Hide and lock tracks

Hide Video takes a track’s picture out of your video and leaves its clips where they are. Lock Track protects a track’s clips while you edit everything around them.

Menu: Track ▸ Hide VideoTrack ▸ Lock Track
Where: The eye and padlock switches in a track headerRight-click a track header or an empty stretch of its lane
Agent tools: set_track

Hide Video

Click the eye in the track’s header. It becomes a struck-through eye and the track’s clips draw dimmed on the timeline. Click it again to bring the picture back.

Hide Video in the track context menu does the same for the track you clicked, and Track ▸ Hide Video for the current track.

While a track is hidden:

Its picture is gone from the preview and from every export.
Its clips aren’t drawn on the canvas, so you can’t click them there. You can still select and edit them on the timeline.
Its sound keeps playing. To silence it as well, use Mute Audio.
A hidden matte track cuts nothing, so the track behind it shows whole.
If it holds a nest, everything inside the nest is hidden too.

Lock Track

Click the open padlock in the track’s header. It closes and the lane is hatched. Click it again to unlock.

Lock Track in the track context menu does the same for the track you clicked, and Track ▸ Lock Track for the current track.

What a lock stops

On the timeline, you can’t drag, trim, slip or roll a locked track’s clips with the mouse. Their trim edges are gone, and their fade handles, volume lines and action bands don’t respond. A marquee skips them.

On the preview, you can’t select or drag them. A click passes through to the unlocked clip behind.

Edits that reach across the timeline leave a locked track alone:

Split with nothing selected doesn’t cut its clips.
Lift and the range form of Ripple Delete leave them uncut.
Ripples, closed gaps and inserted time don’t shift them. That includes the cuts from Remove Silences.
A clip on a locked track isn’t moved, cut or deleted along with a linked partner on an unlocked track.

What Frame Job won’t do

A few edits need to shift or cut a locked track to work, so Frame Job stops them.

Edit	What happens
Insert onto a locked track	Beeps and says why at the foot of the inspector.
Close Gap on a locked track	Beeps and says why at the foot of the inspector.
Retime Range	Won’t run while a locked track has a clip that ends after the range’s start, because that clip would fall out of step.

What a lock doesn’t stop

A lock protects where a clip sits, not what it looks like. You can still rename a clip on a locked track and change it in the inspector.

You can also still select one by clicking it on the timeline, with ⌥-click on the header, or with Edit ▸ Select All on Track. Once a locked clip is selected, the edits you aim at it still work:

Delete and Ripple Delete remove it.
Split cuts it.
Clip ▸ Trim Start to Playhead (W) and Clip ▸ Trim End to Playhead (E) trim it.
, and . nudge it along the timeline.
If you drag an unlocked clip in the same selection, the locked clip moves with it.

A few other things get past a lock too:

Overwrite still clears the span it needs on a locked track.
You can drop a clip or a file onto a locked track.
You can reorder or remove a locked track.
New Project from Range cuts locked tracks like any other, and the new project keeps their locks.

Good to know

Each flip is one undo step, named Hide Track or Lock Track.
Track ▸ Hide Video and Track ▸ Lock Track show no checkmark, so read the state from the track’s header. The context menu does show one.

With an agent

set_track sets both switches, as hidden and locked. See Tools: tracks, markers and canvas.

A lock holds back gestures in the window and edits that reach across the timeline. As with a clip you’ve selected, an agent that names a clip on a locked track can still move, trim, cut or delete it. See Tools: moving and trimming.