Internal + Public

Project Studio (Video Editor)

Project Studio is the timeline-based video editor at /creator-studio/project-studio.html. It composites video, image, audio, overlay, and text tracks into a final render.

Updated 2026-09-26 Project Studio project-studiovideo-editortimelinerendertextoverlaymarkerslooprangepartial-renderkeyframesanimationadjustmentspositionfpsanimate-imageextend-shotseedance720p

What Project Studio is

Project Studio is the full timeline-based video editor. It lives at /creator-studio/project-studio.html and is reached from the grid menu under Video. It supports multi-track editing across:

Use Project Studio when you want frame-level control over an edit. For one-shot social cuts, Track Reels is faster.

Timeline basics

Scaling and positioning clips

Each video or image clip has Scale and Position X / Y controls in the right panel. Scale 100% means the media fits inside the canvas with letterboxing if the aspect ratios don't match. Position 50 / 50 is centered; the sliders run past the edges so media can travel fully off-canvas. Two quick buttons under the scale slider:

You can also drag the corner handles of the bounding box in the preview to scale visually.

Keyframes (animating clip properties)

Almost every clip property can be animated with keyframes, CapCut-style: park the playhead inside the clip and move a slider - a keyframe is written at that moment automatically. Move the playhead, adjust again, and the property animates between the two. Each property row also has a small keyframe button that toggles a keyframe at the playhead; it lights up only when the playhead is exactly on one.

Animatable properties and their timeline colors:

Working with keyframes on the timeline:

Remove all formatting in a clip's right-click menu clears every keyframe type and resets opacity, scale, volume, position and adjustments to defaults in one step. It works on a multi-selection and is undoable.

Muting a clip. To silence one clip, click the small speaker icon just left of the Volume slider in the clip's settings. It turns pink when muted, and clicking it again restores the level you had. Dragging the Volume slider all the way down also works, but it writes a volume keyframe at the playhead rather than setting a plain level, so the mute button is the cleaner way to switch a clip's sound off. You can also right-click a clip and choose Mute clip (it mutes every selected clip at once). A muted clip shows a small speaker with a red line through it on the timeline. Muting a whole lane is the speaker icon on the track head.

Normalize audio. Clips from different sources arrive at very different loudness: a mastered song can be many times louder than a talking-head clip. Select the clips, right-click, and choose Normalize audio. Each clip is measured on the part you actually use and brought to one even level: voices (the voiceover lane, and the sound from video and overlay clips) to -18 LUFS, and soundtracks (the music lane) to -20 LUFS, so a voice sits slightly above the music. The volume slider then reads 100% at the normalized level, and your ducking, fades, and keyframes work on top of that even base. Normalized clips show an N badge. A boost is limited so it never clips, and a clip with no audio is skipped. Reset normalization in the same menu undoes it. The final export's loudness option then brings the finished mix up to platform level, so the export plays a little louder than the preview.

When keyframes exist, the curve IS the volume / opacity / scale. The slider is just how you write points onto the curve, so its resting position after your last edit is not a separate setting that fights the animation.

Adjustments (color grading)

The Adjustments panel (brightness, contrast, saturation, blur) applies a static grade by default. The keyframe button in its header animates the whole panel: one keyframe records all four values at that time, so you can ramp a shot from neutral to black-and-white, pulse the brightness on a beat, or rack a blur in and out. Renders reproduce the browser preview's grade math exactly. Clips with animated adjustments take longer to render than static grades.

Text clips

Add a text clip by double-clicking the Text track. The right panel exposes:

Text size in the editor is measured against the displayed preview canvas, and the renderer scales it proportionally to your export resolution. So 48 px text takes up the same percentage of the frame in your render as it does in the preview, regardless of the export size.

Fades and transitions

Two ways to fade a clip out:

  1. Transition fade-out - pick "Fade" or "Fade to Black" in the clip's transition controls and set a duration. Most direct.
  2. Opacity automation curve - drop a keyframe at full opacity at one time and a keyframe at 0% opacity later. The renderer picks up either signal. On the main video track an opacity fade renders as a fade to black; on overlay tracks it fades to transparent, revealing whatever is underneath.

If neither is set but the clip ends before the timeline does, a short 0.3 s cushion is automatically applied so the cut to black isn't a jarring jump.

After the base track ends, the canvas goes to black (matching Premiere/FCP behavior) - overlay and text on top continue to render normally over the black background.

Markers

Press M or click the flag button to drop a marker at the playhead. Markers are for finding your place and marking sections - they do not affect the render.

Markers also act as snap targets - the playhead and range handles both snap to them.

Selecting a time range

Drag across the timeline ruler to select a range. The range is a general selection, not a loop-only tool: you can loop it, play it, or render it.

L toggles looping. With a range set, looping repeats just the range; with no range, it loops the whole timeline. Play this range plays from the start of the range and stops at its end (or repeats, if looping is on).

Rendering part of your project

You do not have to render the whole timeline. There are two ways to render a section, and they behave differently on purpose.

Render a range - right-click the range and choose Render this range. This renders a slice of time, so everything inside that window is included: your music bed, overlays, and any clip that happens to sit in the range. Clips that only partly overlap the range are trimmed at the boundary.

Render selected clips - select one or more clips, right-click, and choose Render these clips. This is literal: you get exactly the clips you selected and nothing else. If you want the music with your video, select the audio clip too.

Selecting only video clips gives you a silent render - unless the video files themselves carry audio. The music on your audio track is a separate clip, so it only comes along if you select it. The confirmation dialog warns you when audio is being left out.

A few things worth knowing:

Frame rate

The project has one frame rate, shown in the header badge and preselected in the render dialog.

The project adopts your footage's rate automatically. The editor measures the first video clip on the timeline and sets the project to match it, so a timeline of 24 fps clips reads 24 fps rather than an arbitrary default. This happens on a new project when you add your first video, and on an existing project the first time you open it. You will see a brief "Project set to 24fps to match your footage" message when it happens.

Only standard delivery rates are adopted automatically (24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60). Generated clips sometimes come back at 12, 15 or 16 fps, and adopting one of those would drag the whole project down to the rate of its slowest asset.

Once you pick a rate yourself, it is yours. The editor saves it with the project and never overrides it again.

Picking a rate:

There is no way to avoid conversion entirely on a mixed timeline. The header badge turns amber when your footage mixes rates, because at that point no output rate is free of it.

Changing the rate in either the header badge or the render dialog updates both. They are the same setting.

Tip: if you bring clips in from another editor, set that editor's export to 24 fps. CapCut and most consumer tools default to 30, which is the usual source of a single mismatched clip.

Animate an image or extend a shot

Two AI tools work straight from a clip's right-click menu. Each opens a small dialog with an engine, a length, a prompt you can edit, and the credit cost before you commit. Generation takes about 2 to 4 minutes and runs in the background, so you can keep editing. Progress shows in the AI Editor panel.

Render and export

Click Render in the header. The export modal lets you pick:

The render runs server-side and you'll see live progress. When it finishes you get a Download button, and the video is already in your Gallery - we save it for you the moment the render completes, so there is nothing to click.

You can close the tab. Saving happens on our servers, not in your browser, so a finished render reaches your Gallery whether or not you are still watching. Start a long render, close the laptop, and it will be there when you come back.

Finished renders are stored permanently, the same as everything else in your Gallery.

Common gotchas

Where to ask for more