Video

A Video is a multi-track video you create in MotherFluxer and edit on a timeline. Videos live under the Media filter group in Artifacts, alongside your other visual work. Generate one from chat, upload your own, then refine it clip by clip in the timeline editor.

Create a video

You have two ways to get a Video into MotherFluxer:

• Generate from chat — describe the video you want and send it. When a model option chooser appears, pick from the model options shown, each with its cost and speed. The finished Video lands in your Artifacts under the Media filter.
• Upload — bring in a video file you already have. It becomes a Video artifact you can open and edit just like a generated one. Footage shot on a phone held upright is treated as the upright picture it shows: the first time you open it, the video's frame takes that picture's shape. Every size limit in the editor is measured on the picture's shorter side, whichever way it faces, so an upright 1080×1920 phone video previews and exports at its full 1080×1920, exactly as a 1920×1080 one does.

Either way, the result is a multi-track Video on a timeline, ready to edit.

Open the timeline editor

Open a Video to enter the timeline editor. Across the top you'll find:

• Smart Edit — describe a change in plain language and let the AI generate it for you, working with the clips on your timeline.
• Add — the one place a new thing comes from: a mark or drawing, a picture, a 3D model, a mask, another clip, sound, captions, or something you browse for — an upload, your artifacts, or what is starred and in the community.
• Canvas — the settings that belong to the video itself: its shape, its background, the view's zoom range, the alignment grid, and the safe-zone guide.
• File — save the current state of your Video as a version you can return to, share it, or export it.

The timeline is always there below, and every setting appears along the bottom when you pick something on it.

The timeline editor draws your video on your device's graphics processor, as the Image editor does; where a device can't run it, opening a Video says so in place of the editor. The Video's card and its playback still work everywhere.

Smart Edit a video

Smart Edit lets you change your Video by describing what you want instead of editing it by hand. Say it in Discuss and the AI suggests one of these edits for what is on your timeline, then generates the result:

• Animate an item — Write an item's animation from a sentence
• Change settings — Change an item's settings from a sentence
• Add clip — Generate a new clip from a prompt and drop it on the timeline
• Extend clip — Continue a clip seamlessly from its last frame
• Edit clip — Regenerate or restyle an existing clip
• Add sound — Generate synced sound effects and ambience for a silent clip

The three that make a clip — Add clip, Extend clip and Edit clip — each let you set which model generates it and how many seconds it runs, and offer an optional cheap first-frame preview before you commit to a full clip. Every one of them saves the result as a new version.

Add sound to a video

Video clips are silent by default. Two kinds of sound come from describing them in Discuss, and each lands as its own row, so you can layer them:

• Dialogue — generate a clip with spoken dialogue and ambient sound built in. Put the lines you want spoken in your description, and the speaker's mouth is matched to the words. Because the sound is generated together with the footage, a dialogue clip costs more than a silent one.
• Add sound — put matching effects on a silent clip: the system listens to the clip and generates effects and ambience that fit what's happening. It works best for nature, atmosphere, and action. Pick which clip to score with the Clip control and, optionally, describe the sound you want. It works on clips from 3 to 20 seconds long; a shorter or longer clip is turned away before anything is charged. The result is a sound of its own, linked to that clip.

A narration or a music bed is made on a sound's own Audio tab instead. Add a sound with the Audio tile in Add, open the search at the start of its Audio tab's strip and pick Voiceover — type what the voice should say and choose a Voice — or Music, and describe it; the form stands beside the search, in the strip's place, and closing the search brings your audio back. A voiceover is narration, so it does not lip-sync to anyone on screen. What you generate replaces what that sound played, so add one sound for each voiceover or music bed you want.

You can always leave a clip silent; sound is never added unless you ask for it.

The video hands-on tools

The menus across the top do exactly two things: Add brings a new thing into the video, and Canvas holds the settings that belong to the video itself. Nothing you have already made is edited up there, and no effect is added up there either. Every setting — a clip's, a drawing's, a caption's, an effect's — appears along the bottom of the screen the moment you pick that thing on the timeline, the same as when you edit an Image or a Document.

Adding an effect is one press on the thing that will carry it. Pick the clip, the drawing or the group first, open its own Effects menu, and press a card: the effect is made, its row appears on the timeline, and it becomes the layer the menu is working on — open the layer stack beside the cards and press Recipe on its card to dial it in while watching it.

The timeline never gets out of your way for a settings panel: every lane stays visible and clickable while a panel is open, so the row you just clicked is still in front of you. The timeline rides UP as the panel opens, and the picture above it shrinks to fit the space that is left — nothing is ever covered. Close the panel and both go back. The menus across the top are different: they open over the picture and leave it where it is.

The picture never changes what it shows while you move around. You see the whole video assembled, at the video's own shape, filling the space above the timeline — the top bar floats over it, fading into the picture as it does in the image editor — and it stays exactly that as you click between clips, drawings and captions, open any menu, or pick any effect row. Nothing you do to navigate swaps it out from under you; the only thing that changes its size is how much room the timeline and an open panel take beneath it.

The play bar sits directly under the picture, and the tracks hang beneath it. The tracks show as many rows as your richest item needs when it is open — up to four — and keep that height while you work: picking an item reveals its rows inside that space, scrolling through them when there are more. The tracks have three sizes, and the thin line at the bottom of the list is the way between them: scrolling only ever scrolls the rows. Scroll down to that line and press the chevron just left of its centre: the tracks fold away so the play bar alone stays and the picture gets the room — the way to watch on a phone. When a video holds more tracks than the default shows, a second chevron just right of the centre opens every track, with the picture keeping at least a quarter of the screen; there it points the other way and brings you back to the default. Each chevron always sits in the same place, and the line runs on where the second one isn't needed. The tracks and the picture glide to their new places so you can see the whole view change. While the tracks are folded a small chevron on the play bar's bottom edge, in the same place as the one that folded them, brings them back, and a press on the play bar itself only ever scrubs. The picture, the play bar, the tracks and an open panel sit only a small gap apart, so no space goes to waste on a small screen, and every panel under the picture is the same height. The picture keeps its size and place whether or not a panel is open: with the panel closed, the tracks run on into its space and show more rows, so picking something, switching tabs and closing the panel never move the picture. Only while the tracks are folded does the picture take the panel's space too, making room for it again when you pick something. A Recipe opens taller than the other panels — six rows — rising over the bottom of the tracks rather than moving the picture, and the row you're editing stays in view above it; on a video with only one or two tracks it grows only as far as the tracks can spare, and while the tracks are folded it stays the height of the other panels.

The two exceptions are yours to ask for. Every selected clip, drawing and caption has Expand in the ⋯ More menu of the row above it: choose it and that one thing fills the picture area on its own — alone, at its own shape, centred, as large as the space allows. A clip shows its footage itself rather than where you happened to place it in the frame; a drawing or a piece of text fills the area the same way, however small it sits in the video; a caption keeps its text size and shows centred at its own width. While something is expanded, a Back to the whole video button sits in the top-right corner of the picture area, whatever you expanded and however far you have zoomed; press it, press Escape, or close the thing's panel along the bottom, and you are back to the whole video. An expand lasts only while that thing stays picked: pick something else, or nothing, and the picture returns to the whole video, so coming back to the item finds the normal view. If the playhead is outside the item's time when you expand it, the playhead moves to the item's first frame, so you see it straight away; if the playhead is already inside the item, it stays where it is. Picking a clip does the same: a playhead outside the clip moves to its first frame. While something is expanded, the timeline shows only that thing's own track and what belongs to it — its effect rows and any sound that follows it — and every other track comes back when you return to the whole video. An expanded item stands still in its own frame: its group's movement is left out, and a mask that follows something shows exactly as it sits at that moment, held still. Expanding changes nothing else: the picture area itself stays exactly where it was. The other exception is the layout view, described under "See everything at once" below.

Picking on the picture. A tap or click on the picture picks the topmost clip, drawing or caption showing at that spot, and the same press can drag it straight away: once the pointer travels a few pixels it moves, while a slightly shaky tap only picks it. Tap the picked thing again and the pick steps to whatever is underneath it at that spot, or types into a picked text or table, as on every editor. Something in a group picks its whole group first, and a second tap steps into the group, to the thing under your finger. Clicking an empty part of the picture while something is picked only puts it down; with nothing picked, the same click plays or pauses the video (except in the layout view, where it does nothing). While you are zoomed in, dragging an empty part of the picture pans the view instead, and leaves what you picked as it was.

The buttons above the box. A picked clip, drawing or caption has one row of buttons above its box and nothing under it: the rotate button, Duplicate, Delete and the ⋯ More menu, which holds Lock (or Unlock) — a locked clip, drawing or caption keeps its outline and its row but can't be moved, turned, resized or deleted until you unlock it, a group's Lock takes every member, and a group reads as locked while any member is — Fit display (the item at its own shape, centred, as big as fits whole inside the picture, keeping any turn, tilt or flip — on a caption, the picture's full width, or with one caption picked, that caption alone; on an item that moves over time, it fits the item where it stands at the playhead and keys that move there; a locked item and a mask that follows something don't offer it), Expand, and, last, a row of four layer moves: bring to front, bring forward, send backward and send to back. A picked group's row carries the same Fit display and layer moves. A caption's box has the rotate button and a pill-shaped handle on each side, which sets its width; its height follows its words. The things you do inside an item are opened from where they belong: Perspective on its Transform tab, the cut's grips from a card in its Border menu's Shape section, typing by tapping a picked text or a table's cell (or pressing Enter), drawing by pressing a brush in a drawing's Freeform menu, and a connector's points by clicking the connector's stroke on the picked drawing. A shape's reshape points, a bubble's tail, a mask's aim and a 3D object's turn sit right on the item as blue rings whenever it is big enough on screen. While one of these is in use, the box's handles and the row above it step aside; Escape, a tap elsewhere or leaving the menu that opened it ends it. Draw is the exception: while you draw, the box and its buttons are hidden, and the right end of the Freeform menu reads Drawing, with an Exit.

When nothing is expanded, the selected clip carries its resize box — including when the video has only one clip, where there is nothing to choose between (a hidden clip gets its box only once you pick its row). The box and its handles stay visible even when you drag or scale a clip past the edge of the frame, so you never lose the grip you are reaching for; the picture itself still ends at the frame, because that is what the finished video contains. Drag a corner to resize the clip and keep its shape, or drag one of the pill-shaped handles in the middle of each side to stretch it in one direction. To turn it, press the rotate button, always the first in the row of buttons above the box, and drag it round — a tap on its own does nothing. While you turn, the box's handles and the buttons around it step aside, the pointer becomes a curved turning arrow, the status at the bottom centre of the display reads the clip's angle (for example "Rotate · 37°"), and the clip settles on 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees as you pass near them; hold Shift to turn in 15-degree steps instead. With the rotate button focused, the Left and Right arrows turn the clip one degree at a time, ten with Shift. The box also takes the keyboard: press Tab to focus it, then the arrow keys move the clip one pixel at a time, ten with Shift held, and Alt with the Left or Right arrow turns it one degree at a time, ten with Shift. A run of presses is one step of Undo. On an item whose place or turn changes over time, a drag, an arrow press and a turn each set a key at the playhead on what already moves, rather than shifting the whole movement; an item travelling a motion path is placed by its path, so it takes no move of its own until the path comes off.

The effects a clip can carry, and where you set them

You do not add an effect from a menu at the top — you pick the thing you want to change, and its effects are already there along the bottom. Select a clip and it has its own menus: Video, Effects, Animate, Border and, last, Transform. Effects, Animate and Border work as every editor's item menus do: a strip of cards in sections, the clip's layers in a container at its right end, and each layer's Recipe. The Effects strip runs Adjust, Beauty, Filters, Styles, Distort, Light, Weather, Depth and Timewarp, and ends with what you have starred, a section for each kind: your starred effects, a tuned weather among them, then — where the item can take them — your starred Timewarps, Blends and Marks. A starred weather is offered only on something that can carry Weather — a clip or a group, never a drawing or a caption — and pressing it works like any Weather card; a starred Blend or Mark picked over one the item already carries asks first. Adjust closes with two cards that each add a fixed layer of their own rather than a look: Mark, a circle, a box, an underline or an arrow drawn round the item, and Blend, how the item lands on what is beneath it. Both stand after the looks, the Mark first, and each card wears a dot while the item carries one. On a video the container also shows time: a layer that is not showing at the playhead's current moment is faded, and the fading follows the playhead as it moves, and pressing another card changes the layer in place — same position, same timing. Where a layer can only ever be one of its kind, pressing its card after + layer tells you so rather than replacing it, and the arrows never move a timewarp, whose place the picture decides. In the Effects menu the automate mark, the layer's automation, stands at the right end of the picked layer's name (the Animate menu carries an Automate card in its strip instead, so a bare clip can reach it). On a clip the Retouch card opens the face retouch first and lands one Retouch layer for each face you pick, following that face. The menu asks before switching over a layer that carries automation, a timewarp among the layers it asks about. A group of clips has the same menus over the group's finished picture, and a drawing has its own.

A clip's band on the timeline is a run of small frames from its footage, each the frame nearest that moment — so a trim, a loop or a speed change shows the frames it actually plays, and zooming in never stretches a frame. While the clip is not selected those frames show the clip as it plays, every effect it carries included; select it and the band goes back to the plain footage while each effect's own row shows the frames wearing that one effect alone, so you can see what each layer adds. Each effect adds a row of its own under the clip's lane — the same kind of band as the clip's, at the same height, named in the column at the left — and those rows slide down out of the clip's lane when the clip is selected, and fold back up into it when you pick something else. An effect does not have to run the whole clip, and one can hand off to another: drag a row's ends to choose when it applies, and put a second effect of the same kind after it — added from the layer stack's +, it starts at the playhead (at the very start it takes a second and nudges the first one along). The stack lists every one the clip carries over time, in the Border menu as much as in Effects — a shape or an edge not showing at the playhead is dimmed, never hidden — so whatever you added is always there to pick and change. Where two effects of one kind meet, the seam becomes a single crossfade — one eases out as the other eases in, a second long unless you change it — and an effect standing alone can fade in or out against nothing from the same two controls. Pulling two effects apart turns the crossfade back into each one's own fade, keeping its length. Two cuts in the Border menu take turns with no fade at all, and two Timewarp effects never overlap: each fades in and out on its own, the plain picture showing between them. Selecting an effect's row does not take the clip's menus away. The tab strip stays exactly where it is: clicking a row opens the menu that effect belongs to — a look under Effects, a cut or an edge under Border — with that layer already picked, so the cards, the stack and the verbs are all about the row you clicked. Where an effect runs and for how long is its row on the timeline; how it fades is the Timing section at the end of its Recipe, where each end gets a fade: how long it takes and, once it has a length, its Ease — Linear, In, Out or In/Out. A seam between two effects has that one length and ease, shared by both, so changing it from either effect changes the other; set it to zero and the change is instant. To have two effects genuinely mix rather than hand off, overlap their windows — both run, each at its own fade weight, and it looks the same when you play it as when you export it. A look's row has an eye at its left: press it to turn that effect off — it stays in place, with its timing and settings intact — and press it again to turn it back on, so you can compare with and without it and never lose what you dialled in.

An effect can sit on one clip or on a group, and they stack in that order. An effect on a clip treats that clip alone. An effect on a group treats the group's finished picture, over the members as they sit together — so warm up one clip, then cool the group it belongs to, and each one does its own job. A clip's effects show as rows under its own lane and a group's under the group's lane once the group is open — a closed group shows nothing beneath it, its own effects included — where you reorder filters by dragging, limit when each applies by dragging its ends, and remove one by removing its row — or by selecting the row and pressing Delete, which removes that effect alone and leaves the clip or group carrying it where it is.

The rows under a clip are named for their layer, and grouped by the menu you edit them in. Each row carries the same name its card shows in that menu's list of layers — VHS, Bulge, Recolor, Rain — and everything from the Effects menu sits together, in the order the picture is built. The other menus that carry rows do the same — Border for the silhouette and its edge, Animate for animations, a drawn path, a speed ramp and anything you set over time — and each menu's rows sit together, in the same order as the tabs along the bottom. A menu with nothing on the timeline simply has no rows.

Grouping never destroys a clip's own effects. They live on the clip, so putting it in a group, taking it out, or ungrouping leaves them exactly as they were. What a group carries is its own, and ungrouping discards that — it is a deliberate take-this-apart step, and undo brings it back. Merging a group that carries effects into another one tells you what it removed, and offers to bake it down to a single clip instead (below) if you would rather keep the picture.

One effect needs a group, and it says so. The Timewarp effects blend frames of a finished picture, which a single clip's own image does not have — so putting one on a lone clip puts that clip in a group of one, and the card you press tells you it is about to. You stay in the clip's own menu while the new group appears on the timeline. Depth no longer needs a group: on a single clip, pick a card in the Effects strip's Depth section and the editor reads the picture's depth on its own — no splicing, nothing to set up — then draws the fog, haze or focus falloff into that clip by how far away each part of it is (while the reading runs, the strip shows progress and the effect appears when it lands; a device that cannot run the reading says so plainly). On a group, a Depth look works from the layers: it paints between the members using the distances you set. Everything else goes straight onto the clip with no group involved.

A group's depth lives with its Depth look. Select a group and its bar reads its name, Effects, Animate, Border and Transform — a Depth look lives under Effects with the other effects, and the first thing in its Recipe is the group's members on one Near-to-Far line. Drag a member along it and two things happen at once: nearer members cover farther ones, and the Depth look treats them by those same distances. There is no separate Depth menu and no separate stacking control to disagree with it.

The Border menu holds a cut and an edge, as on every editor, and each gets its own row on the timeline; a drawing is its own outline, so its strip is Edge alone. The search at the start of its strip reaches the cut shapes and the edges you have starred: a pick lands on the layer you are on, or as a new one at the playhead after + layer, its curves with it.

The Effects strip is one list in sections, sorted by what the effect does to the picture — Adjust, Beauty, Filters, Styles, Distort, Light, Weather, Depth and Timewarp — the same cards on a clip as on a picture, with what each holds on the visual effect page and the time effects on the Timewarp page. Adding one works the same everywhere — a card in the strip, its own row on the timeline, its own settings.

A Beauty or Retouch look you give a face is a row under the clip like the clip's other effects, and it is reordered and removed the same way. Tracking something does not add a row by itself: what you track is saved on the clip as a tracked object rather than drawn as a layer, and masks follow it from Tracking on their own Mask tab.

Following something through the shot — no Track menu, no Track tab

Following a subject is done to one clip's footage, so there is no separate Track surface anywhere. You reach it from whichever thing you actually want: a mask's tracked items list, behind the target at the bottom of its card, whose Add tracked item reads the clip under the playhead; Splice on a clip's Transform tab, whose Face, Body, Object and Plane cuts each follow what you point at, or cut along something the clip already tracked; Retouch and the Beauty cards under the clip's own Effects, which ask which face; and the one that needs no subject, which sits with the clip's own settings — Reframe, beside the flip buttons at the top of the clip's Transform menu. It is one tracker underneath every one of them, and what it reads is saved on the clip as a tracked object until you delete it — a splice's included — so a face you tracked for a mask is already there for a Beauty look, and a second mask can follow it without a second wait. Every one of them lists what the video has tracked in the same way: what it follows now with Remove, then each tracked object with how many things use it, Attach (or Use), and a trash button to delete it — a tracked person with their Face on a row of its own beneath them, the row a face look or a face mask takes; pressing a row outlines that object on the video.

Add — the one place a new thing comes from

Add is a grid of equal tiles: Text, Shape, Emoji and Table put a mark straight onto the video (anything you draw can be tilted in perspective so it sits on a surface in the shot); Freeform puts an empty drawing down, ready to draw into; Image adds your newest picture and 3D Model your newest 3D model, as an object you can restyle, pose and animate in place; Mask puts a mask down in the middle of the frame, following nothing until you ask it to; Video adds your newest video as another clip at the end of the timeline; Audio adds your newest audio as a sound of its own, at the playhead; Captions adds an empty caption at the playhead, ready to type into or to fill from what is said; and Browse opens the places to look for something to add — an upload from your device (a picture, a 3D model, a video, a sound, or an SVG or Lottie file), your artifacts, and Starred and community, a chooser of the items and groups you have starred and the community has posted, by kind, where a pick places the whole thing with its settings on it. What other people have published is in the search on each item's first tab, under Community. Image, 3D Model, Video and Audio add at once: the item's first tab along the bottom is where you swap it for another of yours, and if you have none of that kind yet, Browse opens on its upload instead. Every add closes the menu behind it and hands the new thing back selected, with its settings open along the bottom.

Add only adds. Everything already in your video is on the timeline below, one row each — every clip, drawing, caption and sound — and that is the one place you pick, move, trim, arrange and delete. Picking a drawing opens its settings along the bottom, never back inside this menu.

An SVG or a Lottie file comes in as things you can edit. Upload one from Browse and it lands as ordinary items of the video — shapes, drawings, pictures and text, grouped where the file groups them — selected, in one step Undo takes back. A Lottie lands at the playhead, and what moves in it lands as curves on each item's Automate. Whatever a file holds that items can't, the editor names once, Brought in. Left behind: and the list; a file it can't read says That file isn't one this editor can read.

The bottom bar — the settings of whatever you have selected

Pick a clip, a drawing, a caption, or a sound by its row in the track area below the video, and its settings appear along the bottom of the screen, so you never hunt for a control. There is no menu to choose first — picking the thing IS the choice. Pick nothing and the bar is not there at all; press the tab you are already on, or click the picked thing's own row on the timeline again, and the thing is deselected, which puts the bar away again. The track area always sits clear of the bar, so nothing you are working on is ever covered.

• A clip gives you Video, Effects, Animate, Border and Transform — each described on the clip's page.
• A drawing gives you a first menu named for what it is — Text, Shape, Emoji, Table or Freeform — holding its own look, exactly the same controls as when you draw on an Image (a picture you placed is named Image, and that first menu is where you swap it for another of your pictures); then Effects; Animate for how it enters, leaves and blends and for automating its effects over time; Border; and, last, Transform for its flip, tilt and opacity, and where it sits, how big it is and how far it is turned — a placed picture is a picture as it is on an Image: its Transform also carries Crop and Splice, its Border can cut it to a shape, its Effects hold Weather, Beauty and Depth, and a mask can follow a face in it.
• A mask gives you Mask first — what it draws, with Tracking, what it sits on, beside its style card; then Effects, Animate and Border like any drawing; and, last, Transform, its opacity and where it sits while it follows nothing. A privacy cover has Mask and Transform alone.
• A sound gives you one tab, Audio, the audio it plays — described on the sound's page.
• A caption gives you five tabs — Captions, Effects, Border, Animate and Transform — described on the caption's page.
• An effect row — a grade, a filter, a Depth look, a retouch on a tracked face, a reframe — opens the menu that effect belongs to with that layer already picked, and a reframe opens the clip's Transform tab. The row carries its layer's name, the same one its card shows in that menu. Every row on the timeline opens something; none of them is just a label.
• A group gives you a first menu named for the group — the same Group menu an Image and a Document give a group: one card per member, each a picture of that member exactly as the Layers menu draws it, with the member's own leave-the-group and copy buttons when you select it; and at the right end the same container every effects menu keeps there — Ungroup all and Consolidate as its rows, then, under a thin line, a delete button and the forward and backward arrows, which act on the member you picked or, with none picked, on the whole group. Last comes its Transform: its crop and flip, its own opacity, then where the group sits, how big it is and how far it is turned, as numbers you can type. Its size keeps the group's shape, exactly as dragging a corner of its box does. How the group arrives and leaves is on its Animate menu, and the atmosphere laid over its members — fog, defocus, a lamp, rays or a warm grade — is under Effects ▸ Depth, with the members' Near-to-Far line inside its Recipe. Everything else it carries — the filters, the lens, the scene, the timewarp — is a row under its lane rather than a control in here, so the thing you pick is the thing you edit.

Typing a number. A number you type into a setting — a clip's, a drawing's or a group's Transform settings, a caption's placement — applies once, when you press Enter or leave the field, so nothing changes while you are still typing it. A size you type keeps the point the anchor grid beside Position names where it stands on screen — on a turned item too — and grows or shrinks the box around it. The Up and Down arrow keys step it instead, one unit at a time or ten with Shift held, and each step applies straight away. Each value you type is one undo step, and a run of arrow presses on one field is one undo step too.

Grouping — keep things together without sealing them away

Select several clips and a chip appears offering to group them; press it and they become one group, shown on the timeline as a single row that opens to show its members whenever it or one of them is picked: they slide down out of the group's row, and fold back up into it when it closes. A group holds anything — clips, drawings, captions, and the sounds you link to it — and there is one level of it: grouping a group's members with something else widens the same group rather than making a group inside a group. A mask or a look that follows a subject groups only with the clip that subject is on; picked with other things, it stays out, and a note says so.

Adding one thing to a group, or taking one out. Select the row you want to move and it shows a chain button. Press it, and every row shows where it stands: a row already linked with it shows a bright chain, and every clip or group it can still join shows a dimmer one; press the dim chain on the one it should join — the row joins that group, and joining a group means taking on that group's effects. Doing anything else instead — pressing elsewhere, opening a menu, or pressing Escape — puts the chains away without linking anything. Press the chain on a row that is already in a group and it leaves, landing just above the group it came from. So a group grows and shrinks a row at a time; you never have to ungroup and rebuild one to change what is in it. A group always has at least two rows: when the last-but-one leaves — or is deleted — the group ends, and if it carried effects of its own you're asked whether to move them onto the row that's left or remove them. A group carrying a Timewarp is the exception and stays, since only a group can hold one.

What a group does is move things together. Drag its row sideways and everything in it shifts in time by the same amount, keeping the spacing between the members exactly as you set it. Drag the box drawn around it on the picture and its clips and drawings move across the frame together; drag a corner of that box and the whole group grows or shrinks about its centre, and dragging the rotate button at the start of its row of buttons turns the whole group, settling on the quarter turns as it passes them. A caption in the group comes along too: it moves with the box, and growing or shrinking the group resizes the caption and its text with it. Captions always read level, so when the group turns a caption travels round with it but its words stay upright. The box turns with the group, so a turned group keeps a turned box with its handles on its own corners, fitting snugly around what the group holds at that angle rather than a level box that grows around it. A freehand drawing in the group travels with it through every move, turn and resize, and growing or shrinking the group also scales the line widths and text sizes of the drawings in it, so each mark keeps its weight. Growing a group keeps its shape — the corners resize it evenly rather than stretching it one way — because members that have been turned cannot be squashed along one axis without skewing them. Everything inside stays an ordinary thing the whole time — click any member and you get its own settings, trim it, re-time it, give it its own effects, exactly as if it had never been grouped. That is the difference from sealing a set of clips into one: nothing is hidden, so nothing has to be un-grouped first to be edited.

A group moves through the stacking order as one piece. Something outside a group never ends up between its members: drag a loose row, or a folded group, in among an open group's rows and it lands above or below the whole group, whichever edge is nearer. A member row dragged within its group stays inside that group. The layer moves at the bottom of the ⋯ More menu above a selected item on the picture step past a whole group at a time, on a group as well as on anything else, and a move that would change nothing is dimmed.

A sound can be linked to a group as well as to a single clip, and it then follows the group's start — so shifting the group in time carries the sound with it. Ungroup on the group's settings leaves every member where it is, un-grouped; a sound linked to the group stays where it is and links to the earliest clip that was in it. Picking a group and pressing Delete removes it and everything in it in one step — the sounds linked to it included — which you can undo in one step too — the one case it refuses is a group holding every clip in the video, since a video always keeps at least one; ungroup it and delete the rows individually to go that far.

Consolidate — turn a finished group into one piece of footage. The group's first menu offers Consolidate. It renders the group exactly as it plays — every member, every effect, the timewarp, the way it arrives and leaves, its transparency, and anything pulsing in time with a sound — into a single new piece of footage, and puts that in place of the group. From then on it behaves like any other clip: drag it, trim it, group it with something else, put fresh effects on it. It keeps its transparency too, so a group with a hole cut through it still shows what is behind it once flattened. It is rendered from your original footage at the frame rate of the fastest clip inside it — 60 frames a second for 60 fps footage — so it looks the same in a 60 fps export as the group did.

A group whose look depends on the picture behind it cannot be flattened, because a single clip carries no picture behind it: a group with a Depth look, a group holding a blur or a privacy cover, a group with an edge treatment that darkens or tints what is behind it, a group that arrives or leaves by blending with what is behind it, or a group whose Blend lands it on what is behind it. For such a group, the menu shows the reason in place of Consolidate.

Use it when a group is finished and you want it to stop being a stack of parts — it also gives you a way to put one effect over an arbitrary set of rows, by flattening first and then grouping the result with whatever else you like. It takes a moment to render, and the button shows how far along it is; nothing on your timeline changes until the new footage exists, so a render that fails costs you nothing but the press. Undo is the way back — there is no button that un-flattens it later, so flatten when you are happy with how the group looks.

Closing any of these closes the bar. Nothing appears underneath it: the clip stays picked and its rows stay open, so the thing you just closed is still in front of you, and clicking any row or tab opens the next one.

Settings that belong to the whole video rather than to any one thing — aspect ratio, background, the view's zoom range, the alignment grid and the safe zone guide — are the Canvas menu at the top, beside Add: the same menu an Image has, plus the safe zone. It is four rows, each split into sections you press to open in place, the way the grid's are: Canvas shows the shape (press it to see every shape and pick one) beside Background and its colour; Zoom shows how far the view may travel, beside Default, where Reset Zoom lands — exactly as on an Image; Safe zone comes next — its switch, then its Layout; and Grid is its switch, with its Snap, Format and Color settings opening in place beside it once it is on. Export quality is not in here: it is asked for when you export, in the Export dialog, for the whole video. Background is what shows wherever nothing is drawn, and it works exactly as it does on an Image: a new video is transparent, which the editor shows as a dark grey checkerboard — the same one the Image editor uses — and picking a colour fills those areas instead; the swatch's Transparent background control clears it again. An MP4 cannot be transparent, so a transparent video exports black there and a coloured one exports in its colour. Dragging through colours in the picker is one step of Undo. The Canvas section offers four shapes — 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 and 4:3. Custom…, the last choice, opens a small menu over the video where you type any shape as two numbers — 4 : 5, 21 : 9, or a size like 1080 : 1350 — from 1:3 (tall) to 3:1 (wide); Done applies it and the section then reads Custom 4:5, Cancel leaves the frame as it was. A shape that is really one of the four named ones becomes that one. A video whose frame took its shape from its first clip, and that matches none of the four, shows its shape the same way.

There is nothing in that menu to tune for smoothness or frame rate, and that is deliberate. The editor plays every video at 30 frames a second, whatever its footage, and how much decoding and background rendering your device does at any moment is MotherFluxer's job to work out, not a setting to hand you. Footage recorded faster keeps every frame it has: the export starts on your footage's own rate (see Export to MP4 below), and a group you consolidate, a moving 3D object and the copy people watch when you share the video are all made at it too. The render caches on your device look after themselves as well: they are capped, the oldest work goes first, and there is nothing for you to clear.

The video's own settings

A video's frame shape stands in its Canvas menu and its master volume on the transport. Its Background is the same setting a picture's is, listed with an Image's own settings.

Canvas

• Canvas — The shape of the video's frame, its width to its height: its size follows from the shape, and every item is placed again in it.

Master volume

• Master volume — How loud the video plays its whole soundtrack, from silent to twice its level.

Work with timeline rows

Every row on the timeline says what it is in the column on its left. That column has four places, lined up under the four buttons of the play bar, and each place always means the same thing. The first is the row's picture: a clip, a drawing, a caption or a sound shows the same picture as its tile in the Add menu, and a group shows a chain. The second is the link, shown only on a picked row or while you are choosing what to link. The third is Duplicate on a picked row, and a lock on a locked one. The fourth is the eye (on a sound, its speaker) on a picked row, and a crossed-out eye or a quiet speaker on a hidden or muted one. A lock, a hidden eye or a muted speaker on a row you haven't picked is drawn dimmer, the way an unpicked button is. An effect row shows its name instead of a picture, and an effect row under the thing it treats steps in a little, so you can see at a glance what belongs to what.

Every band shows what it is. A clip's band shows its frames, a caption's its words, a sound's its wave, a mark's its own picture, and a group's the group's members together, as it plays. An effect row shows the thing it sits on wearing that one effect alone, whether that is a clip, a mark, a caption, a group or the whole video, and a Depth look's row shows one frame wearing it. A motion's row shows a small apple doing that motion, the same apple on every row so you can compare them, and a motion path's row shows the apple travelling along its path. A number that changes over time draws as its curve, and one following a sound draws that sound rising and falling. A reframe row shows the camera's window with the rest dimmed, and a speed change shows the frames it actually plays with its curve over them. These pictures are made while the timeline is at rest, so playing, scrubbing and dragging never wait for them.

The playhead fades over anything switched off. It runs as one line down the rows, solid everywhere except over a hidden item, a muted sound, an effect turned off, and everything under a hidden item or group.

Picking a row draws a thin blue box around what you opened: a clip together with its effect rows, a sound, or a whole group — and the box stays on the group while you pick its members. The row you're working on lights up and its track glows; everything outside the box dims, so the rest of your timeline stays in view but quiet. Pick several things and their boxes turn amber. Press Escape — from a member of a group, once to step back out to the group and once more — or click an empty part of the picture, to pick nothing, and nothing is dimmed.

A picked row's tools stand in their places beside its picture — the link, Duplicate, then the eye or speaker — and on an effect row in place of its name.

• Duplicate puts a copy directly above the original, named with "(copy)", and picks it. A clip's copy brings its own sound along; a sound's copy gets its own copy of the audio, so changing one never changes the other; a group's copy copies everything in it. A copied drawing lands a little down and to the right of the original so you can see it. Cmd+D (Ctrl+D on Windows) duplicates the picked clip, drawing, caption or group the same way. On an effect row, Duplicate shows where that kind of effect can stack. A clip's own sound has no Duplicate of its own — it is copied with its clip.
• To delete: a clip, drawing or caption from the buttons above its box or with the Delete key, a sound from the bin on its card in its Audio menu or with the Delete key, and an effect from its menu or with the Delete key.

Dragging a handle shows where it is. A picked track carries a handle at each end. While you drag one, the time at that end and the track's new length show beside the handle, then fade when you let go — and while the video is paused, the playhead follows the handle, so the picture shows the frame it stands on.

Pull a handle out to make a track longer; pull it in to cut. Dragging either end of a clip, drawing, caption or sound outward lengthens it at once. Dragging it inward changes nothing yet: the handle stays where you let go, and a pair of scissors appears in each part. Press the scissors in the part a handle crossed to trim that end away — the rest stays exactly where it is in time. Press the scissors in the middle to cut out what lies between the handles: the part after slides back to close the gap and becomes a piece of its own, on its own row just above. Pull both handles in to mark a stretch in the middle, then cut it out the same way. You can drag a waiting handle again before you cut, and the handles stay where you left them for as long as the item stays picked — play the video to check, then cut. Pressing Escape, picking something else or nothing, or moving the item itself puts the handles back without cutting. On the picked clip or sound, an end that has reached the very first or last frame of its footage or audio stops there — there is nothing more to pull out. A caption made from a sound has no handles to cut with — its words follow the sound.

Trimming a clip's start keeps your effects where they were. Cut a clip's start away and everything you set on it — a windowed effect, a moving path, an automated setting, a speed change — stays on the same moment of the footage, the way professional editors work. Anything that sat entirely inside the part you cut away goes with it, and Undo brings it back. When you cut out the middle, each part keeps exactly the effects and animation that were on its own footage.

Hide something without deleting it

Every row on the timeline that draws picture — a clip, a drawing, a caption, or a whole group — has an eye button: it sits at the end of the row's name when the row is picked, and stays there while the row is hidden. Press it and that thing is hidden: it leaves the picture and the export together, so what plays on screen is always exactly what an export would contain. The row dims and stays on the timeline, and everything about it still works — select it, rename it, drag it, trim it, change its settings — so hiding is a way to watch the video without something, never a step toward losing it. Press the eye again and it is back exactly as it was.

A hidden thing never shows anywhere, the way hidden layers work in design apps. Clicking the picture where it sits reaches whatever is visible beneath it instead, so the one way to pick it is its row on the timeline. Picked there, it shows only its outline and handles, which still move and resize it, while its own picture stays hidden — even when you expand it to fill the display, and even with a 3D object's menu open. A hidden text shows no typing cursor either; show it again to change its words.

A group's eye hides the whole group in one press, and it remembers: members you had hidden individually stay hidden when you show the group again, and the ones that were showing come back — the group's switch and each member's switch are their own.

Picture and sound are separate switches. Hiding a clip leaves its sound playing, the same way the pro editors keep the two apart. A sound is heard rather than seen, so its row carries a speaker where a picture's carries an eye: press it for that sound's volume — a slider for its own level, and beside it a speaker switch. Switched off, the sound drops out of what you hear and out of the export, and stays on the timeline, its speaker dimmed, until you switch it back on. A clip's own sound has its own row and speaker, so it is set the same way, and the speaker on the play bar sets the whole video's level.

Hiding also lightens the work while you edit: a hidden clip is not decoded or prepared in the background, so hiding heavy tracks you are not working on can make a busy video play more smoothly. And each press of the eye is one Undo step, like any other edit.

See everything at once

The picture normally shows one moment of your video — whatever is on screen at the playhead. The layout view shows every clip, drawing and caption at once, each where it starts, so you can arrange things that never appear together in time. Press the stacked-layers button on the play bar (beside the volume) to open it: the time reel and the cursor disappear from the play bar, and in their place one row reads "View all first frames", with Exit beside it. Every item shows at its own first moment — a clip at its first frame, a moving item at the start of its path, arrivals and fades left out so nothing is faint or half-size. Press the row to step every item on: to its mid frame — the middle of its life, past its arrival and before it leaves — then its last, then back to its first. Everything else works as usual: select things, drag and resize them, change their settings; the tracks below stay as they are. A hidden item stays hidden here too.

A selected clip, drawing or caption can be turned another way from the rest in its ⋯ More menu while the layout view is on: Show mid, Show end and Show start each move it on to that moment of its own life; a group has none, since it has no single first or last frame. Shown at its middle or its end, its box turns red so you can tell at a glance which items are shown another way. While any item is, the row's word dims, and its next press puts every item back on the row's moment before it steps on. The choice is kept per item for as long as the video is open, so you can leave the view and come back to the same picture; it is never saved into the video.

Press Exit, press play, or press Escape with nothing selected, and the picture goes back to the normal time view with the playhead exactly where you left it. Playing always returns to the normal view, because a view of everything at once has no moment to play. Expanding one item also leaves the layout view, and opening the layout view ends an expand — the picture shows one or the other, never both.

Your edits are saved as you work

Your timeline is saved a moment after you pause, so you don't have to close the editor to keep a change. The video's sound is mixed separately, in the background: after each save that changes a sound — where it plays, which part, how loud, whether it is muted — and after a sound you changed in the audio editor finishes mixing. What you hear catches up a moment later; until then you hear the previous mix.

If the same Video was changed somewhere else while you had it open — another tab, another device, or someone you share it with — MotherFluxer combines the two: what you changed and what they changed both stay, and where you both changed the same clip, drawing or caption, the version on your screen is kept. If the two can't be combined, the editor stops saving instead of writing over that work and tells you the Video was edited elsewhere, with Reload to pull in the newer version.

How your edits play back

Play always plays. Press it and the video starts on the moment you are sitting at — there is no pause while anything is prepared, and the picture never goes dark waiting. If a stretch is still being made smooth, it plays a little rougher and then tidies itself up as it goes, with the sound running the whole time.

Most edits show instantly as you work, and that includes every look: a filter, a warp, a weather or a grade is on the picture the moment you pick it or move one of its settings, with nothing to prepare and nothing to wait for. Moving, resizing, trimming, opacity, layer order and animation need nothing either.

A few things change the footage itself, and those are prepared in the background: smooth slow motion from a speed ramp, stabilization, a Depth look on a single clip, and a group's trail effect. While one is being prepared the editor tells you on the item itself (see Knowing what is ready below). Pause, and a still frame shows the finished result anyway, drawn exactly the way your export will draw it — stabilization is the one that waits either way, until its analysis finishes.

On a device that can't keep up with an expensive look while the video plays, the editor prepares that clip quietly in the background. It decides this by measuring, never by guessing: a device that keeps pace never prepares a look at all. The picture on screen is already the right one, so nothing tells you it is happening — playback simply gets smoother.

The paused picture is the export's picture. When you stop — pause, or let go of a control — the frame sharpens within a moment to exactly what your exported file will show at that moment, drawn at your screen's full sharpness. While the video plays or you drag, it shows a lighter version so playback stays smooth.

On a slower device, the moving picture can drop a size to keep up. If the video can't keep pace while it plays or while you drag, the editor draws the moving picture at a smaller size — the same picture, a little softer — and goes back to full size as soon as it can. Nothing on screen announces it. A paused frame is always full sharpness, and your export is never affected. There is no setting for this: the editor adjusts on its own, and a device that keeps up never sees it.

A clip you add shows straight away. A video you bring in from your device plays in the editor while it is still uploading — the editor reads the file you picked directly, so you can start working on it at once.

HDR footage keeps its highlights on an HDR screen. When the editor reads a clip as HDR and your screen is an HDR screen, the preview shows its light above white — as bright as an HDR export of it holds, and never brighter. On a standard screen you see the same picture toned to fit. Safari reads every HDR clip as standard range, and so does Chrome for an HDR clip stored as HEVC; those clips edit, preview and export in standard range.

Knowing what is ready

What is still being prepared says so on the item itself. While a clip, a drawing or a group has work running on it, its track on the timeline reads N% complete at its left end, with a white bar filling along the bottom of the track to the same share. That one number covers everything the item is owed, counted from the moment you make the edit, so it climbs once and doesn't start over; it only falls if you add more work to the item. While the item can't play yet — its upload, its playback copy or a reversed copy is still on the way, or, while the video plays, one of the background effects above is still being prepared — a spinning circle sits in the middle of it on the picture. Both disappear the moment it is ready. A look that can draw straight away shows neither: it is on the picture already. A Depth look shows the number while the clip's distances are read and its file is made. Turning Reverse off while the reversed copy is being made cancels it.

If preparing a clip fails, a message at the centre of the screen says what went wrong with the one thing that fixes it: Try again when the clip's playback copy couldn't be made, Remove when a reversed copy or a rendered clip couldn't be. If an effect couldn't be finished, the message says so once with Try again, and the picture stays as it is until you press it or change the item. Every error in an editor appears there, and each one can be closed; a confirmation that something you did worked shows there too, and goes away by itself after a few seconds. Nothing here asks you to wait.

Zoom and pan the picture

Zoom into the video's picture with the mouse wheel, or on a phone or tablet by spreading two fingers apart and bringing them together. The point under the pointer — or between your fingers — stays where it is while the picture grows or shrinks around it, so you zoom straight into the detail you are looking at, the same way an Image zooms. Keep both fingers down and drag to pan. At the fitted size or smaller, the picture stays centred.

The Zoom row in the Canvas menu sets how far the view may go, and the reset button in the top bar takes it back to its Default. Zooming changes only your view: the video and its export stay exactly as they are.

Line things up with the grid

The Canvas menu at the top carries a Grid row that lays a grid of guide lines over the picture and has things line up to it. It has four parts side by side: Grid (press it to turn the lines on and off), Snap (Off, Soft or Hard), Format (the lines' gap and weight) and Color (the lines' colours); Snap, Format and Color are greyed out while the grid is off. Pressing one opens it in its place with an ✕ at its end, while the others shrink to their names. It is the same grid, and the same settings, as the one in an Image's Canvas menu.

Clips line up to it too. Drag a clip, or one of its resize handles, with the grid on and its edges settle onto the lines the same way a drawing's do; turning a clip never snaps, because an angle has no line to land on. Hold Command (or Control on Windows) while dragging to ignore the grid for that one movement. From the keyboard, with the snap set to Hard, an arrow key moves the focused clip a whole square at a time and puts it on the line.

The Canvas menu also has a Safe zone row. Press Safe zone to turn it On, and the picture outlines where a phone app's own buttons and text cover a video, so you can keep captions and faces clear of them; press it again to turn it Off. Layout picks the app — open it to choose TikTok, Reels or Shorts. It is greyed out while the safe zone is off and remembers your pick for the next time you turn it on. A video that is not tall is shown as that app would fit it on a phone's screen. It is only a guide — it never appears in an export.

The grid is remembered for each Video on its own, and so are the Safe zone and the Zoom range. Every Video starts with the grid off, the safe zone off and the zoom range at its default; once you change any of them on a Video, it is there exactly as you left it the next time you open that Video — through every new version too — while Videos you never changed them on keep the defaults. All three are yours rather than part of the video: someone you share the Video with has their own, and none appears in anything you export.

Timeline transport

The timeline gives you full playback control while you edit:

• Play / Pause — one button runs your edit and pauses it exactly where you want to work, because the playhead stays on the moment you paused at. When playback reaches the end, the playhead goes back to the start, ready to replay.
• Back to start — beside play, takes the playhead to the start of what the timeline shows, playing on if it was playing. It is there only while the playhead is away from that start.
• Scrub — drag the playhead to jump to any moment.
• Zoom — narrow the timeline to the stretch you're working on, or open it back out to the whole video.

The transport, the time markings and the zoom control all share one slim bar at the top of the timeline, directly under the picture, so the lanes beneath it keep the height instead. Zooming in is a drag: a small handle sits at each end of that bar, and pulling one inward narrows the timeline to the stretch between them; while the video is paused, the playhead follows the handle you hold. Once you're zoomed in, that stretch is marked at both ends and you can drag it along to move your window through the video without changing how much of it you see. Playback stays inside the stretch you've zoomed to, so pressing play checks the part you're actually working on. To see the whole video again, press the reset target in the middle of the zoomed stretch, or pull the handles back out to the ends.

Use the transport to check every change in context before you commit to it.

Undo and Redo

Every edit is reversible:

• Undo — step back through your recent changes.
• Redo — reapply a change you undid.

A number you type into a field counts as one step, and so does a run of arrow-key presses on the same field. While a 3D model's tabs are open, Undo and Redo still take your changes back newest first, to the model and to the rest of the video alike.

Edit boldly — you can always walk a change back.

Export to MP4

When your Video is ready to leave MotherFluxer, open File, the last menu on the left of the editor's top bar, and press Export, then Download (Video, once a caption holds words). The Export video dialog opens; MP4 is the only format, so there is no format to pick — what the dialog asks you for is:

• Output resolution — Source to keep your largest clip's own resolution, or one of the smaller sizes offered (720p, 1080p, 4K and so on). Each size names the picture's shorter side, whichever way it faces: 1080p is 1920×1080 for a landscape video and 1080×1920 for an upright one. Only sizes below your largest clip are offered, so an export is never scaled up.
• Frame rate — plain numbers, up to your fastest clip's own rate and in its family: a video of 30 fps clips offers 24 and 30, and one holding a 60 fps clip offers 24, 30 and 60. It starts on the fastest clip's rate and is remembered for each Video. A phone clip recorded at 29.97 frames a second shows as 30 and keeps its exact rate, so its timing never drifts. Trails and blends from the Timewarp effects last as long in the export as they did in the editor, whichever rate you pick.
• Export a range only — optional. Give a start and an end and only that stretch is exported; leave it off and you get the whole video.
• Dynamic range — only for an HDR video that this browser can export as HDR: Standard (SDR) or an HDR file. Where the browser can write an HDR file that plays wherever HDR video plays, the choice reads HDR and starts on it. Where the only HDR file it can write is the web kind, it reads HDR (web/YouTube) beside Standard (SDR), which stays the starting choice, and choosing it notes Plays in Chrome and on YouTube. iPhone Photos and QuickTime won’t play this file.

Then press Export. Your Video renders right on your device and downloads as a finished MP4 named after your Video — there's no separate server step and no temporary link to expire. A longer, larger or higher-frame-rate Video takes a little longer to render, so leave the dialog open while it works, then save the MP4 when it's ready. If something makes the export impossible right now — a clip still being prepared, sound still rendering, a 3D object still being redrawn, or a size your device's encoder cannot manage at the frame rate you picked — the button tells you which of those it is instead of failing part-way through. Opening the dialog closes an open 3D object's menu, so a change you made there is redrawn first and lands in the file.

Add to an App…, beside Download in the same list, sends the finished MP4 into one of your Apps' Assets instead of downloading it — up to 150 MB, the most an App holds for one video.

When people watch your Video without downloading it — on its card in a chat, or on a page you share — they see a copy made at the same frame rate the export starts on: the rate of your fastest clip, up to 60 frames a second.

There is no Dynamic range choice in Safari, or anywhere the browser cannot write an HDR file: there an HDR video exports in standard range, and so does an HDR clip stored as HEVC in Chrome, which edits as standard range to begin with. Whenever an HDR clip goes into a standard-range export, the dialog says so before you start — One of your clips is HDR — this export is standard range (SDR), so its brightest highlights are toned down. — and nothing else about the export changes. Footage with extra colour depth that is not HDR gets no notice.

A video export is taking a while

Videos render right on your device when you export them, so a long or high-resolution Video can take a little while to finish — that's the render working, not a failure.

• Give it a moment. Let the export finish rather than starting it over.
• Bigger or higher-resolution Videos naturally take longer.
• When it's done, the finished MP4 downloads straight to your device.

A slow export is usually just the render working, not a failure.