath /path/to/ffmpeg

ffprobe is taken from beside it, or else found by the same search.