Trimming Clips

Once clips are on your timeline, you'll often want to adjust exactly where they start and end. Trimming lets you fine-tune the in-point (where the clip begins) and the out-point (where the clip ends) with precision.

Trimming by Conversation

Tell StarZero Agents what you want to change in plain language:

• "Shorten the second clip by 0.5 seconds at the end"
• "Trim the first clip to start 1 second later"
• "Make the intro clip 3 seconds long"
• "Extend the last clip by 2 seconds"

You can also set exact timestamps:

• "Set the in-point of clip 3 to 45.2s and the out-point to 53.8s"
• "Start the second clip at 1:22.5 and end it at 1:30"

Trimming in the Visual Editor

In the timeline editor, click a clip to select it — trim handles appear on its left and right edges. Drag these handles to adjust where the clip starts and ends:

• Drag the left handle to change the in-point (where the clip begins)
• Drag the right handle to change the out-point (where the clip ends)

As you drag, the preview player updates so you can see exactly what frame you're trimming to.

Smart Boundary Detection

StarZero Agents is aware of sentence and shot boundaries in your content, and it uses this knowledge to help you make clean trims:

• Sentence boundaries: If your trim would cut someone off mid-word, StarZero Agents will flag it and suggest an adjustment. For example: "Trimming here would cut off the word 'revenue' -- would you like to extend by 0.3s to include the full sentence?" Speech warnings only apply to clips whose audio is audible — muted clips won't trigger cut-word or mid-sentence warnings.

• Shot boundaries: If trimming to your exact point would leave a brief flash of an adjacent shot (which looks jarring in the final video), StarZero Agents may suggest: "Trim 0.18s earlier to avoid flashing an adjacent shot." Flash frame detection runs on every clip, including muted ones, since it's a visual issue.

• Source-time overlap: If two consecutive clips from the same video have overlapping in and out points, the same frames would play twice in the final video. StarZero Agents flags this and adjusts the earlier clip's out-point or the later clip's in-point to eliminate the overlap.

When there's a trade-off between a clean sentence boundary and a clean shot boundary, StarZero Agents will present your options and let you decide.

Suppressing Warnings

Sometimes a warning is intentional — you may want a clip to cut mid-sentence for dramatic effect, or a brief flash of an adjacent shot is part of your creative vision. Instead of fixing these every time, you can tell StarZero Agents to suppress specific warnings.

Each quality-check warning has a code (like W0001, W0002) shown in the lint results. When you've reviewed a warning and decided it's intentional, just say:

"Suppress warning W0003."

Suppressed warnings are hidden from future quality checks, so they won't clutter your results or prompt unnecessary fixes. You can suppress multiple warnings at once:

"Suppress warnings W0001 and W0005."

If you change your mind, you can bring a warning back:

"Unsuppress warning W0003."

You can also ask to see all suppressed warnings alongside active ones if you want to review what's been hidden.

Trimming from the Playhead

You can also trim clips visually using the playhead controls. Position the playhead where you want to cut, then use the trim buttons:

• Trim start ( [ ) -- moves the clip's in-point forward to the playhead, removing everything before it
• Trim end ( ] ) -- moves the clip's out-point back to the playhead, removing everything after it

These buttons are available in the playhead control bar that appears when playback is paused, or via the keyboard shortcuts [ and ].

Sub-Second Precision

You can be as precise as you need. StarZero Agents supports fractional seconds, so you can specify timestamps like 12.4s, 1:03.75, or even smaller increments. This level of control is useful for:

• Matching cuts to music beats
• Catching the exact start of a key moment
• Removing unwanted pauses or filler

Practical Example

You: "The third clip starts too early -- there's a pause before the speaker begins. Can you trim it?"

StarZero Agents: "I can see the speaker starts talking at 22.8s. The clip currently starts at 21.0s. I'll trim the in-point to 22.6s, giving a brief moment before they begin speaking. Does that work?"

You: "Perfect. Also shorten the last clip -- it should end right after she says 'thank you.'"

StarZero Agents: "She says 'thank you' at 58.2s. I'll set the out-point to 59.0s to include a natural pause after the phrase."