Media Library

The Media Library panel (left side) holds all source clips available for your project.

Importing Media

Library Empty: A large + Import Media… button is shown in the center of the library panel.
Library Populated: The large button is hidden to save space. Click the compact + button in the Media Library header to add more files.
Drag and Drop: You can also drag files directly from your system’s file manager into the Media Library pane to import them.

Choose one or more video, audio, or image files from the file chooser. Supported formats depend on your installed GStreamer plugins (any format playbin can decode).

GStreamer probes each file on import to determine its duration and type (audio-only or video). This runs in the background to keep the interface responsive.

Browsing and Selecting

Click a library item to select it — the Source Monitor immediately loads and previews the clip.
The clip name is shown above the source monitor preview.

Adding Clips to the Timeline

Append to Timeline

Select a clip in the library.
Set In/Out points in the Source Monitor if needed (see Source Monitor).
Click Append to Timeline — the marked region is placed at the end of the first Video track.
- For audio-only sources, append targets an audio track; for video sources, a video track.
- If an active matching-kind track is selected in timeline, append uses that track; otherwise it uses the first matching-kind track.

Drag and Drop

Drag a library item directly onto a specific track and position in the timeline.
The clip is placed at the drop position on the target track.

Notes

Importing a clip does not automatically add it to the timeline.
Deleting a clip from the timeline does not remove it from the library.
The library list is saved as part of the FCPXML project file.