Watching a clip

There are two easy ways to watch a clip in Brolla. From your search results you can double-click a clip, or use “Open in player”. While you have a clip open, ← and → move you between the results so you can review several quickly.

The other place is the Trim & Export tab, where you preview a source file while you set the part you want to keep. Either way, the controls work the same.

Play, pause and shuttle

These keyboard shortcuts let you scrub through footage without reaching for the mouse:

• Space plays and pauses.
• L shuttles forward. Tap it again to speed up — it ramps through 2×, 4× and 8×.
• J shuttles in reverse.
• K stops.

Shuttling is the quickest way to find an exact moment, then slow down and land on it.

Stepping one exact frame at a time

When you need to be precise, the arrow keys step a single frame at a time: ← goes back one exact frame and → goes forward one exact frame. This is perfect for finding the exact spot to set your in and out points.

Exact-frame stepping needs a small helper tool called FFmpeg. Brolla downloads it automatically the first time you export, so the very first time you may see a short one-off wait. After that, stepping is instant.

Scrubbing audio

Audio clips show a waveform instead of a picture. Drag along the waveform to scrub, and use the same Space, J, K and L shortcuts. The peaks and dips make it easy to see where sounds start and stop, so you can land right on a beat or a word.