Why part of your edit plays black or silent

A clip is on the timeline, yet the preview shows a black stretch where it should play, or the picture runs and the sound stays off. DepCut lets you switch pieces of an edit off without deleting them, so the layout stays intact. Three places hold those switches.

The gutter at the left of the timeline

Look at the narrow column at the left edge of the timeline. It holds one control set per track:

• A video track gets an eye. Its tooltip reads Hide track when the track is visible and Show track when it is hidden.
• A video track that carries sound also gets a speaker. Its tooltip reads Mute track or Unmute track.
• Each soundtrack row has a speaker.
• Each title row and each caption row has an eye.

The icons are always visible. An eye or speaker turns into its crossed-out form when the track has anything switched off, and fades slightly when only some clips on it are off, so the gutter shows at a glance what is off. One click turns the whole track off. The next click turns every segment back on, including clips you disabled one by one.

The Clip options menu

Every clip on the timeline has a three-dot button named Clip options. Open it to find two pairs of switches.

• Mute clip and Unmute clip silence or restore the sound of one clip. Photos have no sound, so they do not offer it.
• Disable clip and Enable clip hide or restore the clip itself. A disabled clip stays on the timeline in gray. On the main track the preview and the export show black for that stretch, and on an upper track the footage underneath shows through. Later clips keep their places.

Titles, shapes and stickers have a small eye on their bars with the same two tooltips, Disable clip and Enable clip.

Detach audio appears in the same menu and is grayed out while the clip is muted. Unmute the clip to use it.

The Mute tab for soundtrack clips

A soundtrack clip, such as music or a voiceover, has its own switch.

1. Click the soundtrack clip on the timeline.
2. Open the Mute tab in the right panel.
3. Turn Mute audio off.

A muted soundtrack clip stays on the timeline in gray and leaves the mix.

Run through it in order

1. Put the playhead on the problem spot.
2. Check the gutter for an eye or speaker that shows as off. Click it.
3. Open Clip options on the clip and look for Enable clip or Unmute clip.
4. For music or a voiceover, select it and check Mute audio.
5. Play the spot again.

You can also use these switches on purpose. Hide a title row to judge a shot without text, or mute a track to hear the music alone. Switch everything back on before you export, because the export follows the same switches. A black stretch in the preview becomes a black stretch in the file, and a muted clip stays silent there too.

Where to look first

Gray clips are the quickest signal on a busy timeline. Open DepCut, find the gray bars, and flip their switches.