How to Split a Clip in Premiere Pro (3 Ways)

To split a clip in Premiere Pro, park the playhead on the frame you want to cut and press Ctrl+K on Windows or Cmd+K on Mac. You can also press C for the Razor tool and click the clip directly. Either way you end up with two clips you can move, trim, or delete on their own.

That's the whole answer for most edits. People get stuck on what's around it: the shortcut only cuts tracks you've targeted, the Razor cuts audio and video together unless you tell it not to, and neither one closes the gap you just made.

One naming note first. Adobe dropped the "Pro" from the app name with the 26.0 release in January 2026, so the docs just say Premiere now. Everyone I know still says Premiere Pro, so that's what you'll see here.

Below: what a split does to your footage, the shortcut method step by step, the Razor tool (including cutting audio without touching the video), cutting every track at once, picking the right method for the job, what to do when the shortcut does nothing, closing the gap, undoing a split, trimming before a clip ever hits the timeline, exporting just the section you cut, letting Premiere find the cuts for you, and the music side of a recut.

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Splitting a clip never touches your original footage

Premiere creates two instances of the same source clip with new In and Out points, and the original file sits untouched on your drive. Nothing is transcoded, overwritten, or deleted. Undo works, re-extending past the cut works, and there's no ruining a take by slicing it up.

That matters more than it sounds. A lot of editors coming from phone apps cut conservatively because they think each split costs them something. It doesn't. Cut early, cut often, and clean up later. If you're still building vocabulary around this, the video editing terms every YouTuber should know covers the rest of the timeline language.

Split a clip with the keyboard shortcut

Ctrl+K on Windows, Cmd+K on Mac. This is the one to build muscle memory around, because it cuts on the exact frame the playhead is sitting on. The Razor can't promise that, since you're aiming with a mouse on a timeline that might be zoomed way out.

Add Edit is the command name to search for if you ever want to rebind it, and Adobe keeps the full list on its default keyboard shortcuts page. Once this is in your hands you stop reaching for the toolbar at all, which is most of the speed difference between a fast editor and a slow one.

Split a clip with the Razor tool

Press C, move the cursor over the clip, click where you want the cut. Press V to get your pointer back. Most people learn this one first because you can see what you're about to do, and it's still the right call when you're eyeballing a cut rather than hitting a specific frame.

The limitation is precision. On a timeline zoomed out to show a ten-minute sequence, one pixel can be a dozen frames, so a click that looks right lands nowhere near right. Zoom in with the equals key before you cut, or use the shortcut instead. For the full behavior, see Adobe's own documentation for cutting clips.

Split only the video or only the audio

Hold Alt on Windows or Option on Mac while you click with the Razor. Premiere splits only the portion you clicked and leaves the other half of the link whole, so you can cut the picture while the audio runs straight through, or the reverse.

Faster than right-clicking and unlinking, and it doesn't leave you with two orphaned clips you have to remember to relink later. It's also the setup for offsetting your audio and video edits on purpose. That technique has its own name and its own reasons, and the guide to J cuts and L cuts gets into it properly.

Split every clip on the timeline at once

Press Ctrl+Shift+K on Windows or Cmd+Shift+K on Mac. That's Add Edit to All Tracks, and it ignores your track targeting entirely: every clip sitting under the playhead gets cut, including the ones on tracks you forgot about. With the Razor tool, hold Shift while you click for the same result.

This is the move when you're breaking a long assembly into chapters, or when you need a hard stop across picture, dialogue, music, and titles at the same frame. It comes up constantly if you're working through how to edit a YouTube video from a single long take.

The one thing to watch: it really does mean all tracks. If you have a music bed running the length of the sequence, it gets cut too. Either lock that track first (click the padlock in the track header) or use plain Add Edit with only the tracks you want targeted.

Which method to use when

All three do the same underlying thing. The difference is scope and precision, and picking the wrong one is what creates cleanup work later.

When the shortcut does nothing

Nine times out of ten it's track targeting. You pressed the key, the playhead is in the right place, and nothing happened because Premiere had no track to cut. Work down this list before you go looking for a bug:

• No track is targeted. Look at the track headers on the left. The targeted ones are highlighted. Click V1, A1, or whichever tracks hold the clip.
• The timeline doesn't have focus. If you last clicked in the Program Monitor or the Project panel, the keystroke goes there instead. Click once on the timeline panel and try again.
• The playhead isn't where you think. The Program Monitor playhead and the timeline playhead move together, but the Source Monitor has its own. Check which monitor you were scrubbing in.
• The clip is inside a nested sequence. Cutting a nest cuts the nest, not the clips inside it. Double-click the nest to open it and cut in there.
• Something rebound the key. Ctrl+K collides with shortcuts in other apps and with some custom keyboard layouts. Open Keyboard Shortcuts, search for Add Edit, and see what it's actually mapped to.
• The track is locked. A padlock in the track header blocks every edit, including this one, without any warning.

Premiere is still changing the timeline through 2026, including the June 2026 update, so check your shortcut settings after a version bump before assuming a key is gone. If you're collecting these, the 20 essential Adobe Premiere Pro shortcuts are worth a pass.

Close the gap after a cut

Splitting a clip and deleting the middle leaves a hole, and a plain delete won't close it. Use ripple delete instead: it lifts the section out and pulls everything after it back down the timeline in one move, so you never have to drag clips over by hand.

Two cuts, select the middle, ripple delete. That's the whole workflow for removing a stumble in a talking-head take, and it's the single most-used sequence in a rough cut. Once the gap is closed you'll usually want something across the seam, and add transitions in Premiere Pro covers that side of it.

Undo a split and put the clip back together

Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z, as long as you catch it before you've done much else. If the split is buried under twenty other actions, don't undo your way back through all of them. There are two cleaner options.

Delete the second half, then drag the right edge of the first half back out to where it ended. Because splitting didn't destroy anything, the media is still there waiting. Or select both halves, right-click, and choose Merge Clips if you need them treated as a single item going forward. The first option is what most editors actually do, and it takes about four seconds.

Trim before the clip ever hits the timeline

Sometimes the cleanest split is the one you don't make. Double-click a clip in the Project panel to load it into the Source Monitor, set an In point with I and an Out point with O, then drag just that section down to the timeline.

You get one clip with exactly the range you wanted and no cut points to clean up afterward. This is how most editors handle interview selects and B-roll, and it keeps a sequence readable when you're pulling forty pieces out of an hour of footage. Splitting on the timeline is for decisions you make while watching the edit play.

Export just the section you cut

Set In and Out points around the piece you want, then export the work area rather than the whole sequence. Press I and O on the timeline to mark the range, then open Export and confirm the range setting is set to your In and Out points rather than the entire sequence.

This trips people up because the export defaults to the full sequence, so you sit through a ten-minute render to get a twenty-second clip. Check the range dropdown every time. It's the difference between a fast turnaround and a wasted afternoon.

Let Premiere find the cuts for you

Handed a flattened export and need the original edit points back? Right-click the clip on the timeline and choose Scene Edit Detection. Premiere analyzes the footage and offers three outcomes: a cut at each detected point, a bin of subclips, or markers you can review before committing.

Markers first is the safer habit. Detection is good, not perfect, and it will miss a soft dissolve or add a cut where the camera whip-panned. Reviewing markers costs you a minute and saves you undoing forty cuts.

One more thing to know going in. Premiere cuts the linked audio at those same points unless you separate it first, so split your music bed off before you run the analysis. For what else has landed in the app lately, the rundown of AI tools for Premiere Pro editing is current.

Better music for the cuts you just made

Here's the part nobody warns you about. You cut four minutes down to two and the music no longer lands anywhere. The chorus that hit your best shot is now under a title card. Re-timing a track to a new edit is its own job, and it's much easier with stems than with one flat mix.

With stems you can pull the drums down under dialogue and bring them back on the cut, or drop the whole arrangement to a pad for ten seconds without the track sounding like it got interrupted. With a single stereo file your only real tools are volume and a fade, and both of them sound like what they are. Soundstripe's 116,000 tracks come with stems for exactly this reason.

It matters more if the video is headed to YouTube, where uploads get scanned against a database of rightsholder audio and a match generates a claim. Google explains how Content ID works if you want the mechanics. Getting a licensed track onto the timeline is covered in how to add music in Premiere Pro.

The cuts are done. Now the soundtrack.

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Frequently asked questions

Once the cuts are where you want them, the track underneath is the next decision. Our roundup of royalty free music for Premiere Pro is a good place to start.