46 VIDEO EDITORInserting clipsClips are the objects that make up your movie. A clip can be an image, a video, atransition, a title, a background color, or an audio file. Following insertion into theTimeline, clips can be trimmed and special effects can be applied withoutmodifying the original source files. This is designed to give you greater confidencein editing your video. To start work on a video project, you need to first insert clipsinto the Timeline. Once inserted, you can begin to edit and arrange them into yourfinal video production.Inserting video, audio and image clipsThe easiest way to insert a video, audio, or image clip into the Timeline is to clickthe appropriate Insert button on the Timeline Toolbar. You can also choose itscorresponding command from the Insert menu or the right-click pop-up menu. Adialog box opens allowing you to select a file that Video Editor supports. Supportedformats include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DV type 1 & 2 AVI, as well asQuickTime and Flash files.If you choose a video file that contains both video and audio data, the clips areplaced in both the video and audio tracks: these clips remain connected tomaintain synchronicity. (You can separate them by clicking the Clip: Splitcommand.) Clips already in the Production Library can simply be dragged onto theTimeline. You can also drag-and-drop clips directly from Windows Explorer.When you insert clips, they are placed at the position of your pointer. How insertedclips affect any neighboring clips is determined by the Ripple Editing mode. Ifyou are in Ripple Editing mode, you can insert the clip anywhere you like on acompatible track (even over existing clips) and the clip pushes along any otherclips which appear in the same track. If you are not in Ripple Editing mode, youcan only insert the clip into an empty clip slot. An empty clip slot starts from theDouble-clicking an empty time portion of a video track opens either the InsertVideo or Insert Image File dialog box depending on the settings in the Edittab of the File: Preferences dialog box.The files you insert should match the properties of your video project toensure the best possible output results.
