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Add shots

The Shots tab on the left lists every shot in your library, across every shot list you have marked. This is the payoff for filling in metadata while marking: the picker is searchable, so a reel starts from a query rather than from memory.

The five ways

Which one you want depends on where the shot should land.

Do this The shot lands
Double-click a shot in the picker At the end of the reel
Drag a shot from the picker onto the strip Where you release it
Right-click empty strip, then Add a Shot… At the end of the reel
Right-click a clip, then Add a Shot After… Directly after that clip
Right-click a gap, then Fill With a Shot… In the gap

Double-click is the fastest way to build a reel from nothing: pick your shots in order and they stack up end to end.

Dragging is the one to use when order matters. While you drag, the strip shows where the clip would land, and the edge snaps to the nearest clip boundary as you approach it, so a clip placed tight against its neighbor does not need a second pass to close a one-frame gap.

The three right-click routes open a shot picker dialog instead, which is worth having when you know where the shot goes but not yet which shot it is.

Four of the five, in a row: a double-click appending Shot 052, a drag whose ghost snaps to its tail, Add a Shot on empty strip, and Add a Shot After on the first clip inserting between it and the next

Note

Shots already on this reel are left out of the picker. A filter that should match something and comes back empty usually means those shots are already in the edit.

Narrow the list first

The filter box takes the same query language as the shot list, so rating:4 tag:creature -project:"Old Reel" works here too. See Organize shots for the full syntax.

The star control beside it sets a minimum rating without typing. Click the fourth star and the list drops to your four- and five-star work.

The count at the bottom left tells you how many shots the current filter matched.

The picker narrowed twice: a query typed into the filter box, then the stars lighting under the pointer and the fourth one clicked

Tip

The two buttons at the right of the filter row switch between the list and a thumbnail grid, and the slider at the bottom sizes the thumbnails. The grid is easier when you are recognizing shots by eye rather than by name.

What happens

The shot becomes a clip: a copy of the shot's range placed on the reel. The shot itself is untouched, and the same shot can appear on more than one reel, though not twice on the same one.

Warning

Restricted shots show as a red row in the picker, and a reel only takes them if it is set to. See Describe a shot.

Offline footage

A clip whose video file has moved keeps its place but draws under a red hatch, and the preview plays it as black so the rest of the reel still plays. The reel settings name the file. Relink it from the shot's own shot list (right-click the clip, then Edit Metadata); the reel updates as soon as you do. Export waits until every clip is back.

  • Arrange clips once there is more than one.
  • Start a reel if you would rather Shotwork made the first pass from your ratings.