Importing video and audio
Bringing footage in to rotoscope against and a soundtrack to time to: which formats work on which system, how clips sit on the timeline, and how to trim them.
File ▸ Import ▸ Video… adds a Video layer centred on the canvas, and File ▸ Import ▸ Audio… adds an Audio layer. Both appear on the timeline as a coloured clip bar (blue for video, orange for audio) that you can slide and trim like any other editor.
Neither is stored in your project. Celas Studio saves the path to the file, the clip layout and the trims, which keeps the .cls small but means the media has to stay where it is. If it moves, see Missing media.
Formats and platforms
Decoding is done by the operating system, so what plays depends on which codecs the machine has.
| Windows | macOS | Linux | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video: mp4, mov, avi, mkv, webm | Yes | Yes | Not available |
| Audio: wav, mp3, flac, ogg | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audio: aac, m4a, ac3, opus, wma | Yes | Yes | Not available |
The extension gets a file past the dialog; the codec inside decides whether it decodes. H.264 in an MP4 is the safest reference footage on both systems. An unusual codec in a container the app accepts can still come up empty.
What importing actually does
The whole clip is decoded in the background, at its native resolution, into memory, so scrubbing and playback stay responsive and do not hit the disk. The clip bar shows a percentage while that runs, and the frames appear as it goes.
That memory is real: a long or high-resolution clip costs a great deal of it. For reference footage, trim it down or scale it in another tool before importing rather than bringing in a full take.
Clips on the timeline
A freshly imported file gets one clip starting at frame 1, so the first frame of the animation is the first frame of the media. From there the bar behaves as you would expect:
- Drag the middle of the bar to move the clip in time
- Drag either end to trim the in or out point
- Right-click the bar for Split, which cuts it in two at the frame you clicked, and Remove Clip
One layer can carry several clips from the same file, so you can split a take and re-time the pieces. Frames the clips do not cover are drawn dark on the bar, and play as empty.
Audio in the timeline
An Audio layer draws its waveform inside the clip bar, which is what you scrub against when timing an action or a lip-sync. The waveform is hidden while the layer is muted, and the bar turns brown to make that obvious.
Audio layers have no transform. Their Properties panel shows an Audio section instead:
| Control | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 100% | 0 to 200% |
| Mute | Off | On or off |
Sound plays with the timeline during playback and stops when you stop. On export, audio is mixed into an MP4 and nothing else: MOV, WebM, animated WebP and GIF are silent, and there is no way to export a sound file on its own. See Exporting.
Worth knowing
- A .webp file always imports as a still image, even if it is animated.
- GIF cannot be imported.
- An .mkv imports but cannot be exported; render to MP4, MOV, WebM or WebP instead.
- An Audio layer is never drawn on the canvas, and has no motion-blur switch in the Timeline.