Editing & Post-Production

Playhead

Also called: scrubber, scrubbing, current time indicator

Everything in an editor happens relative to it. Cuts land where it sits, pasted clips arrive at its position, markers drop on it, and the preview window shows the frame beneath it. Keyboard control beats the mouse here, since arrow keys move it a frame at a time and J, K and L shuttle it backwards, stop and forwards in most software.

Scrubbing means dragging it across the timeline to skim footage, and audio scrubbing plays sound as you go, which is how editors find one specific word without watching anything. Losing track of where it sits causes most accidental edits in the wrong place.

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All 131 Editing & Post-Production terms

Trying to put this into practice? The Chewbr Knowledge Bank walks the whole upload workflow, phase by phase.