Scrubbing

You can use scrubbing to scroll playback of your project at varying speeds.

Choose a setting from the JKL / shuttle speed drop-down list on the Editing tab of the Preferences dialog to control the scrub speed and range when you scrub with the JKL keys or with a multimedia controller. For more information, see Using a multimedia controller

Scrubbing with the playhead

Drag the playhead above the timeline to shuttle forward or backward from the cursor position to find an edit point.

TIP

  • Hold Alt, click the ruler, and drag to move the cursor to the position you clicked and scrub in the direction you drag.

  • Hold Ctrl while dragging (or drag while holding the right mouse button) to find audio when you're zoomed out. The cursor moves in larger steps than with a regular drag.

  • Hold Ctrl+Alt while dragging to scrub video only.

  • Zoom in or out to adjust the scrub sensitivity. For more information, see Zooming and magnification

Using the scrub control in the track list

Drag the scrub control to shuttle forward or backward from the cursor position to find an edit point.

You can drag the Normal Rate indicator below the scrub control (or double-click the label to type a playback rate) to adjust playback speed when you click the Play or Play from Start button.

Scrubbing with the cursor

  1. Hover over the cursor in an area of the timeline that does not contain an event and press Ctrl. The mouse pointer is displayed as a .

    NOTE When the Allow Ctrl+drag cursor style scrub over events checkbox on the General tab of the Preferences dialog is selected, you can scrub with the mouse even when the cursor is over an event.

  2. Drag left or right to scrub playback.

Scrubbing with the keyboard

Press the J, K, or L keys to use the keyboard as a scrub control.

TIP Press and hold K while pressing J or L to emulate a shuttle knob mode. Press K+J to turn the knob to the left or K+L to turn the knob to the right.

Item

Description

J

Scrub reverse mode. Press again to accelerate the playback rate.

K

Pause.

L

Scrub forward mode. Press again to accelerate the playback rate.