Let's say you are in the middle of the music video example from above, and you want to roll an edit point, but the second clip is at its first frame, without a handle. The Slip Tool can help. This tool moves the in-point and out-point of a single clip without altering the duration of the clip or the entire piece. Say you need a full second or thirty frames of handle at the beginning of your clip to make this rolling edit. Select the Slip Tool, hover over the middle of the clip you are affecting, click and drag to the left. Watch the time window, so you know you have moved exactly 30 frames (one second).

As you slip the clip thirty frames or one second to the left, also keep an eye on your Canvas window (also known as the Program window, the window which shows video from the timeline). That's where you will now see a split screen showing both your in-point frame and out-point frame. This split screen will help you make sure no unwanted frames slip into the piece. Very efficient.

The Slide Tool is kind of the opposite of the Slip Tool. As with the Slip Tool, the duration of the entire piece remains constant, as well as the duration of the individual clip you are altering. What changes is the out-point of the clip to the left and the in-point of the clip to the right. From our example above, say you have a five-second piece of B roll between two pieces of video of the band playing. That five seconds of B roll works well with the overall rhythm, but there is too little footage of the band playing before this roll and too much after the five-second clip. To quickly solve this problem, select the Slide Tool and click and drag on the five-second clip, moving it to the right. The band clip to the left gets longer, the band clip to the right becomes smaller, the five-second piece of B roll stays the same and the entire length of the clip remains unchanged.

Using these four tools will take some getting used to. You'll need to engage the cerebral cortex at first, but, with practice, they will soon become second nature. Your editing workflow will be more efficient, leaving you time to work on your Academy Award acceptance speech for Best Editing.

Contributing editor Morgan Paar is a nomadic producer, shooter and editor, making documentaries worldwide.