# Placeholders

> Named stand-ins for footage to come, replacing and filling them, Edit Range, and how templates come from them.

## Add a placeholder

Press ⇧⌘P, choose Clip › Add Placeholder, pick Add Placeholder in a track header's menu, or right-click empty track space and choose Add Placeholder Here. A 3-second placeholder lands at the playhead on the active video or audio track. They are named Placeholder, Placeholder 2 and so on.

On a video track a placeholder plays as a black plate with its name, in the viewer and in exports. On an audio track it is silent. Trim, move, split, copy and duplicate it like any clip. It can be stretched to an hour.

## The sidebar

Select a placeholder and the sidebar shows its name, a preview plate, and Details: duration, timeline range, and whether its track is magnetic or free. Edit the name at the top.

## Replace it with a file

Three ways:

- Replace with video or photo… (or Replace with audio…) in the sidebar.
- Replace with File… in the placeholder's right-click menu.
- Drop one file onto it in the timeline. Only a single file dropped on a placeholder replaces; a file dropped on a real clip never does.

The file takes the placeholder's spot and length, playing from its own start. If the file is shorter the app asks: **Use** its own length, **Fill the Rest** with a new placeholder, or **Cancel**.

## Replace it with a clip

Drag a clip already on the timeline through the middle of a placeholder. The placeholder lights up. Let go and the clip takes the placeholder's spot and length, bringing its own in and out points, level and placement, and leaves its old spot. The outer fifths of the placeholder still mean "reorder beside it". A shorter clip gets the same choices as a shorter file.

## Replace any clip

Replace with File… in a clip's right-click menu, or Replace… in its sidebar, swaps the file behind a real clip too. The app confirms first: "Replace “x” with “y”?" A shorter file asks whether to keep its own length or fill the rest with a placeholder.

## Edit Range

Edit Range… (sidebar, right-click menu, or `clip-slip` on the command line) slides which part of a file a clip plays without moving the clip. The sheet shows the whole file as a strip with a window the clip's length. Drag the window along it and click Done.

## Templates

A template is a plain JSON description of a video without its footage: `video` and `audio` segments with a name, start, duration and notes, `texts` with their words, timing, favorite and position, plus a `name` and `notes`. Video segments become named placeholders in order on the first video track, audio segments placeholders on the first audio track, and texts text clips.

- File › Import Template… starts a project from a template file.
- `template` on the command line prints the open project as one; `template-import` reads one.
- [Clone Reel](https://docs.usebetterapps.com/betteredits/clone-reel) writes one from a reel and keeps it in the project folder as `template.json`.

> **A shot list you can edit**
>
> Name placeholders after what goes there ("Talking head: hook line", "B-roll: hands typing"). Claude Code reads those names through `timeline`, and the names come back in the template.