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Arrange clips

The reel timeline has no gaps by default: clips sit end to end, and most edits close up after themselves. That is the whole model, and it is why a reel needs fewer gestures than an NLE sequence.

Five edits do everything. Each one is a drag; what changes is where you grab and which modifier you hold.

Edit Grab Does
Reorder The strip along a clip's top Moves it in the running order
Trim A clip's outer edge Changes that clip's length, and the reel's
Roll The boundary between two clips The two trade screen time; the reel's length does not change
Slide A clip's body, with Alt held Moves the clip into adjacent space without changing its length
Replace A clip, with Ctrl held Swaps what is under the pointer for what you are dragging

Reorder

Drag a clip by the strip along its top and carry it to its new position. The insertion indicator shows which side of its new neighbor it will land on, and the gap it leaves behind closes up.

Reorder: the first clip carried to the end, the insertion indicator flipping to either side of the last clip before the drop

Trim

Drag the outer edge of a clip to change its length. Trimming inward from an interior edge opens a gap, which is a real thing on the timeline rather than an error: it holds the space until you fill it or remove it. Right-click a gap for Remove Gap, or Fill With a Shot… to put something in it.

Trim: the second clip's head pulled in, then the first clip's tail; the gap that opens is selected and deleted

Roll

Drag the boundary between two clips and they trade screen time: one gets longer by exactly what the other loses. The cut moves, the reel's total length does not, and nothing downstream shifts.

Interior boundaries are rolls by default; only a clip's outer edge trims. The pointer tells you which you are about to get before you press.

Roll: the seam dragged left, right and back; the two clips trade screen time and the reel's length never changes

Slide

Hold Alt and drag a clip's body to move it into adjacent space without changing its length. Its neighbors absorb the difference. This is the edit for closing a gap by moving a clip into it rather than by stretching anything.

Without Alt, dragging a clip's face scrubs the playhead. The modifier is what turns the same gesture into an edit. The last clip on the reel can slide right as far as you like: nothing is out there to absorb anything, so a gap opens behind it instead.

Slide: a clip Alt-dragged into the gap on its left until its head snaps to the previous clip's tail

Replace

Hold Ctrl while dragging and the gesture changes meaning: the clip under the pointer is replaced by the one you are dragging, rather than pushed aside. The target washes amber so the two cannot be confused mid-drag, and the replaced clip's screen time is kept, so the reel's timing does not move. If the new shot is shorter than that, a gap fills the rest of the slot rather than pulling everything after it earlier.

Replace With… on a clip's right-click menu does the same thing from a picker instead of a drag. Its Keep the previous clip's length box is on by default; turn it off to let the new shot play in full instead.

Replace: a three-second shot from the picker over a one-second clip and a seven-second one, with and without Ctrl

Snapping

N toggles snapping, and it is on by default. While it is on, edges pull to other clips' edges, to beats in the music, to marked interest points on other clips, and to the budget line. Nearest wins, and each kind of target has its own indicator color: white for an edge, green for a beat, amber for an interest point. Hold Shift during a drag to invert the setting for that gesture only.

A slide snaps its head first. Only when nothing is in range of the head does its tail get a turn, so when both ends are close to something the cut lands where you were looking.

Interest points show on each clip as small amber diamonds, higher in the block the stronger the mark. Show interest points on clips, in the reel settings, hides them and stops snapping to them at the same time. They are read-only here: right-click the clip and choose Edit Metadata to move or add them on the shot's own timeline.

The beat grid lights up under a drag only when snapping is actually live, so the glow predicts what will happen rather than decorating the drag.

Snapping: the last clip's tail trimmed onto a downbeat, then the clip slid along the beat grid with both edges catching marks as it travels

Wheel and zoom

The wheel works on the reel strip the way it does on the source timeline:

Gesture Effect
Wheel Step one timeline frame
Ctrl wheel Pan the playback range
Alt wheel Zoom the range, keeping the point under the cursor where it is
Alt middle-drag Zoom the same way: drag right to zoom in, left to zoom out

Zooming sets the playback range, so the range row under the strip follows, and playback loops over what you zoomed to. Double-click the range bar to go back to the whole reel, and double-click again to return to where you were.