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Sprocket Help

Preview and monitors

The Program monitor is your main preview — it shows your edited timeline at the current playhead position. Alongside it, the Source monitor lets you look at a clip’s original, untrimmed footage. Between the two you can also zoom the picture, overlay framing guides, and expand the preview to fill the whole screen.

What’s in this guide

Section titled “What’s in this guide”

Program vs. Source: the two monitors

Section titled “Program vs. Source: the two monitors”

Two tabs sit above the preview:

The Source monitor showing a clip's full, untrimmed footage, with the Inspector's Clip section listing a Duration of 10.49s against the Program monitor's edited 5.25s

  • Program (the default) — your finished edit: every enabled track, composited together, at the current playhead position. This is what your export will look like.
  • Source — the raw footage behind whichever clip is selected on the timeline, from its very first frame to its very last, ignoring any trim, speed change, or effects you’ve applied. It’s useful for previewing what more of a clip looked like before you trimmed it, or for judging a shot on its own before you decide how to use it.

Click a clip on the timeline, then click Source to see its original footage; click Program to go back to your edited timeline. The transport controls below the picture — play, step, and the scrubber — work the same way in both, always driving whichever monitor is active.

Tip: The Source monitor is video-only — it doesn’t play a clip’s audio.

Zoom the preview

Section titled “Zoom the preview”

The Fit ▾ menu above the picture sets how large it’s drawn:

The Fit ▾ menu open, listing Fit, 50%, 100%, and 200%

  • Fit (the default) — scales the picture to use all the available space in the monitor panel.
  • 50% / 100% / 200% — a fixed zoom level, useful for checking fine detail or comparing exact pixels at 100%.

This only changes how large the preview looks on your screen — it has no effect on your project’s frame size or your exported video.

Overlay framing guides

Section titled “Overlay framing guides”

Click Guides above the picture to overlay a frame outline, a rule-of-thirds grid, and action-safe / title-safe rectangles:

The Program monitor with Guides on: a bright frame outline, a rule-of-thirds grid, and an inset safe-area rectangle, all ending exactly at the frame edge

  • The frame outline marks exactly where your video ends — handy for judging composition on a sequence whose empty canvas would otherwise be hard to tell apart from the panel around it.
  • The rule-of-thirds grid divides the frame into thirds, a classic guide for placing a subject off-center.
  • The safe-area rectangles mark the zone action and titles should stay inside of, in case the very edge of the frame gets cropped on some screens.

Click Guides again to turn the overlay off. It’s purely a preview aid — none of it appears in your exported video.

Full-screen preview

Section titled “Full-screen preview”

Press Ctrl+F (⌘F on macOS) to expand the preview to fill your whole screen, with no menu bar, toolbar, or panels in the way:

The preview filling the entire screen edge to edge, with no window chrome visible

Playback keeps working exactly as before — Space still plays and pauses, and the frame-step and jump shortcuts all stay live — so you can judge a shot at full size without losing the transport. Press Esc or Ctrl+F again to return to the normal window.

Full-screen preview works for both the Program and Source monitors, so you can check either one at full size.

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