Trim with the drag handles

Drag the blue bars to snap word-by-word, or use the trim strip ± buttons for frame-precise nudges

Each row in the script panel has two thin blue trim handles, one at the left edge, one at the right. Drag them to set what gets included from this clip.

Word snap with the drag handles

Drag the left handle to move the in-point. Drag the right handle to move the out-point. As you drag, a live source-frame preview appears next to the handle so you can see what you're landing on.

The handles snap to word boundaries one word at a time, with hysteresis so you don't accidentally over-snap mid-word. The snap tolerances aren't symmetric, and that's on purpose:

• At the in-point, the trim leans 150 ms generous. A word that ends up to 150 ms before the in-point still gets kept in.
• At the out-point, the trim leans 30 ms strict. A word whose start sits within 30 ms of the out-point gets dropped.

Trimming an in-point should err toward keeping the breath at the start of a word. Trimming an out-point should err toward not slicing the tail of one.

Each drag is one undo step labeled "Trim Words" in the Edit menu.

Frame-precise nudges with the ± buttons

Word snap is great until you need a single frame either way. That's what the trim strip is for. Below each row's text, the trim strip has + and − buttons for the in-point and the out-point.

• Plain click moves 1 frame.
• ⌘+click is a coarse step. Default 7 frames, roughly 233 ms at 29.97 fps.
• ⌥+click is a fine step. Default 15 frames.

Both step sizes live in Settings → Paper Edit. Change them to whatever your hands like. We default to 7 and 15 because they sit in useful zones for most edits, but if you're cutting at 50 or 59.94 you may want different numbers.

A working pattern: rough in with the drag handles, polish with ⌘+click on the trim strip when a syllable is sitting too close to the cut. The ± buttons aren't replacing the handles, they're the fine pass on top.

That's trimming. Two tools, one row, every cut undoable.