A tour of the Rooster editor

Rooster's editor is one window. From left to right it holds your projects, the script, the picture and the tools, with the timeline running along the bottom.

The sidebar

The column on the left lists your projects and folders.

• Record and New project at the top start a take or an empty project.
• The search field, Search projects and transcripts, finds a project by its name or by something said in it.
• Right-click a project to rename, duplicate, move or delete it.
• The gear at the bottom opens Settings.

The button in the title bar shows and hides the sidebar.

The script

The script pane holds the transcript, and it is where most editing happens: select words and press Delete to cut them from the video. Select some words and a bar appears just above them, with Correct, Cut, Restore when the selection touches one cut, and More for the rest of the right-click menu. The pane's header keeps Fillers, for removing filler words, and the button to transcribe again. See Edit video by editing the script.

Drag the divider between the script and the picture to give either more room.

The canvas and the transport

The canvas shows the video as it will export, with every edit applied. View > Show Safe Areas (⌘') draws two guides over it: the title-safe area, where text stays visible on any player, and the Caption area band where Rooster draws captions. The guides never appear in an export.

Under the canvas, a scrubber and a row of controls:

• Record, to record a take into this project.
• Back 5 seconds, play or pause, and forward 5 seconds.
• Playback speed, from 0.5x to 2x. It changes how fast you watch, not the export.
• The playhead's time and the project's length.

View > Play/Pause (⌘S) plays and pauses wherever you are working. Space does the same when the timeline has focus.

The rail

The strip down the right edge opens one panel at a time:

Section	What it holds
Enhance	Studio Sound, Eye Contact and Green Screen
Adjust	The scene, or the selected layer
Elements	Text and shapes to put on the canvas
Captions	Caption generation, style and cards
Media	The videos, images and audio this project holds

Click the open section again to close its panel. In a narrow window the panel floats over the canvas instead of squeezing it.

The timeline

The timeline along the bottom shows every lane of the project against time: the main recording, B-roll, music and the rest. Its toolbar has Undo and Redo, Split (⌘B), and a bin to delete what is selected. Once you have clicked a clip, Split cuts the main recording at the playhead; until you have - including in a project you have just opened - it begins a new scene there instead. Hover over it to see which it will do. A button in the same toolbar, or ⌥⇧⌘T, hides and shows the timeline.

Help and feedback

Feedback at the right of the title bar sends a message to the Rooster team from inside the app. The Help menu has the same, and links to support and the FAQ.