Although drag-and-drop operations provide somewhat greater power when dealing with clips, the timeline does support the standard Clipboard operations cut, copy and paste, with the usual shortcut keys. The Clipboard also provides the only method for moving and copying transitions and effects between clips.

After selecting one or more clips in the Library, select Copy from the selection’s context menu or press Ctrl+C to put the selection on the application’s Clipboard. (Cut, the other usual command for adding to the Clipboard, is not available in the Library.)

On the timeline, position the playhead at the point where the paste operation should begin, and select the desired track by clicking in its header.

Now press Ctrl+V to insert the clips from the Clipboard onto the given track, starting at the playhead.

If you select Paste from the timeline’s context menu rather than pressing Ctrl+V, the clips will be pasted at the mouse pointer position on the default track, not at the playhead.

You can repeat the paste operation with the same set of clips as often as desired.

Select one or more clips on the timeline, then click either Copy or Cut on the selection’s context menu, or press Ctrl+C (copy) or Ctrl+X (cut). Both commands add the clips to the Clipboard; Cut removes the original clips from the project, while Copy leaves them in place.

Paste the Clipboard contents onto the timeline as described above. The clips paste onto the same tracks as they originally occupied; and with the same horizontal spacing. Unlike drag-and-drop, the Clipboard does not support moving clips between tracks.

Clips to which effects have been added have a magenta line along the upper edge. Right-click on the clip, or right-click the line, to access the Effect context menu, which provides Cut all and Copy all commands for transferring or sharing a set of effects between clips. Select one or more target clips, then press Ctrl+V or click Paste on the timeline context menu.

The effects stack will be pasted to all selected clips. The target clips retain any effects they may already have had. The pasted effects stack will be placed on top of the existing effects.

Right-click in the transition area in the upper corner at the start or end of a clip to access the Transition context menu. Select Cut or Copy to put the transition on the Clipboard.

As with effects, transitions can be pasted to one or more target clips, but any existing transition of the type (start or end) being pasted will be overwritten. The paste fails if the duration of the transition on the Clipboard is longer than the target clip.