After adding my content to the time line the 1st thing I do is split unwanted content and I have all these gaps. To keep from having to do all that dragging.......Is there a keystroke that will group them all together?

Sometimes when I hit the "S" key for a split it does not respond. I then have to mouse click on the line and it almost always moves from the point I wanted the split and I have to find the point again. Why does the "S" key sometimes not respond, or how can I make it respond without touching my line?

When I am playing the time line and I click on it a line appears. What do we call that and why?

Ripple is what you need but be very careful with it as it can sometimes move things you don't want moved. Another way to rid gaps is move the first clip immediately to the right of the split gap then press F all the rest of the clips will follow. I prefer that as opposed to autoripple.
Splitting will only happen when the cursor is placed where you want it to split and if you click anywhere else other than the timeline the cursor gets stupid and nothing will happen so you need to click the TL again. To keep the cursor where it was simply hold down the control key and click the TL again. cursor won't move and then the S key wakes up and does it's job.
HTHs

Thanks!

A Big Help!

I'm almost always in autoripple mode when cutting, I do have it set to 'Affected tracks only' though.
It auto highlights the clip to the right after every split anyway so you can just keep cutting away.
You have to highlight something to split it though, if you didnt, you would be splitting all of your tracks every time you split, which wouldnt be good.
What would be great though is the option like in Premiere where you right click any open space in the timeline and get "Close Gap" (or something similar), press enter, and everything to the right moves down on that track. That would be a bit more controlled for the faint hearted who want the option to ripple rather than it just happening.

Let me clarify a little on "Split". This may explain why sometimes the "S" key does not work:


1. "S" will only split events that are under the cursor.
2. If NO events are selected, all events under the cursor will be split
3. If ALL events are selected, all events under the cursor will be split
4. If some events under the cursor are selected and others are not, only the selected events will be split
5. If some events are selected and NONE under the cursor are selected, NOTHING will be split.

Let me clarify a little on "Split". This may explain why sometimes the "S" key does not work:


1. "S" will only split events that are under the cursor.
2. If NO events are selected, all events under the cursor will be split
3. If ALL events are selected, all events under the cursor will be split
4. If some events under the cursor are selected and others are not, only the selected events will be split
5. If some events are selected and NONE under the cursor are selected, NOTHING will be split.


Thanks Edward, I'm enlightened now as to why I was loosing it in the first place. And as a noob fumbling around the Ctrl & click in the TL saves my bacon too.

I have another one. When I move clips into each other to get the nice transitions I get a number. I am using my mouse and its tricky getting the same number. How do I manipulate that number via key strokes. I have looked at all the key stroke commands in the Sony .pdf but must be missing it.

Try 1 and 3 on the numeric keypad.

Try 1 and 3 on the numeric keypad.

Niiiiicssse! I like the 7 & 9 keys taking me through the from frame to frame boarders also.

Please confirm? It looks like the 1 & 3 and the 6 & 9 are doing the same thing?

allen, press help and read the shortcut keys....

1 & 3 move one FRAME at a time. 4 & 6 move one PIXEL at a time which could be 1 or MORE frames depending on your zoom level. Take a look through my newsletters too. One of the issues has an article that talks about all the numeric keypad shortcut keys.

Thank you, I took Leslie's advise and went to the help files and confirmed that in reading and experimenting.

What I cannot find is the key strokes for the fade that is black, rather than the opacity type of blending as a noob like me would call it.
I can do it with the mouse but cannot find documentation on keystrokes for it similar to the previous.

I found where I could set the snap in preferences/editing/cut to overlap conversion.

Now I want to work with the other kind of fade where it goes black and comes back.

Allen,
You can also set the grid to seconds (under options) and have "snap to grid" switched on. When you move a clip or size a clip it will snap to the nearest second. There are other combinations!

Richard