OpenFrame is a desktop-first video editor in active development (named "Video Editor" until 2026-10-17).

Get the editor

The source is public at github.com/gAlexander77/openframe; there is no packaged release yet. Follow the root README's source setup and run npm run tauri dev in the openframe-application folder. Node.js/npm, Rust, and the platform's Tauri prerequisites are required. Install FFmpeg and ffprobe on PATH for the desktop's broader media-format support. OPENFRAME_FFMPEG points the app at another FFmpeg (the older VIDEO_EDITOR_FFMPEG still works).

Use npm run dev to try the secondary browser build at http://localhost:1420. Browser support and codecs vary by device; desktop is the development priority. Read Features for the current feature map and Roadmap for what is still planned.

Make your first edit

On desktop, drag any noninteractive part of the top header to move the window, including the logo, save status and spaces between controls. Double-click the same areas to maximize the window; double-click again to restore its previous size. Menus, project renaming and buttons keep their normal actions. The maximize button changes to a Restore button while the window is maximized. Clicking a window control keeps your typing focus, so resizing does not submit an unfinished project rename.

On the home screen, create a project and choose a canvas preset if you know the destination format. Otherwise, the first clip can establish the canvas size and frame rate on an empty timeline.
Import your own video, audio, or images with the media picker or by dropping files into the app. Dropping onto the timeline also places them. What a file is comes from the file itself: its extension, or its contents when its name has none. A file that cannot be imported says why.
Arrange clips on the timeline. Drag to move them, drag an edge to trim, and use the toolbar or context menu to split. The magnet keeps the main track gapless; snapping helps align edits, and linkage makes overlays follow their shots through ripples.
Select a clip to adjust its visual or audio properties in the inspector. Add text or captions as needed. Double-click a title or caption in the viewer to edit its text on the canvas. Undo is available for edits.
Play the timeline and review the picture and sound, check it (the library's Check tab, below), then open Export. Choose from the formats and codecs the current platform can encode. Select the output destination when offered, or use Download when the browser's export workflow provides it. Play the exported file to check it.

In the inspector, one drag of a slider (or holding an arrow key on it) is one Undo step, and so is dragging in a color picker. A typed value applies when you press Enter or leave the field, including by clicking another clip; Escape puts the old value back. An empty or non-numeric entry changes nothing, and a decimal comma works ("1,5" is 1.5). Sections stay open or closed as you left them, across clips and reloads. A section with a switch in its header (Border, Shadow, Colorize, a title's Glow) opens when you switch it on, so its settings show.

The inspector fits any width its splitter gives it. Narrower than about 340 px, each slider takes a line of its own, with its keyframe buttons, under its label and number; a choice that no longer fits beside its label (the audio channels, the reverb presets, a color) moves under the label instead of wrapping in place. A long name in a list (a LUT, a font, a logo) ends in "…" and shows in full when you point at it. A number shows as many decimals as its slider moves by (a letterbox ratio of 2.39:1 reads 2.39). The easing menu opens above its button when there is no room below.

In a clip's Animation tab, each preset tile pictures its motion: the layer where it settles and a dashed outline where it starts (In), ends (Out) or swings to (loops); hover a tile to see it move. Picking one plays that part of the clip once in the viewer, silently, and stops.

A title template (Text tab) lands on rows of its own above your footage, never on a B-roll row, and its layers are grouped: they select and move together. Alt+click one layer to edit it alone.

Export presets name where the video goes. TikTok, Reels and Shorts is made for a 9:16 canvas; on another shape the dialog says what size will be exported (a 16:9 project stays 1920×1080) and offers Make the canvas 9:16. The canvas changes only when you click it, and Undo restores it. When a mix is normalized to its loudness target, the finished export says so in green; an amber note means something did not go as asked.

For the sound alone, turn Video off and choose MP3, AAC (M4A) or WAV, or pick the Audio only (MP3) preset. When the project has captions, the Captions row decides what becomes of them: burned into the picture (as you see them), an SRT file beside it for YouTube and other sites that take one (the picture stays clean), both, or none. The SRT matches the exported range. The desktop app saves it next to the video with the same name; the browser version downloads it.

Under the player, the outer buttons jump to the start and the end of the timeline, and the inner ones step a frame. Drag the playhead along the ruler to hear short snippets of the sound under it, to find a word or a beat by ear; turn this off in Preferences under Playback. The gear at the top right opens Preferences (also on Home); the keyboard beside it lists the shortcuts. The app's shortcut panel is the source for the current keyboard bindings. Features explains the deeper trim, color, keyframe, and audio tools.

File → New project saves the current project and creates a new one. A new project is kept once you do something in it: create a project and go back to Home straight away, and no empty project is left behind. File → Open project saves the current project, returns to Home and focuses Search projects; select a saved project card to reopen it. Open also focuses search when you are already on Home. The project shortcuts shown in the shortcut panel use these same actions. Home ignores editing/playback shortcuts so they cannot change a closed project.

If saving fails, New, Open and Back to home keep the current project open with its edits. Resolve the storage problem and retry; a failed save does not show a successful-save notification.

Edits made while a save is running are saved before navigation completes. While a project is opening or the old one is being saved for a switch, repeated navigation requests are ignored. Home shows Opening project… and disables creation/deletion during loading; retry after it finishes. A focused project card opens with Enter or Space; its Delete button never opens it. Right-click a card for Open, Rename…, Duplicate and Delete. List view, beside Search projects, shows each project as a row with its canvas size, length and last edit; Home remembers which view you chose.

Deleting a project moves it to Recently deleted at the bottom of Home, and the notice that says so has Undo. A deleted project waits there for 30 days: open the section to Restore it (it returns to its place) or Delete forever (click twice; this cannot be undone). After 30 days it is deleted for good. Your media files are never deleted.

Closing or switching projects cancels unfinished captions/analysis and discards late import results. Reopening the same project starts a new session; restart unfinished work there. A movie export already in progress may finish from its original project snapshot.

Choose File → Save a copy…, give the version a name, and choose whether to open it after saving. The original saves first and remains independent: later edits to either version do not change the other. Both reference the same footage, so keep those media files available. A project copy is not a backup of the footage. Save errors keep the dialog open for retry.

Find and reuse imported media

In Media, combine Search media with All types, All usage and All folders to find video, audio, images, used or unused files, or one folder's files; the heart beside the view buttons shows Favorites only. Clear filters shows all imports again. Audio uses the same browsing controls but only shows audio files. Stickers remain in their separate tab. Before anything is imported, the tab shows only Import (and Record).

In a narrow or short library (a small window, the library splitter pulled in, or the AI assistant open beside the editor) the tabs show their icons alone; point at one, or focus it, for its name. In the narrowest library, the categories of Text, Stickers, Effects, Transitions and Filters move from the side column to a row above the cards.

Choose Import order, a name sort, or shortest/longest source duration. Name sorting puts numbered shots in natural order (Shot2 before Shot10). Images have no fixed source duration, so they sort after timed media in both duration directions. Sorting never rearranges timeline clips.

Switch to List view beside the file count to see duration, dimensions, frame rate and file size when available, with the folder, the timeline uses and Preview on one line under them. Click a timeline uses count to select every referencing clip and seek the earliest one. Counts include disabled clips and references on hidden, muted or locked tracks; Unused means no timeline reference. It does not remove any source files.

To rename a file in the project, right-click its card and choose Rename…, or in the grid view double-click its name; Enter keeps the new name and Escape the old one. The file on disk keeps its own name, and clips you have not renamed show the new one.

Drag a row, double-click it, or use its Add button to place media, just as with the grid. Search/filter/view choices survive tab changes. Opening or creating a project clears search/type/usage filters; view and sort last for the app session. Browsing and selecting uses do not consume Undo steps.

Select and arrange clips

Click a picture in the viewer to select the top unlocked clip whose box contains the pointer. Clicking empty canvas or stage space clears selection. Hidden and locked tracks do not intercept the click.

With the main track magnet on, drag a clip to the start to make it the first shot. Linkage carries short titles and sound effects with their shots; a music bed covering two or more complete shots stays at its timeline time.

Adding a title or sticker briefly previews its In animation, then restores the playhead. Reduced motion skips that preview. Pausing a preview stops it without a later jump back.

Right-click a clip for the everyday edits in one place: Ripple delete, Split, Speed… (opens the Speed tab), Reverse (shows a check while the clip plays backward), Copy effects and Paste effects (onto every selected clip), Rename, Ungroup and Duplicate, among others.

Deactivate clip in the same menu (or its shortcut, V by default) turns the selected clips off: they stay in place, hatched, and preview and export skip them. With some clips off and some on, it turns them all off; when every selected clip is off, the menu reads Activate clip and turns them all back on. Undo names which it did.

Name a clip with right-click > Rename…, or double-click the name on its strip (a title's double-click edits its words, so use the menu for titles). Clear the name to show the file's name again.

Add a transition between touching clips, or click its timeline marker, to open Transition settings. Undo history gives agent edits readable names such as Add clip, Change opacity and Change border width.

A title an AI agent gave a drop shadow, a border or a colorize shows them in its Text tab (as Drop shadow, Border and Colorize), where you can change them or switch them off.

Compose with viewer guides

Choose Safe margins, Rule of thirds, or Safe margins + thirds from the Player header's guides selector or the View menu. The action box encloses 93% of the canvas dimensions and is labeled at its top; the title box encloses 90% and is labeled at its bottom. Use them to keep text away from edges and balance a shot. They are general guides, not platform-specific safe-area requirements.

Guides follow the picture when resizing, using a portrait canvas or entering full screen. They do not block editing handles, appear in exports, change the project or consume an Undo step. The choice lasts for this app session; choose Guides off to hide them.

Organize edits with markers

Open View → Markers, Timeline → Manage markers, or the library's Markers tab. Add marker places a note at the playhead. Click a row to jump to it and edit its note, position and color; choose Save marker to apply all changes in one Undo step. Cancel discards the draft. Position accepts timecode or seconds with s, such as 12.5s, rounded to the nearest project frame. Invalid timecodes cannot be saved.

Search matches note text or displayed timecode; the color filter narrows that list. Ruler flags remain visible while searching. Previous/Next moves through all markers. Double-click a flag to open its editor, or use the list's trash button to delete it. Undo restores a deletion. The shortcuts panel lists marker navigation bindings.

Markers you add keep their timeline positions when clips move. A song's markers (its beats, bars, parts and drop, from Beat markers in AI tools, the Beat grid or an agent) follow their clip instead: the list names the clip after the marker's time, with a link icon, and they move when the song is moved, trimmed, split or sped up. Detach (the broken-link button on such a row) makes one stay where it is, like your own; giving it a new position does the same. Searching a clip's name lists the markers that follow it. Notes beyond the last clip are reachable and appear in the list, but do not make the exported movie longer. Editing markers leaves clips, gaps and clip selection alone. Saved markers reopen with the project; range markers are not implemented yet.

Use Export shown markers to preview and save just the notes shown by the current search and color filter. Timecoded notes keeps frame-exact positions; YouTube chapters uses whole-second timestamps. The export preview can be selected and copied with your normal text-copy shortcut. Save text uses the platform's save picker or browser download fallback.

Chapter checks flag a missing 00:00 start, fewer than three chapters, duplicate timestamps, markers at/past the movie end, and chapters shorter than ten seconds (including the last). You can still save a draft and fix its markers later. Names without notes become numbered chapter titles. Times refer to the full timeline, even if an export In/Out range is set; chapter timestamps round down to whole seconds. This saves a text file for your video description; chapter display also depends on the destination's requirements. YouTube's chapter guidance.

Check the edit before you export

The library's Check tab reviews the edit against the rules professional editors keep, the same check an AI agent runs: text that runs past the title-safe area or under TikTok, Reels and Shorts buttons, text too small for a phone, on screen too briefly to read, or hard to read against the picture behind it (measured on the rendered frames), captions too fast, more than two fonts, a title hidden behind its subject, strobes that flash too fast, black gaps on the main track, music that stops dead at the end, sound cut off mid-sound, and a click, a dropout or a sound cut off where one audio clip meets the next (each join is played on its own track and measured; its fix is a crossfade from the clip menu). Choose what you are making under Made as: an Ad also asks for an end card, a Social short sizes text for a phone, Cut to music checks that the cuts land on the beat. File → Check project… opens the tab and checks.

Check project measures the picture and the sound, so it runs only when you ask, with its progress shown; Cancel stops it. The findings are grouped as Text, Timing and Sound, with a count for each and a summary that says whether anything must be fixed before you export. Each says what is wrong, what was measured, and what to change in the app ("Raise Size in the Text tab to 49 or more"). Click one to go to it: the playhead moves to its time, its clip is selected and the inspector opens on the tab with the fix. After you change something the tab says the check is out of date; Check again checks once more.

The Export dialog's Check row shows what the last check found; Review opens the tab, and Check project (or Check again, after changes) checks first. The check never stops an export. It does not measure loudness: choose a Loudness target in Export, or run Normalize loudness in AI tools.

Manage effects

Select a visual clip or adjustment layer on the timeline, then open the right-hand inspector's Effects tab. Its count shows how many effects are attached. Use the eye to enable/disable an effect, or its trash button to remove it; Undo restores a removed effect. Filters and color correction remain under Adjust. Inspector tabs wrap when space is narrow.

Effects run from top to bottom. Use the up/down arrows to change their order, or Reset to restore one effect's defaults and clear its keyframes. Disable all / Enable all sets the whole stack off/on; Undo restores a previous mix of enabled and disabled effects. Remove all clears the stack and its effect keyframes in one undoable step. Color grading, transforms and their keyframes are retained. Unlock a track before editing its effects. Text and caption clips have the same Effects tab.

To reuse a stack, choose Copy effects, select another clip, and choose Paste effects in its Effects tab. For several selected clips, use Paste effects to N clips in the Selection inspector. It appends effects and their keyframes to unlocked visual clips; audio and locked clips are excluded and the count reflects that. Existing effects, grading, transforms and timing stay intact. One Undo reverses the whole paste.

This clipboard lasts for the current app session and is separate from normal clip/keyframe copying. Animation keeps its timing relative to the clip's beginning, including when copied between projects with different frame rates. Keys beyond a shorter clip's end are retained so the visible part of an animated effect keeps the same interpolation.

Where your work lives

Desktop: project JSON and home-screen summaries are saved in the app's data folder. Saves keep a previous project version as a .json.bak file. Imported media is referenced by its path, so keep the original files available. Autosave does not make a portable backup of all source footage.

Browser: locally imported media and project JSON are kept in the origin private file system (OPFS) for that browser profile and site. Clearing site data, changing the site origin, or switching profiles can make those projects unavailable. Storage failures can leave imported files usable for the current session without keeping them for a reload. Keep independent backups of your original media and important project data. Media imported by its address (through automation) is copied into the same storage, so the project keeps working when the address goes away; a file over 1 GB stays linked to its address, and the app says so when it is imported. See Web capability log.

The OpenFrame rename must preserve existing saved work. Its migration plan is in Renaming. The project format itself is documented in Project format.

AI features and automation

Manual editing does not require an AI coding agent. The editor's optional features include auto captions, local analysis, and the AI assistant. Some models or tools need a separate download or installation; local inference can still require network access to obtain model files. The current AI assistant uses a local model server such as Ollama or LM Studio.

Remove a background: select a video clip, open Video > Remove BG and turn on Auto removal (or use the AI tools card). The first time downloads the model (88 MB, or 0.5 MB on a computer without a capable GPU); after that it works offline. A bar shows progress and Cancel stops it. When it finishes, the person plays over whatever is on the tracks below. Turning it off and on again is instant.

Read a title aloud: select a title, open Text > Text to speech, pick a voice, a pace and a quality, and click Add voice. The voice is made on this computer and lands on an audio track where the title starts; one Undo removes it and its file. Best quality downloads the full speech model (325 MB) the first time; Draft downloads a smaller one (92 MB). Normal pace is a narrator's 2.3-2.8 words a second (Slow and Fast move it half a word): the app reads the title, measures it and reads it again at the speed that lands it there, so short words are not rushed. Voices come with natural pauses, one level, and a quiet room under the silences.

Caption a voice: the Captions tab's Generate captions hears the timeline on this computer. A voice made by the app (Text to speech, or an agent's voiceover) is captioned in the words it was given to read, at the times it says them, so a word the recognizer mishears never reaches the captions.

Ask the AI assistant for an edit: click AI assistant in the title bar. It opens as a column at the right of the editor, which makes room for it (in a window too narrow for four columns the media library steps aside until you close it; in a browser window narrower than 1066 px it floats over the editor's right side instead); drag its left edge to resize it. Pick the model server and model at the top, type what you want in the box at the bottom and press Enter to send (Shift with Enter starts a new line). The box grows as you type. While the model works, the steps it takes appear as they run; Stop ends the turn. Each answer that changed the timeline has an Undo button for all of its changes at once, and a failed request can be tried again. The examples in an empty conversation fill the box for you.

Connect Codex or Claude Code (desktop app): open the AI assistant's Connect agents tab and turn on Allow AI agents. Then click Add to Codex or Add to Claude Code: the app asks that program to add OpenFrame to its settings and tells you whether it was added, was already there, or the program was not found (with a link to install it). You can also copy the ready-made command or, for Codex, the config.toml entry. Start a new Codex or Claude Code session afterwards, and keep OpenFrame open with Allow AI agents on while the agent works. After updating OpenFrame, an agent added with the button sees the new tools by itself; one connected over HTTP (the copied command) needs a reconnect: in Claude Code, type /mcp, choose openframe and Reconnect.

While an agent (or the docked assistant) works, each change it makes is named in a notice at the top of the window, marked AI agent with the robot icon, so you can tell its edits from yours; your own notices stay at the bottom. Every change it makes is undoable like your own.

External agents connect only after the user enables "Allow AI agents". Automation explains the controls, MCP connection (with step-by-step Codex CLI and Claude Code setup), headless rendering, and the openframe command line. AI tools records the algorithms and limits.

Generate music

Open the library's Audio tab: under your audio files, the Generate music card makes an original score on your computer, free to use.

Pick a Style (Product launch, Cinematic, Upbeat corporate, Lo-fi chill or Ambient); the line under it says what it sounds like.
Set the Length in seconds. Tempo and Key are optional (each style has its own); Ending rings out or stops on a final hit.
Preview renders it (a few seconds) and plays it; Stop stops it. Not the one? The dice button makes a new take with another seed.
Add puts it on an audio track at the playhead. With Bar and drop markers on, markers show every bar and where the drops land, ready to cut to; Stems too also adds the drums, bass, harmony and lead as separate files in your media. One undo removes what Add placed.

Agents get more control through generate_music (sections with fixed times, the loudness, the stems on their own tracks); see Automation.

Correct a song's beat grid

Select a music clip and open its Audio tab: Beat grid shows the song's tempo, where its first bar starts (in the song's own seconds) and its parts. A generated score already has one. For any other song choose Detect beat grid: the app reads the song on your computer and draws the grid on the clip, a dot on each beat and a line on each bar's first beat. If the lines fall between the kicks, correct them:

Tempo: type it, or play the song and click Tap along with the beat; the tempo shows on the button and is kept when you stop tapping.
First bar: the arrows beside it nudge the grid 10 ms earlier or later; or park the playhead on a downbeat you hear and choose Set downbeat here.
Parts: put the playhead where the drop (or the build, the outro) starts, pick it and choose Add here: it starts on the nearest bar. Rename or remove a part in its row; its time takes you there.

Each change is one undo step, and the song's beat and bar markers move with the grid. Clear grid forgets it.

Cut bars out of a song

Mark In and Out around the bars to take out, right-click the song and choose Cut bars: the menu names how many (Cut 4 bars). Each mark moves to the nearest bar line, the bars go, the rest of the song closes up and plays on the beat, and the two pieces meet with a short crossfade so nothing clicks. The marks are cleared; Undo brings the bars back. The song needs its beat grid first, and plays at its own speed.

Add sound effects and natural sound

The Audio tab also lists Sound effects (whooshes, hits, risers) and Ambience: wind, a stream, a waterfall, surf, rain, a rocket's rumble, city traffic and room tone, made on your computer and free to use. Play a card to hear it first.

A sound effect lands at the playhead on the SFX track (made the first time), never in a gap on your voiceover or your music; sounds that overlap get a second SFX track.
An ambience bed lands on the Ambience track from the playhead (or where you drop it) to the end of the timeline, fading in and out. It moves like a recording (gusts come and go, waves break, cars pass) and can be trimmed like any audio clip; its level sits under a voice as it is.

Each audio track is a stem (dialog, music, effects or ambience), which the loudness check and agents use; a track the app made knows which it is, and an imported song counts as music.

About OpenFrame

Help → About OpenFrame shows the version, the license (GPL-3.0-only: you may share and change the app under its terms) and the open-source packages it is built with. Its links open the license text, the source code, this guide and the full list of third-party licenses in your browser.

Report a problem or help improve it

Follow CONTRIBUTING.md. Include the revision, OS, desktop/browser target, steps, expected result, and actual result. Share only media you have permission to share and remove private paths and tokens from logs. Report it as an issue on the repository.

Reuse settings

In the clip inspector's Effects tab, open Effect presets…. Name and save the selected clip's stack, then choose it on another clip and Apply preset. Presets append effects with independent animation and work across projects on this device. Rename/delete them in the same dialog. Applying is undoable; deleting a saved preset does not remove already applied effects.

Use Copy attributes in a clip inspector, select the destination clip(s), then Paste attributes…. Choose transform (with crop, opacity, the drop shadow and the border), color, audio (with the EQ and compressor) or effects. Checked groups replace those settings and their animation; effects append unless Replace existing effects is selected. Timing and source offsets stay put. Unavailable groups need compatible targets on unlocked tracks. Undo restores the previous settings.

Preview trim edges

While dragging with Trim, Ripple, Slip, Roll or Slide, the player shows two clip-edge frames and their times. Roll compares the outgoing and incoming frames; Slide compares neighboring clips. Other tracks and transitions are excluded so the cut is clear. Release to keep the edit; cancel the gesture to restore it. The whole drag is one Undo step. In a short player the frames shrink so the preview's title and note stay in view.

Nest clips in a compound clip

Select the clips (any tracks: video, titles, sound), then choose Create compound clip from the right-click menu or the Timeline menu (Alt+G). They become one green clip that plays them as they were. Its speed, position, scale, opacity, blend mode, color, effects and volume act on the whole group, so a fade or a filter covers every layer at once. Double-click it to edit what is inside; the bar above the timeline shows where you are, and its first name takes you back. A change inside shows in every copy of that compound clip. Break apart (Alt+Shift+G) puts the clips back where they were. Undo works the same inside and out, and saving or exporting always takes the whole project.

Preview sources

Choose Preview under a media card to open its source. Play, scrub or step frames, set Mark In and Mark Out, then Add range. Out includes the frame you see. The range is placed using the current timeline mode; Undo removes it. Previewing does not move the timeline playhead. Marks reset when the preview closes. Image previews offer Add image instead.

Organize media

In Manage media → Organize folders, create a folder, then choose it beside each file. Mark Favorite for your preferred takes. Filter the library by folder (All folders, beside the other filters) or Favorites only (the heart beside the view buttons), combined with its other filters. Rename and delete folders in the same section; deleting a folder unfiles its media and keeps all clips and source files. Organization is saved with this project and can be undone. These are virtual folders, so footage stays on disk where it is.

Remove media

Right-click a media card and choose Remove from project. A file that clips on the timeline use says how many and removes those clips too. To clear out everything the timeline does not use, open Manage media and choose Remove unused. Only the project forgets the file; it stays on disk, and Undo brings it back.

Relink moved media

Open Media → Manage media to check source availability and see file paths. Choose Locate…, pick one replacement, review its path, then Relink file. Every use keeps its cuts and effects; Undo restores the old location. Choose the same media kind with the original audio/video streams and at least the original duration. When a proxy exists, the check reports that editing copy.

Titles that fit the frame

A new title's lines wrap inside the frame's safe area: on a vertical (9:16) project, inside the column the TikTok, Reels and Shorts buttons leave, so a long line breaks onto the next instead of running under them. To break a line where you want, press Enter while editing the title on the canvas. Titles made before this keep the width they had.

Inline title styling

In the text inspector, expand Style range, choose a word, and set its color or weight. Clear word style restores that word to the title style. Agents can use style_text_range with character offsets or a literal match, including all occurrences, to apply color, gradient, weight, italic, underline, or size scale. Ranges use UTF-16 offsets with an exclusive end. Typing shifts and trims ranges; inserted characters inside a range inherit it. Run colors override animated base color. The inline editor preserves styling while typing; its caret and selection use the base font, so use the word picker for precise mixed-font range styling. Preview, alignment, text checks and version exports use the same run-aware raster layout.

Layout presets

Select two to four overlapping pictures and open Layouts in the inspector. A picture on the main track stays there (in picture in picture it must be the full-frame one), so the timeline never ripples; the others stack above it on Layout tracks. Tiles offer side-by-side, stacked, grid, triptych (three pictures), and picture-in-picture arrangements. Choose Fill to crop each picture to its cell, or Fit to show the whole picture centered in it (a screen recording stays readable). The pictures move to Layout tracks just above the highest of their tracks, so a label you already placed above them stays on top. apply_layout also accepts gap and margin (fractions of the shorter canvas side), rounded mask radius, editable border shapes, and a slide or scale entrance. Clips are placed in input order, with the first PIP picture full frame. Layout replaces position, scale, rotation, crop, mask and their keys, plus clip animations, canvas fill, edge repetition and wiggle. Other effects remain. The whole layout is one undo step. Borders are separate shapes grouped with their pictures; remove an old border before applying another bordered layout.

Group transforms

A multi-selection has one viewer box: drag it to move, use a corner to scale the arrangement, or the rotation handle to rotate it about its combined center. Each gesture is one undo step. transform_group accepts a group_id or explicit clip_ids, canvas-fraction x/y offsets, a scale multiplier and a rotation offset in degrees. Add at in timeline seconds to key every visual member using its own clip-relative time. Existing keys are preserved; audio members remain unchanged. Without at, geometry is evaluated at the latest member start and existing keyed paths receive keys there. Times outside a member clamp to that member’s span.

Motion path points

Select a picture with position keyframes to see its motion path. Drag a dot to move that key position; the gesture is one undo step. A focused dot can also move one canvas pixel with an arrow key. The move_motion_point command takes a clip id, an existing key time in timeline seconds, and x/y positions in canvas fractions from center. Both axes receive a key at that time, with existing easing preserved.

Crossfade audio clips

Where one audio clip ends and another starts on the same track, right-click the first and choose Crossfade into next clip: the first fades out as the second fades in, at constant power, over the seconds before the cut, so the cut itself still lands where you put it. It takes the default transition length from Preferences (0.5 s), or as much as the clips allow when that is less. The timeline draws it as a small marker at the end of the first clip; click it to open the clip's Audio tab, where Crossfade sets its length (0 removes it). The second clip rises from the part of its file before its start, so it needs some: when it starts at the very beginning of its file, the menu says to trim its start first. Choose the menu item again to remove the crossfade. Dragging any transition from the Transitions tab onto the cut between two audio clips makes the same crossfade.

Mix tracks

Open Mixer from the timeline toolbar or View > Mixer. Move each track's vertical fader to balance its level in dB, and use pan to place it left or right. Mute silences a track; Solo plays only soloed tracks. The meters show peak and RMS after track gain and pan. The master strip controls the whole mix, including exports, and shows stereo levels and short-term LUFS; with many tracks, their strips scroll sideways and the master stays in view at the right. A drag is one undo step. Double-click a fader or pan to reset it. Close the panel with Close mixer or Escape.

Use animated images

Import an animated GIF, WebP or APNG like any image. Supported webviews read its frame timing and transparency. A new clip lasts one loop; drag its right edge farther to repeat it. Hover across its library card to scrub frames. The same animation is drawn during playback and export, including imported animated stickers. Renaming it in the library keeps it moving: its format comes from the file, not the name it shows. When ImageDecoder is unavailable the image is treated as a still. Loops larger than 256 MiB after decoding are refused; use a smaller animation in that case.

Change the timeline display

Open Timeline display on the timeline toolbar to show or hide waveforms, video thumbnails or clip names, and choose small, medium or large tracks. These choices stay with your profile and do not change exports. Medium retains individual heights set in track menus. On taller tracks (audio, video and the main track) the name has a line of its own above the lock, eye and sound buttons; point at a header to read a long name in full. Right-click a track header and choose a Track color swatch to tint its clips. A clip with its own label color keeps that color instead. No track color removes the tint.

Move or open a project file

On desktop, choose File > Collect files, then a destination folder. OpenFrame creates a new subfolder containing project.json and media. Wait for copying to finish, then move that entire subfolder together. Media, proxies, LUTs and background-removal cutouts are included. A missing source must be relinked before collecting. The original project and files stay put.

Choose File > Open project file and select the JSON. It opens as a new saved project; its relative media paths are resolved beside the JSON on desktop. If media is missing, open Media > Manage media and relink it.

On the web, Collect files downloads only the JSON. Media remains in this browser profile. Opening that JSON elsewhere does not transfer its media; relink the original files there. Automation's collect_project is desktop only, and can name the destination folder itself (folder) instead of asking; open_project_file accepts a path only on desktop.

An AI agent exporting over MCP writes into your Videos folder, in a folder named OpenFrame, or into a folder it names. It never replaces a file: a second export of the same name is saved as "Name (2)", and the agent is told. Only when it names the folder and asks to replace (to supersede its own earlier export there) does a new file take the old one's place, once the export has finished.