The video editor
FoundryInk has a genuine non-linear video editor built right into the studio, in the spirit of the desktop editors you know but running in your browser. You import footage (and it converts almost any format for you), cut and arrange it on a multitrack timeline, colour-grade it, key out a background, ramp the speed, add titles and a voiceover, then render the whole thing and publish it as a streaming Video asset. This is the full tour, control by control, and it is honest about the one thing that shapes everything: the render happens on your own machine, so a couple of limits come with that. Here is how to build one, start to finish.
1A Video is an asset you create
A Video is a first-class asset kind, the same as a comic or a book. Make one with New asset, then Video (A video that streams in the browser: animation, motion comic, vlog, or trailer). Once published it streams inline for readers, nothing to download or install. A video asset carries three views along the top, Setup, Studio, and Publish, and the editor lives on Studio.
2Import almost anything
Drop footage in anywhere: the Setup dropzone (Drop a video here, or click to pick) or, in the editor, onto the media bin or a track. MP4, WebM and MOV stream as-is. Awkward formats, GIF, AVI, MKV, WMV, FLV and more, are converted to MP4 automatically before upload (you will see Converting as it works), so you can hand it the file you actually have rather than the file it wants.
3The timeline and the transport
The editor is laid out like an editor: a media bin and a preview monitor up top, a properties dock on the right for whatever clip you select, and a multitrack timeline along the bottom. A new project seeds three lanes, Titles (on top), Video, and Audio, and the Track menu adds more of any kind. Higher tracks sit in front. The transport is what you expect: Play/Pause is the spacebar, with jump and skip buttons and a running time readout.
4Cut and arrange
Add a clip by dragging a bin source onto a lane, hitting the row's +, or dropping a file straight onto the timeline. Then shape it: drag a clip's edges to trim, drag its body to move it along or between tracks, and use the razor (the scissors, hotkey C) to slice at the playhead. Turn on the magnet (S) so clips snap cleanly together.
- Razor (C) splits the clip under the playhead.
- Ripple delete (Shift+Delete) removes a clip and closes the gap.
- Markers (M) drop amber flags to mark beats.
- Insert 1s gap and Close 1s push or pull time across every track at once.
- Batch fades adds quick fade-in and fade-out or crossfades every internal cut.
I and O) when you only want to render part of the timeline. The zoom slider stretches the timeline from a tight overview to frame-by-frame.5Colour: grade, look, curves
Select a video clip and the properties dock on the right fills with colour tools. The Color section is your primary grade: seven sliders, Temperature, Tint, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Shadows and Highlights. Above and below it sit Look (a film-look picker with built-in styles like Teal and orange, Bleach bypass and Cool noir, plus your own uploaded LUTs, with an Intensity blend), Curves (master and per-channel tone curves), and Secondary (HSL) (isolate one colour, say skin, and shift just that).
6Composite: key and power windows
Shot something on a green screen? The Chroma key section removes a background colour. Tick Remove a background colour, use Pick to eyedrop the exact green from your footage, then tune Strength, Edge blend, Spill and Feather, with Show the matte to check your edges. Put the keyed clip on a track above whatever should show through. For a targeted fix, Power windows draws a Rectangle, Ellipse or free Roto shape and corrects only inside it, and it can follow the action: press Track it and it motion-tracks the region across the shot.
7Speed and retime
The Speed section retimes a clip from 0.1x to 10x. Leave it flat for a simple slow-mo or fast-forward, or hit Ramp the speed to build a proper speed ramp that eases from one rate into another across the shot. Reverse plays it backward, and Keep pitch stops a slowed or sped clip's audio from turning into a chipmunk or a monster. It tells you how long the clip will run on the timeline once retimed.
8Audio, titles, and voiceover
Sound lives right here in the editor, not off in the Audio studio. Any audio or video clip gets Volume, fade in and out, volume automation keyframes, and a Level dialogue loudness tidy, and a per-clip audio panel adds a three-band equaliser, reverb and a limiter. You can Record a voiceover straight against the picture from the media bin. For text, the Titles tab drops a Title card or a Lower third onto the overlay track, and each video clip has a Transform (position, scale, rotate, crop) for picture-in-picture and reframing. Between clips, pick from thirteen transitions, from a plain Crossfade to Dip to black, wipes, slides and an Iris.
9Deliver: render it out
When the cut is done, hit Deliver. Pick a Resolution (1080p or 720p, 30 or 24fps, or a Vertical 1080 by 1920 preset for the Shorts feed), a Format (H.264 MP4 is always there; VP9 or ProRes appear when your browser can encode them), a Quality from Draft to Master, and an audio bitrate. Tick Make this the asset's video when it finishes and the render becomes the published video. The render, like the import conversion, happens in your browser, so keep the tab open while it works, and queue several exports if you want.
10Publish, poster, and Shorts
A video publishes through the usual Publish view (price, access, status), with video-specific bits on Setup: upload a poster or grab Use current frame as poster, add .vtt captions, and set a free preview, a short public teaser clip plus a number of seconds free (readers see the teaser, the full video stays locked until they buy). A free, published video can ride the Shorts feed with the Show in Shorts switch (it plays to its own end rather than on a page timer), which is exactly what the Vertical export preset is for. And if you have connected a channel, publishing a video can push it to YouTube too.
Questions creators actually ask
No. If you already have a finished cut, upload it on the Setup view, add a poster, and publish. The Studio editor is only for when you want to assemble or polish the video from parts here. A plain uploaded video never needs the timeline.
MP4, WebM and MOV stream as they are. GIF, AVI, MKV, WMV, FLV and several more are converted to MP4 automatically in your browser before upload. A source file can be up to 500 MB, and a file that needs converting is capped at 200 MB because the in-browser converter is memory-limited.
In your browser, on your machine, both the format conversion on import and the final render on Deliver. That is why it asks you to keep the tab open, and why the preview is a fast approximation while the rendered file is the authoritative one. There is no server render farm.
Rendering your timeline into the asset so you can publish it is always available to everyone. Saving the finished file down to your own computer is the gated part: that needs Premium, or export switched on for your studio. You can always make and publish here; taking the file off-platform is the paid extra.
The grade is a real primary correction (seven controls plus curves, secondary HSL, LUT looks and scopes), and there is chroma key plus a power window with a single-region motion tracker. It is a capable light edit, not a node-based effects suite: deep multi-node compositing and roto beyond one window are out of scope, and the tracker is a single region scored for confidence.
Yes. A free, published video can ride Shorts with the Show in Shorts switch, and it plays to its own end rather than on a page timer. Cut it vertical (there is a Vertical 1080 by 1920 export preset for exactly this) so it fills the phone frame instead of blur-filling.
No, the editor has its own audio: per-clip volume, fades, automation, a three-band EQ, reverb and a limiter, plus a voiceover recorder that punches in against the picture. It is built into the video timeline rather than being the separate multitrack Audio studio used for music and podcasts.
Render and publish
Import anything, cut it on a real timeline, grade it, key it, retime it, score it and title it, then render and publish, all in the browser. The video editor is one of the deepest tools in the studio, and now the whole thing is yours. Go cut something.
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