Navigating the Timeline
The rules for moving around the Timeline are the same as those you learned when you were dealing with the Clip Viewer in Chapter 5, but if you skipped that chapter, the concepts of scrubbing, zooming, and undoing your mistakes are covered here. Remember, it is very important that you learn to use the mouse and keyboard shortcuts effectively.
Scrubbing the Timeline
Unlike with the Source Viewer, you can scrub the Timeline from two places: directly under the clips, or directly under the Master/Timeline Viewer.
To scrub the Timeline
1. | Make sure the Master/Timeline Viewer has a red border indicating that it is selected. |
2. | Scrub by doing one of the following:
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- By using the arrow keys and/or the mouse wheel, you can be frame perfect when scrubbing the Timeline.
- When scrubbing the Timeline, you won't hear any audio; this is because, by default, audio tracks are ignored at all times except when you are previewing. Details on activating audio so you can hear the media clip during scrubbing can be found in Chapter 7.
Using the Zoom tool
To display more detail on the Timeline, or to see a whole hour-long project in one screen, you'll need to use the Zoom tool.
Two Cursor Lines when in Zoom 1When the Zoom tool has been expanded to the Zoom 1 setting, the cursor displays a bold red line followed by a faint red line (Figure 6.7 ). Figure 6.7. At Zoom 1, the timeline cursor brackets which frame is currently being displayed.![]() |
To use the Zoom tool
- Figure 6.5 ) or to the right to show a decreased level of magnification (Figure 6.6 ).
Figure 6.5. Magnification at Zoom 1 will display one frame per Timeline mark.

Figure 6.6. Magnification at Zoom 37 will show a two-hour Timeline (approximately) completely on a single monitor.

- Pressing the up and down arrows on the keyboard will also cause the Timeline to zoom in and out. You can do this while the Timeline is playing.