Working with the Timeline

Timeline Basics

The first thing you should do after you import your media file into TimeBolt is to review your Timeline (waveform) by pressing the Spacebar, or pressing the ‘Play’ button to preview both audio and video.

In the Timeline,

Red Sections indicate sections that are cut out (silences).

Green Sections indicate sections that are kept (speech, other sound).

There will also Orange Sections (discussed later) which will be fast-forwarded.

Note: If the play-head lags at a red section, it is possible that you recorded using Zoom or PowerPoint's Variable Frame Rate (VFR) feature. Please refer to the Troubleshooting section for a possible solution.

Important: For files over an hour long, the Timeline is divided into 45-minute 'Chunks,' but they are still exported as a single file. Click on 'Next Chunk' to access the next 45 minutes.. Also, you can use ‘Previous Chunk’ to go back to the previous 45 minutes.

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How to Improve Silence Detection

Refer to the Silence Detection section to find out how you can improve Silence Detection for your file.

Changing Preview Playback Rate

When editing your file in TimeBolt, speeding up the preview is the perfect productivity hack.

You can do this by,

1. Going to the “Preview Playback Rate“ dropdown above the video preview.
2. Selecting your desired playback multiplier.

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Preview Only Silences (The Reds)

When you’re editing in TimeBolt, sometimes you quickly want to go through and just look at the silences that were detected. The reason you’d do this is that previewing the silences (the Reds) is much faster than going through all of the actual content.

To do this, click on the “Flip Timeline” button right below the Timeline.

Note: Just remember, you’d never actually render out just the silences… so don’t forget to revert back to the original Timeline by clicking ‘Flip Timeline’ again.

Editing the Timeline

Keeping or Removing Sections

Once TimeBolt is finished with Silence Detection, it gives you a fully-cut Timeline. But that doesn’t mean the Timeline isn’t editable. You can choose to keep or remove sections as you’d wish.

Sections in TimeBolt are color-coded as mentioned above.

Red Sections indicate sections that are cut out (silences).

Green Sections indicate sections that are kept (speech, other sound).

When you render the output, only the Green Sections will be included and the Red Sections will be removed.

You can switch a Green Section to Red, or vice-versa. This means you can remove a section, and also keep sections which were going to be removed.

Steps

1. Scroll the Timeline to the section that you’d like to keep or remove.
2. Use the horizonal bar on top to either keep or remove the cut.

Alternatively,

You can also use the shortcut key “O”, to keep or remove a section.

Steps

1. Move the Timeline cursor to the section that you’d like to keep or remove.
   • This can be done by either clicking on the Timeline with a mouse, or by using the left and right arrow keys to place the cursor precisely.
   • The left and right arrow keys move the cursor by one frame on either side.
2. Press the “O” key to keep or remove the section.

Splitting the Timeline (Custom Cuts)

Steps

1. Move the Timeline cursor to where you want to split the Timeline.
   • This can be done by either clicking on the Timeline with a mouse, or by using the left and right arrow keys to place the cursor precisely.
   • The left and right arrow keys move the cursor by one frame on either side.
2. Use the “Create Split” button below the Timeline to create the split, or better—use the shortcut key “S” to create the split.

Common Editing Use-case

Let’s say you have to remove a certain section from the Timeline.

What is the fastest workflow to do this?

Steps

1. Move the Timeline cursor to the start of the section you want to cut out.
   • This can be done by either clicking on the Timeline with a mouse, or by using the left and right arrow keys to place the cursor precisely.
   • The left and right arrow keys move the cursor by one frame on either side.
2. Press the “S” key to split the Timeline.
3. Move the Timeline cursor to the end of the section you want to cut out.
4. Press the “S” key to split the Timeline.
5. Move the cursor inside of the split cut, and press “O” to turn the cut Green or Red.

Easy Editing Shortcuts To Remember

’S’ to split the Timeline

‘L’ to start / speed up the Play-head.

’O’ to turn scenes on / off.

'P' to Punch In / Out, and Alt/option + arrow keys to select the focus area.

'M' for Markers.

‘Up’ arrow key moves cursor to next green section.

‘Down’ arrow key moves cursor to previous green section.

‘Left’ arrow key moves cursor one frame to the left.

‘Right’ arrow key moves cursor one frame to the right.

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Saving your Timeline

Once you’ve done some cut work and editing in TimeBolt, you might want to save your work.

Steps

1. Click on the Save Timeline Cuts icon below the Timeline to save cuts in a file.
   • The file is saved on your local disk with .json extension.

Note: The .json file doesn’t have information about the path of the original media file.

Note: Only users on a paid plan can save their Timeline.

Opening Saved Timeline

If you had saved your Timeline cuts for a media file previously, you could open up the same Timeline.

Steps

1. Open the same media file in TimeBolt.
2. Click on the “Apply Timeline Cuts” button below the Timeline.
3. Click on the button “Select JSON File and Apply Timeline”.
4. Navigate to the folder where the saved Timeline .json file is located.
5. Open the file by double clicking it, or select the file and click on the “Open” button.