Jump around the timeline

These are the quick ways to put the playhead where you want it: hop from cut to cut, go to either end of the timeline, or type a time. To drag it along the ruler, see The ruler and playhead. To step frame by frame, see Play, pause and shuttle. To hop between flags, see Markers.

Keys: ↑↓HomeEnd
Where: The transport buttons in the toolbarThe timecode field in the toolbar
Agent tools: set_playhead

Jump between edit points

Press ↑ for the previous edit point and ↓ for the next. The Previous Edit Point and Next Edit Point buttons either side of Play in the toolbar do the same.

An edit point is the start or end of any clip, on any track, and the two ends of the timeline.

↑ with nothing earlier goes to the start of the timeline.
↓ on the last edit point stays where it is.
Playback keeps going. The playhead jumps and plays on from there.
With a nest open, these step through the nest’s clips.

Go to the start or end

Press Home for the start of the timeline and End for the end, or use the Go to Start and Go to End buttons, on the outer side of the edit point buttons. Both pause playback first.

The keypad’s Home and End work too, and so does the fn key with ← or → on a keyboard without them. With a nest open, they go to the start and end of the nest.

Type a time to jump

The toolbar shows the playhead’s time in a field. You can type into it.

Click the time.
Type where you want to go.
Press Return or Tab, or click somewhere else in the editor.

Playback pauses, the playhead moves to the nearest frame, and the keys go back to the editor, so Space plays straight away.

The field takes any of these, whichever way the project displays time. You can leave out leading zeros, so 1:05 and 01:05 mean the same.

You type	Example	It means
Hours, minutes, seconds and frames	`00:01:23:12`	1 minute 23 seconds and 12 frames
Hours, minutes and seconds with milliseconds	`00:01:23.500`	1 minute 23.5 seconds
Hours, minutes and seconds	`1:23:04`	1 hour 23 minutes 4 seconds
Minutes and seconds	`1:23`	1 minute 23 seconds
Seconds with a decimal	`83.5`	83.5 seconds
A bare number of seconds	`83`	83 seconds

Text that isn’t a time beeps, and the field goes back to the playhead’s time. Only whole numbers count as frames, so 00:00:01:12.5 isn’t a time.

A leading minus sign is accepted, but the playhead can’t go before the start, so a negative time lands on the first frame.

The field shows frames by default. The Document tab’s Timecode row switches it to milliseconds, along with the duration beside it, the ruler and the times in the Clip and Document tabs. The field stops following the playhead while you type in it.

Read the duration

After the time, the toolbar shows a slash and the length of what the timeline shows, such as / 00:00:05:07. It’s written the same way as the time, in frames or milliseconds.

With a nest open, both numbers are the nest’s: the time counts from the nest’s own start, and the duration is the nest’s length.

Good to know

Moving the playhead is never an edit. It makes no undo step, and it isn’t saved with the project.
When a jump lands outside the visible part of the timeline, the view scrolls to bring the playhead back.
With the text of the Transcript tab in focus, the arrow keys move through its words.
None of these keys work while you’re typing in a field or while a sheet is open. They do work in the Preview Window.

With an agent

set_playhead moves the playhead to a time and seeks the preview. It doesn’t pause playback. split, freeze_frame and add_marker use the playhead when they’re given no time. See Tools: playhead, range and selection.