Editing, clipboard and undo

Clip multi-selection

Modifier flags are captured at mouse-down, so a modifier click can never accidentally trigger a clip.

Rectangles only include cells that are non-empty and currently visible under the active filter or search.

The status line confirms what is armed: "N clips selected. Copy, Move, Duplicate or Clear acts on this selection."

Selections are bank- and session-local: anything that moves out of the active bank, becomes empty, or gets filtered away is dropped from the selection on refresh.

Effect-instance multi-selection

The Effects inspector selects instances within a single stack. Its checkboxes, Command-click toggle, Shift-click range and Clear selection do not act on the matrix's clip selection. The selected count and Selected actions menu control a complete batch; the labelled primary-effect form edits one instance. See Selecting several effects for batch movement, duplication, unavailable effects and selection lifetime.

Clip context menu

For a populated slot, top to bottom:

1. Inspect clip
2. Transport submenu — Pause clip / Resume clip / Play clip, Restart clip, Stop clip (disabled while idle)
3. Cues submenu — Add cue here (disabled at 16), then one entry per saved cue name
4. Learn MIDI note (disabled unless a MIDI source is connected)
5. Copy control target — puts the clip's JSON control target on the pasteboard for the control API
6. Import / replace media…
7. Shader Browser…, then a Shader submenu of generators
8. Copy clip / Copy selected clips
9. Move clip / Move selected clips
10. Duplicate clip / Duplicate selected clips
11. Rename clip…
12. Toggle favorite
13. Paste clip — disabled unless a clipboard exists
14. Paste attributes
15. Clear clip / Clear selected clips (destructive)

For a file-backed clip, the menu also offers Reveal original in Finder (disabled when the file is missing) and Relink this media in set…, which updates every reference to that media across the set.

Plural labels appear whenever the selection holds more than one clip. Empty slots get a shorter menu — no transport, cues, learn, copy/move/duplicate or paste-attributes items, because none of them apply to nothing.

Keyboard actions

These act on the selection, or on the single focused slot when nothing is selected:

They are intercepted only while the console window has focus and no text field is being edited.

What travels with a clip

A copied clip carries its appearance in full: effects, transform, generator or shader selection, favourite flag, audio-reactive settings, media duration, opacity, audio volume and mute, its file-tempo estimate and confidence, and its collection memberships.

Each paste mints fresh identities for the pasted clip and its controls, so two pastes of the same clip never collide.

Copy, Move, Paste, Duplicate

• Copy (⌘C) + Paste (⌘V) places a replica at the destination. Recent-trigger stamps are cleared. Status: "Pasted copied clip. The clipboard is ready for another paste."
• Move (⌘X) requires the source to still be valid, different from the destination, and still holding media. Status: "Moved clip. Undo restores both slots." The move is consumed on paste.
• Duplicate (⌘D) puts the copy in the next vacant column on the same layer, appending a column if needed, named <original> copy. Status: "Duplicated clip into column N."
• Paste attributes copies only effects, transform, opacity and the audio settings. The target keeps its own source, transport, name and timing. Status: "Pasted effects, transform, opacity and audio attributes. Source and transport retained." Targets must be populated and distinct; the batch form additionally requires a destination the same shape as the copied selection, otherwise it reports "Select the same clip shape to paste batch attributes."

Batch shapes

A multi-clip selection remembers its shape, so holes inside the selection stay holes:

• Each item is recorded relative to the group's minimum row and column.
• Targets are computed by offsetting from the anchor. If the whole group does not fit, nothing is written and you get "The complete clip selection does not fit. Choose an earlier slot or add columns/layers before pasting."
• Before writing, the batch removes every move-source key and every target key, so overlapping moves are replaced rather than merged. Overlapping moves capture every source before clearing any slot.
• After pasting, the pasted cells become the selection and the library filter resets to All clips.

Between windows and app sessions

Copies are written to the system pasteboard as a versioned JSON payload (≤ 2 MiB), which means you can copy in one Ultimate VJ set or app instance and paste into another. Each paste produces independent clip and control identities.

Moves are different: they write an inert marker and are confined to the owning session. A foreign move is ignored, and any newer pasteboard change invalidates a local clipboard.

Undo and Redo

⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z, also labelled Undo set edit and Redo set edit in the Edit menu and in the Composition structure editor's footer. The buttons disable when there is nothing to undo or redo.

Properties worth knowing:

• Undo history is bounded to 32 steps. Each step is a full snapshot of the session, not a diff. The 32-entry trim is applied to the undo stack; see Not verified for what that means for redo.
• Identical consecutive edits are coalesced within 0.4 seconds, so dragging a slider does not consume your whole history. Effect-instance batches are separate transactions: every changed batch gets one complete step, even when consecutive batches occur within that interval.
• Both parameter edits (transforms, effects, tempo, crossfader, layer order, autopilot, membership) and structural edits (add/remove layers, column operations, bank operations, bank import, paste, move, media relink, mapping changes) participate.
• Restore preserves the playheads of unaffected runtimes, so undoing an edit in one slot does not disturb what is playing elsewhere.
• Undo releases held input and clears captured edit owners, so it cannot leave a stuck note.
• Undo and Redo are refused while recording: "Stop recording before undoing set edits."
• Changing the saved title is deliberately not an undo step — saving rewrites titles inside the history stacks so file naming never appears in your history.

Not verified

• Whether redo is separately bounded within a single undo/redo cycle. The 32-cap trims the undo stack; redo entries return to that stack un-trimmed, so the cap is re-applied at the next recorded edit, but nothing was found that caps the redo stack on its own.
• Whether the second, legacy Inspector Add effect menu still works for any of its seven entries beyond the two known dead ones — covered in The effect stack.

Presentation edits

Group collapse and compact layer rows are set data and participate in Undo/Redo. Named interface layouts are app-local UI data, separate from set editing and set Undo snapshots.