Curator Tools

Overview

Generate gets you a complete edit in one pass. Curator is how you fix the three or four moments that aren’t right, without throwing away the twenty that are.

Every tool here works on the timeline after Generate Timeline has run, and none of them require a re-generate. The change applies immediately and the rest of the edit is untouched.

Note

Curator requires Core tier or higher. On the free Demo the menu entries are visible but disabled, so you can see what they do before deciding to buy.

Per-clip tools

Right-click any clip block on the timeline:

Tool	What it does
▶ Play Clip	Jumps the preview player to that clip
🔄 Swap Clip	Opens a popover of visually similar alternatives, with thumbnails. Pick one and it takes that slot, locked
🎲 Re-roll This Clip	Skips the picking and drops in the best alternative automatically
⬅ Slip −1 Frame / Slip +1 Frame ➡	Nudges which part of the source clip is used, one frame at a time, without moving the cut
🔒 Lock Clip (Pin)	Protects the clip from being replaced by a re-roll
🗑 Discard Clip	Puts the closest other clip in its place, with the same timing, and keeps the discarded one out of this project from then on

Swap vs Re-roll

Both replace one clip. The difference is who chooses:

• Swap shows you the candidates and lets you pick. Use it when you have an opinion about what should be there.
• Re-roll picks for you. Use it when you just know the current clip is wrong.

A clip you choose yourself (swapped in, placed from the bin, or with its in-point set by hand) is locked straight away, so 🔄 RE-ROLL and generating the timeline again keep it. Unlock it if you want it re-rolled. A clip dropped in by 🎲 Re-roll This Clip stays unlocked.

What Slip is for

Slip is the tool people miss. When a clip is right but its timing inside the source is slightly off - you catch the end of a movement instead of the whole thing - slipping shifts the in and out points together while the clip keeps its exact position and length on the timeline. Beat sync is preserved, because the cut hasn’t moved.

Whole-timeline tools

In the timeline header:

Control	What it does
🔄 RE-ROLL	Re-picks every clip that isn’t locked. A confirmation tells you how many will change and how many locked clips are being kept
🔒 Lock All / 🔓 Unlock All	Lock or unlock every clip at once
Undo / Redo	Step back through your timeline edits (swap, discard, place, re-roll, slip, lock, fill) and forward again. Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y do the same
▶ Preview edit	Makes a quick draft of the timeline as it is now, with your swaps and edits, and plays it. Nothing is picked again
📦 Premiere / Resolve	Exports the timeline, with the song, for Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Kdenlive (Studio). See Finish the edit in another editor
📂 LOAD DJ SESSION	Shows a saved DJ session on the timeline, with 🎬 Render this session to make it a video (Studio)
🚫 BLOCKED	Review and restore clips you’ve blocked: ones blocked in the library (available on every license) and ones discarded from this project

Esc closes any dialog, the same as its ×.

Finish the edit in another editor

📦 Premiere / Resolve saves the timeline in your project’s folder, and opens the folder. It saves two files:

Editor	File	How to open it
Premiere Pro	project.xml	File > Import, choose project.xml. It opens as a new sequence
DaVinci Resolve	project.xml	File > Import > Timeline, choose project.xml
Kdenlive 25.04 or later, and other editors that open OpenTimelineIO	project.otio	Kdenlive: in the File menu, OpenTimelineIO import

The timeline has:

• Your clips on the first video track, cut exactly where Onset Engine cuts them. Each clip links to its original video, so you can trim it longer or shorter in your editor.
• The song on the first audio track, from the same point in the song as your video. A playlist or rounds come in as one mixed track.
• Each clip’s own sound on the second audio track (in project.xml), switched off unless Mix Original Audio is on, as in your video. Turn clips on where you want their sound. project.otio has the clips and the song only.
• Markers where each round and break starts, when the edit has rounds.

Effects, transitions, the title card and the intro and outro stay in Onset Engine: render the video for those.

Editors find the videos where they are on your computer. If you move or rename them after exporting, your editor shows them as offline, and you can point it to the new location.

The lock-and-re-roll workflow

This is the loop that makes Curator worth using:

1. Generate a timeline.
2. Watch it through, and lock every clip that works.
3. Hit 🔄 RE-ROLL. Only the unlocked slots change.
4. Repeat.

Each pass keeps everything you’ve approved and re-rolls the rest, so the edit converges instead of shuffling. It’s much faster than regenerating and hoping for a better overall draw - and much faster than swapping every weak clip by hand.

Tip

Lock All, then unlock the two or three clips you dislike, is often quicker than locking the twenty you like.

Re-Roll ignored your settings before v1.0.11

On earlier versions, Re-Roll silently ignored the Narrative arc and Pacing settings, so re-rolled clips could come back with different energy and cut timing than a fresh Generate would have produced. From v1.0.11 onward, Re-Roll applies both and matches Generate exactly. If you previously found Re-Roll made your edits feel flatter, this is why.

Related Articles

• The Editor
• Your first draft
• Licensing & Activation