Editing a video in Bolide Movie Creator. Tips and tricks

Our users frequently ask us to provide some tips about using Bolide Movie Creator. In this article, you can find all kinds of things that are inconspicuous or... let's be frank, not very intuitive. Hopefully, these tips and tricks will make your experience with Bolide Movie Creator more enjoyable.

Our tips and tricks are divided into four sections. Use the list below to move quickly to a section you are interested in. We recommend that you read all of them. Hopefully, they'll help you become a true video editor! Here's the list:

Accurate positioning

Oftentimes, when you want to remove an unnecessary piece of video, you need to position the cursor on the timeline very accurately. Bolide Movie Creator allows you to position the cursor accurate to one frame! You can do it by pressing the left arrow or right arrow keys.

Important note: You can scale the project timeline in a wide range. It may be useful when you are editing long video clips in which you need to select an exact point. If you "stretch" such a clip, you will see many more video frames in the block, which will make it easier to find the necessary point. To scale the project timeline, drag either edge of the slider under the tracks (the edges are marked with three short vertical stripes) to the left or the right, or rotate the mouse wheel while holding down the Shift key. Zoom is relative to the mouse pointer, so you can enlarge the area you are looking at without losing it from view.

There are also two buttons on the timeline toolbar: "Zoom Timeline to see the entire project" and "Zoom Timeline to see thumbnails". From the keyboard, Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus change the scale by 5%, and Ctrl+8 fits the entire project on the screen.

The mouse wheel also scrolls the timeline: alone it scrolls horizontally along the project; with Ctrl held it scrolls vertically across tracks. All of this keeps working while you drag a block. In addition, while dragging you can hold Alt and rotate the wheel to move the grab point - the place where the mouse "holds" the dragged blocks: wheel up moves it to the left, wheel down - to the right. You don't need to memorize this: while you drag, a reminder appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window. After preview reaches the end of the tracks, the cursor stays at the end of the project instead of jumping back to the start.

Handling blocks on the timeline

Here are some tips and tricks:

• You can select several blocks by clicking them one by one while holding down the Ctrl key. Another way is to press the mouse button on an empty area of a track and drag: all blocks inside the blue rectangle will be selected.
• To select all blocks of a track, double-click the header of that track (its left part with the buttons). Double-click again to deselect them.
• You can move several blocks at once after selecting them as described above. You can also delete, cut, or copy them at once.
• If you bring a block close enough to another one, they will automatically stick together. When this behavior is unwanted, hold down the Shift key while moving a block, and no sticking will occur.
• To remove an empty gap between two blocks, click the gap and press Del. The blocks to the right of the gap will move to the left.
• You can change the speed of a clip right on the timeline: hold down the Ctrl key and drag the edge of the block. Without Ctrl, dragging the edge simply trims the block.
• You can easily make room in a project that consists of several tracks by dragging the cursor to the right with the right mouse button. Each block in each track located to the right of the cursor will move to the right. If you hold Shift at the same time, only the tracks with selected blocks are moved.
  
• If you need to use the same piece of video, photo, or text in your project several times, you don't have to select and drag it each time from the library. Instead, you can copy it once by clicking the "Copy" button (or pressing Ctrl+C), and then insert it into the project as many times as necessary by clicking the "Paste" button (or pressing Ctrl+V).
• With multiple blocks selected, you can apply opacity, a blurred background, or start/end effects to all of them at once via the right-click context menu. Graphic effects from the Effects tab also apply to all selected blocks: drag the effect onto one of them, or use the add button on the Effects panel.
• Double-click a text block to open the text editor right away.
• While the project is playing, clicks on blocks are ignored, so you don't move anything by accident. To select or edit a block, pause the preview first (Space).

Handling tracks

Bolide Movie Creator allows you to use as many tracks (layers) as you want. If you add blocks to the top track, the program will automatically add an empty track above it. To add a track at the very bottom of the project, click the green plus sign ("Add track at the bottom") in the bottom-left corner of the timeline, or simply drag a block to the empty strip below the lowest track - a new track will be created for it. Please keep in mind that the tracks are always layered from bottom to top: the upper tracks cover the lower ones (see Working with Tracks and the Timeline). Our users frequently ask us how to fill the black bars with something if the video image does not occupy the entire frame. Actually, all you need to do is place a block containing a background of your choice (a video, a static image or a ready-made background, see Backgrounds: Color, Gradient and SVG Elements) in the track below that video track. Alternatively, you can right-click the video or static image block and select "Blurred background" in the pop-up menu.

On the left side of every track there are three buttons:

• "Turn off the sound of this track" - mutes all blocks of the track at once. Click it again to turn the sound back on.
• "Toggle height of the track" - if you have a lot of tracks in your project, make some of them lower so that more tracks fit on the screen. Each click switches the track between three heights: collapsed, half and full.
• "Delete track" - completely removes an unnecessary track. If the track contains blocks, the program asks for confirmation first.

General tips

• If you made a mistake when editing a video but recognized it in good time, don't try to fix it manually (especially if multiple blocks are affected). It is much easier to click the "Undo" button (or press Ctrl+Z). Changed your mind? The "Restore" button right next to it brings the undone action back (there is no keyboard shortcut for it). The small arrow next to "Undo" shows the list of recent actions, so you can go back several steps at once. So feel free to experiment!
• As you probably know, transition effects are applied at block intersections. But what if you need to add an effect at the beginning or the end of your project, where there are no intersections? No problem! Look at the effect area at the beginning and end of each block - it is hatched. Drag the inner edge of that area to increase or decrease the effect duration: By default, Bolide Movie Creator applies fade-in and fade-out effects. You can right-click the effect area and choose a different animation from the menu. The same context menu works for multiple selected blocks at once.
• Need a cover or a thumbnail for your video? Put the cursor on the best frame and save it as a picture, see Saving a Frame as a Picture and Viewing File Info.
• Do you want to learn to use a video editor like a pro? If your answer is yes, read about the keyboard shortcuts in Bolide Movie Creator, memorize them, and use them. Keyboard shortcuts allow you to edit a video much quicker.

Back to the Video editing guide.