Audition a Cut by Disabling a Clip Before You Delete It

Deleting a clip on the main track closes the gap and moves everything after it. That is the right result once you are sure, and a hard one to judge beforehand. Disabling a clip lets you watch the edit without it while every other clip keeps its place.

Disable a clip

1. Click the clip you doubt on the timeline.
2. Open Clip options, the ⋮ button on the clip bar, and choose Disable clip. The Hidden button in the right panel does the same thing.
3. The bar turns gray and dims. The clip stays on the timeline and plays as black and silent.
4. Press Space from a few seconds before the clip and watch the sequence without it.

Nothing moves. Titles, captions and music still sit over the moments they were placed on, so you can judge the timing as it will be. Press the skip-back button beside the play button, which is named Back to start, and run the stretch a second time. The first pass shows you what is missing, and the second shows you whether anyone would miss it.

Decide

• To bring the clip back, choose Enable clip from the same menu, or press Hidden again.
• To remove it, select the clip and press Delete. On a timeline with a single video track, Delete closes the gap: it cuts the same seconds out of the titles, captions and music on the other rows, and the clips, titles, captions and music that follow slide to the left together.
• When the project has upper video layers, Delete leaves a gap on the main track. Right-click the gap and choose Remove empty space to close it.

Compare two takes of the same moment

1. Put the playhead at the start of the first take.
2. In Media, open the Assets tab, open the three-dot More actions button on the second take's card and pick Add overlay. It lands on an upper track at the playhead and covers the first take.
3. Disable one take, play the moment, then enable it and disable the other.
4. Keep the stronger take and delete the other.

Disabling one take at a time keeps their voices from playing over each other.

Switch a whole row

At the left edge of each video row sits an eye, and rows with sound have a speaker below it. These toggles are always visible in the gutter at the left edge of the timeline. Hide track and Mute track switch every clip on that row at once, which is a quick way to hear the base edit without an upper layer.

Turning a row back on also re-enables any clips you disabled one by one on it.

Before you export

A disabled main-track clip still takes its time in the export, as a black and silent stretch. A disabled clip on an upper layer drops out of the picture and the sound. Delete the clips you decided against, and enable the ones you want, before you press Export. Scan the timeline once for gray bars you forgot.

Try the audition

Pick the clip you are least sure of in DepCut, disable it and watch the sequence once. The answer is usually clear by the second cut.