When working in Grid mode with material recorded to a click, dropping new clips into your session in time is easy. When editing material which doesn’t have a meaningful grid to quantize to, things aren’t as easy but they are still very simple. A really easy way to drop clips to the right place is to position your cursor and then use these shortcuts to place them at the cursor.

What Is The Insertion Point?

For most people the Insertion Point and the Playback Cursor are the same thing. If you have your Timeline and Edit selections linked then they move together and are effectively the same thing but if they are unlinked then this stops happening. To find out more read this article on the difference.

Placing The Insertion Point

To locate the right place to which to move your clip, placing visually or by ear by stopping playback at the right time, tabbing between clip boundaries or transients or even dropping a marker will all work.

The Shortcuts

These shortcuts snap the clip to the Insertion Point or the Edit selection boundaries.

These are demonstrated by dragging from the clips list but they work with clips already on the timeline too:

• Constrain Clip placement to start at play/edit cursor location or selection start - Control drag from clips list or control click for clip on timeline, On a PC substitute Control for Start.

• Constrain Clip placement to end at play/edit cursor location or selection end - Control+Command drag from clips list or control+command click for clip on timeline. On a PC substitute Control for Start and Command for Control.

Watch the free video tutorial to see these in use. If you want to jump start your shortcuts knowledge in Pro Tools have you considered a shortcuts keyboard like the ones available from Editors Keys?