A tour of the editor

Every take opens in the editor. The preview sits in the middle, the timeline runs across the bottom, and a rail of tabs stands on the right.

The tab rail

Hover an icon for its name and shortcut.

Tab	Shortcut	What it holds
Background	⌘1	The canvas behind your recording. See Backgrounds.
Cursor	⌘2	Cursor look, smoothing and click effects. See The cursor.
Camera	⌘3	Your camera’s layout and look. See Camera.
Captions	⌘4	Caption style and the transcript. See Captions.
Audio	⌘5	Voice, music and sound.
Keys	⌘6	The keys you pressed, shown on video. See Keys on video.
Motion	⌘7	Motion style and automatic zooms. See Zooms.

Below them are Layers and Privacy. Assistant sits at the foot of the rail. See Connect your assistant.

A tab that has nothing to show for this project is dimmed, and its tooltip says why.

The timeline

Each lane shows its name under its icon: Clip, Zoom, Camera, Captions, Keys, Audio, Music and the rest. + Lane adds one.

Where you trimmed or cut, an amber pin above the clip says how much is missing. Click it (its tooltip says Undo trim) to put that footage back. Bookmarks you dropped while recording are listed under Markers in the left panel; click one to go there.

The takes strip sits above the timeline. Click the take (for example “Take 1 ▾”) to see every take, record another, retake, reorder or remove one. Add a video file copies a movie into this project: choose At playhead, At the start or At the end. The movie keeps its source audio, dimensions and frame rate. Drag either edge of its clip on the timeline to trim it; ⌘Z undoes the import. Imported clips travel with an editable shared project.

Replace a take with processed footage

To grade or repair a take in another app and bring it back, click the upload button on its card and choose the processed file. Slyve checks that it has the take’s frame rate, length (to the frame) and size. Then it lists what it checked and asks you to confirm Replace (unchanged timing). Your cursor, clicks, privacy masks and zooms stay where they were, and your privacy reviews still count.

Slyve doesn’t accept a file that was trimmed, sped up or slowed down, or cropped or resized, because the cursor and the privacy masks would no longer line up with it. Export it from your editor at the take’s own frame rate, length and size.

Reopen the project to see the new footage. Click the cursor button on the card to jump to a quarter, half and three quarters of the take and check that the pointer is still on what it points at. Restore original puts the recorded footage back. Slyve keeps the original file.

Cards and More

Each card on the right shows the few settings most videos need. Everything else is under More at the foot of the card. Slyve remembers which cards you left open.

Timeline commands

• Hold ⌥ over the timeline to split: the razor follows your pointer, and a click splits there. Let go of ⌥ to stop. (In the Lumi panel, holding ⌥ still speaks to your assistant.)
• X deletes from the playhead back to the previous cut and closes the gap. With the playhead on a cut, it deletes the whole clip before it.
• , and . move the playhead half a second; ⌥, and ⌥. move it a second. The arrow keys still step one frame.
• Pinch on a trackpad over the timeline to zoom it, as ⌘-scroll does.
• Edit › Clips holds the whole-timeline commands: Apply speed to all clips (the selected clip’s speed, or the one under the playhead), Reset all trims and cuts (everything you trimmed or cut plays again; splits and speeds stay), Hold the last frame 1 s longer (the video runs on past the end of the recording; choose it again for more), Remove the end hold, and Copy clip settings / Paste clip settings (speed and volume).
• Playback › Loop playback starts again from the beginning at the end. Playback › Audible scrubbing plays a short snatch of the sound as you drag the playhead. Slyve remembers both.

Each of these is one undo step.

Search commands

Press ⇧⌘P (or choose Help › Search commands…) in the editor or the Library and type a few letters of any menu command. Use ↑ and ↓ to choose, Return to run it, and Esc to close. The list shows only what can act right now, with its shortcut.

The toolbar

One toolbar stands beside the preview, on its right. Hover a button for its name and shortcut.

• Select picks and moves elements on the picture.
• Spotlight, Arrow, Highlight, Label and Step: choose one, then click or drag on the picture to place it at the playhead.
• Zoom (Z), Loupe (⇧Z), Layout (⇧L), Mask (⇧M) and Text (⇧T) add their item at the playhead. Styles (T) opens the text styles.
• While the Privacy lane is shown and the video is paused, drag on the picture to draw a mask. The switch at the picture’s top left picks what the drag draws: Sensitive data hides the region (Blur, Pixelate or Solid), Spotlight dims everything except the region. Draw more than one spotlight to keep several regions clear at once. It is the same Spotlight the toolbar places, so you trim it on the Elements lane. Select it and use Outside dim in the inspector to set how dark everything outside it gets. The preview and the export match.
• Crop (⇧C) opens the Crop window.
• Safe zones appears when the video is vertical (9:16). Click it to show where TikTok, Reels or Shorts put their buttons and captions. Keep clicking to see the app itself over the video for Instagram, TikTok or Shorts: a back button and title, the like, comment, share and more buttons with counts, an account name with a Follow button, two caption lines and an audio line, all with placeholder text. One more click turns it off. Nothing from this guide is exported.

In a narrow window the toolbar moves under the preview.

Undo

Every change is one undo step. The edit you just made shows for a moment beside the take, with Undo; ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z name the edit they undo or redo. File › Revert to… lists saved project versions when they are available. The editor also remembers your playhead and timeline scale when you reopen a project. ⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes.

Preview quality

The preview button says which preview you have, Full or Faster. Export is always full quality.