Roll Tool

Using the Roll Tool to Change Where a Cut Occurs

A roll edit adjusts the Out point and In point of two adjacent clips
simultaneously. If you like where two clips are placed in the Timeline, but you
want to change when the cut point happens, you can use the Roll tool. No clips
move in the Timeline as a result; only the edit point between the two clips
moves. This is a two-sided edit, meaning that two clips edit points are affected
simultaneously: the first clips Out point and the next clips In point are both
adjusted by a roll edit. However, no other clips in the sequence are affected.

Note: When you perform a roll edit, the overall duration of the sequence stays
the same, but both clips change duration. One gets longer while the other gets
shorter to compensate. This means that you dont have to worry about causing
sync problems between linked clip items on different tracks.

Using the Roll tool, you move the Out point of the outgoing clip and the In
point of the incoming clip simultaneously.

In the example above, clip B gets shorter while clip C becomes longer, but the
combined duration of the two clips stays the same.

Roll edits are useful when the relative Timeline position of two clips is good,
but you want to change when the edit point occurs between them. For example,
suppose your sequence has two clips showing an Olympic diver diving into a
pool from two different angles. The first thing you need to do is adjust each clip
until their edit points align on a similar action. This is called matching on

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Roll Tool

action, or a match cut. You could align the edit point in the Timeline so that
when the diver hits the water in one camera angle, the diver is also hitting the
water in the second angle. Once you have a cut point with matching action, you
can roll the edit point earlier or later to change when the edit occurs. For
example, you could roll the edit to the point where the diver is midway between
the diving board and the water.

Tips for Using the Roll Tool

There are a few tips for using the Roll tool:

If you cant drag any further while rolling an edit, you have reached the
end of the media on one of the two clips. FinalCutPro displays a Media
Limit message in this case.

With the Roll tool selected, hold down the Shift key to switch temporarily
to the Ripple tool.

While dragging, press the Command key to gear down and make a more
precise edit.