A Tour of the Editor

This tour walks through every part of the editor so you know where things are before you start building. The layout is the same in every editor mode. Only the panels on the left rail change (see Choosing an Editor Mode).

The layout at a glance

The editor in Animation mode, with the rail and AI Studio panel on the left, the canvas in the middle, the scene strip on the right and the timeline at the bottom — The editor in Animation mode: rail and panel on the left, canvas in the middle, scenes on the right, timeline at the bottom.

Header (top): home, the design’s name, the mode switcher, undo and redo, save status and Download
Left rail and side panel: the icons you add things from, and the panel each one opens
Toolbar (above the canvas): controls for the scene, or for whatever you’ve selected
Canvas (center): the current scene, where you place and arrange items
Scene strip (right): a thumbnail of every scene, in order
Timeline (bottom): when each item appears, plus the playback controls

The header

Left side

Glintia logo and Home: save the design and go back to the dashboard. You’ll see “Saving your design…” for a moment first
Sun or moon icon: switch between light and dark themes
More (three dots):
- Keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+/, Cmd+/ on a Mac): a searchable list of every shortcut
- Version history: earlier saved versions of the design. See Autosave, Undo and Version History
- The language list: change the app’s language

Center

Design name: click it and type to rename the design. New designs show “Untitled Design …” until you do
Mode switcher: the current editor mode. Click it to switch modes

Right side

Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z). On a Mac, use Cmd instead of Ctrl
Save (Ctrl+S): your design saves automatically, and this icon shows the status: a spinner while saving, a green check when saved, and a warning triangle if a save failed. Click the warning to retry
Background jobs: AI generations and exports keep running while you work. Click to follow them and pick up the results, filtered by All, Images, Videos or Exports
Credits and plan pill: your AI credits and plan, with Top up, Upgrade and, during a trial, Start plan now
Download: opens the export panel. See Exporting Your Video

The left rail and side panel

The rail is the column of icons on the far left. Click an icon to open its panel beside it, for example Template, Character, Text or Upload. Then click or drag something from the panel to add it to the scene.

Hover over an icon to see its name and shortcut, for example “Layers (⌘/Ctrl+Shift+Y)”
If not every icon fits, arrows at the top or bottom of the rail scroll it
Some panels open other panels. When that happens, a “Back to …” row at the top of the panel takes you back

Which icons you see depends on your editor mode. Panels that edit a selected item, such as Effects or Lip Sync, open from the item’s toolbar instead of the rail.

The canvas

The canvas shows the current scene. Click an item to select it, drag to move it, and use its handles to resize or rotate it. Right-click an item for quick actions such as Copy, Paste, Duplicate and Lock.

Zoom and pan

Use the zoom control at the right end of the timeline bar: − and + zoom out and in, and clicking the percentage fits the scene to the window
Hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) and scroll the mouse wheel, or pinch on a trackpad, to zoom around the pointer
Scroll normally to move around a zoomed-in scene, or hold down the mouse wheel and drag to pan

Rulers, guides and grid: the view options button in the timeline bar turns on Show Rulers, Show Guides and Show Grid, and sets the Grid Size. Drag from a ruler to create a guide. Shortcuts: Ctrl+R for rulers, Ctrl+; for guides and Ctrl+’ for the grid.

See Selecting, Arranging and Aligning Items for everything you can do on the canvas.

The toolbar has two states.

Nothing selected: scene controls. The bar above the canvas shows settings for the current scene:

The background color swatch, and a button to add or change a background image. Once a scene has a background image you can also select, crop or remove it here
Scene Transition: the transition into the next scene (not shown on the last scene)
The scene duration, in seconds (from 1 second to 5 minutes)
On the right: Add New Scene, Duplicate Scene and Remove Scene

Something selected: the item toolbar. The controls depend on what you selected. A text item gets font, size, color and Styles, a character gets Actions, Expressions and Lip Sync, an image gets Edit Image and Remove BG, and so on. Most items also get:

Button	What it does
Effects (Ctrl+E)	Entrance and exit effects
Animations (Ctrl+Shift+A)	Looping motion
More Tools (Ctrl+Shift+D)	Opens the More Tools panel (see below)
Position & Layers	Layer order, alignment, distribution, flip, and exact size and position
Lock (L)	Stops the item from being moved by accident
Duplicate (Ctrl+D)	Makes a copy
Delete (Del)	Removes the item

On a narrow window, controls that don’t fit move into a … overflow menu.

Two toolbars. By default the toolbar appears in two places: above the canvas, and floating just above the selected item. To change this, click the Toolbar Mode button in the timeline bar and choose Show Both, Static Only or Floating Only. Under Floating Position, choose Above Item or Right (2 columns).

The More Tools and Properties panels

These two panels change the item you’ve selected. They have no rail icon.

More Tools (Ctrl+Shift+D, or More Tools in the item toolbar): a grid of extra controls for the selected item, grouped into Appearance, Transform and Style. What’s in it depends on the item, for example outlines, corner radius and shadows, plus Copy Style and Paste Style
Properties (Ctrl+Shift+S, or the Properties tile in More Tools): exact Position (X, Y) with Align to page, Size (Width, Height, Lock aspect ratio), Rotate, Opacity, and Timing (From (ms) and To (ms), when the item appears and disappears)

On a Mac, use Cmd instead of Ctrl for these shortcuts.

The scene strip

The column of thumbnails on the right shows every scene in order. A video is made of one or more scenes played one after another.

Click a thumbnail to edit that scene
Drag a thumbnail up or down to reorder scenes
Hover a thumbnail and click its … button for Add Scene, Duplicate Scene, Combine with Previous Scene, Combine with Next Scene and Remove Scene
Click the small button between two thumbnails to choose the transition between those scenes
Click Add Scene at the bottom of the strip, or press Ctrl+Alt+N (Windows), to add a new scene

See Working with Scenes and Scene Transitions.

The timeline

The timeline runs along the bottom. Drag its top edge to make it taller or shorter.

The control bar, from left to right:

Timeline view: Scene (the items in the current scene), Scenes (all scenes in a row), Camera (camera moves) and Tracks (every item of every scene on tracks, the whole video at once). Press Shift+Tab to cycle through them
Fit shows the whole timeline in the available width. Scroll gives a scrollable timeline you can zoom with its − and + buttons. Grid shows grid lines that bars snap to
Playback controls (center): the current time and length, Go to start, Play/Pause (Space), mute (M), fullscreen playback (F) and a playback speed menu for previewing slower or faster. The speed only affects the preview
View options, Toolbar Mode and the canvas zoom control (right)
Split: cuts the current scene at the playhead into two scenes, or, with a video selected, cuts that clip at the playhead

Each item in the scene appears as a bar. Drag a bar to change when the item appears, and drag its ends to change how long it stays. See The Timeline.

The command palette and shortcuts

Press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on a Mac) to open the command palette, then type what you want to do, for example “add text”, “switch to whiteboard” or “open layers”. It lists editing commands, panels, mode switches and AI Animation Director, with their shortcuts.

A few shortcuts worth learning first:

Shortcut	Action
Space	Play or pause
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Undo / redo
Ctrl+S	Save now
Ctrl+D	Duplicate the selected item
T	Add a text box
Ctrl+P	Command palette
Ctrl+/	List of all shortcuts

On a Mac, use Cmd instead of Ctrl. For the full list, see Keyboard Shortcuts and the Command Palette.

On smaller screens

When the window is narrower than 1024 pixels, the editor switches to a compact layout. The scene strip and timeline move into tabs at the bottom, next to the playback controls, and the panel icons sit in a row underneath. Panels open as a sheet above them. For the full set of tools, a laptop or desktop screen works best.