Skip to main content

Shift Lines

Shift Lines moves an entire line of text from the selected event to an adjacent event. It operates at the paragraph level rather than the word level, making it more efficient than Shift Words when the adjustment involves a full line of content rather than a single trailing or leading word.

Prerequisites​

  • A project is open with at least one Event Group containing two or more events.
  • The event you want to adjust is selected in the editor.
  • Shift Line Back (move the last line of the selected event to the previous event): secondary toolbar; configurable keyboard shortcut.
  • Shift Line Forward (move the first line of the selected event to the next event): secondary toolbar; configurable keyboard shortcut.

How Shift Lines works​

Shift Line Back removes the last paragraph from the currently selected event and appends it as a new line at the end of the preceding event. The selected event must not be the first in the group.

Shift Line Forward removes the first paragraph from the currently selected event and prepends it as a new line at the beginning of the next event. The selected event must not be the last in the group.

As with Shift Words, if the Update Timing on Edit option is enabled in the editor settings, the timecode boundary between the two affected events will be adjusted proportionally. The adjustment is calculated based on the average time per word in the selected event, scaled by the number of words being moved. This maintains a proportional relationship between the amount of text in each event and its allocated duration. If either affected event lacks valid start and end times, the timing step is skipped.

After a Shift Line operation, the Quill editor refreshes to show the updated content and alignment for the selected event.

When to use Shift Lines vs. Shift Words​

Use Shift Lines when the structural problem is a full line being in the wrong event. This is common after transcript imports where line breaks were inserted at arbitrary positions, or after an Auto Format run where the algorithm placed a line break that does not align with the natural speech cadence. Moving an entire line is faster than moving one word at a time and produces cleaner results when the line has multiple words.

Use Shift Words when the adjustment is smaller — when only a single word needs to cross an event boundary without restructuring the full line.

All Shift Line operations are added to the undo history.

Troubleshooting​

The operation does nothing​

Confirm that the selected event has more than one line of text. Shifting the last remaining line out of an event would leave it empty, which is not allowed. If you want to move all the content of an event to an adjacent one, use Merge instead.

The line moved but timing looks wrong​

If the timing adjustment from Update Timing on Edit produced an unexpected result, undo the operation, disable Update Timing on Edit temporarily, perform the line shift, and then retime the boundary manually.

Source notes​

  • Components: src/components/toolbar/controls/ShiftLineBack.svelte, src/components/toolbar/controls/ShiftLineForward.svelte