L-CUTS AND J-CUTS — WHY AND HOW?

To create an L-cut, trim the right edge of the video event without touching the audio event. 

✓ Hold the Shift key as you drag the edge of the video event to the left. Holding Shift overrides the event group and enables you to trim only the video event. Now, because the video cuts away before the audio, you have an L-cut. Note that as we said, the video and audio events now resemble a letter L.

✓ Add another video event to the timeline, after the first video event. Snap the left edge of that event to the right edge of the first video event.  This creates a hard cut between the video events, but it also creates an audio crossfade between the audio events.

✓ Hold the Shift key and then trim the second audio event to the right.  Once you have some space between the left edge of the audio event and the left edge of the video event, release the Shift key. This allows you to snap the edge of the audio event against the right edge of the original audio event.

To create a J-cut, follow a similar process. 

✓ Shift-drag the left edge of the video event to the right.  Now, the audio plays before the video starts, and the video and audio events resemble a letter J. 

Add another video to the timeline, before the first video event.

✓ Like before, drag the right edge of the new video event to the original video event and snap it up against the left edge of the video event. 

Again, this creates a crossfade between the audio events, so hold Shift and drag the right edge of the new audio event.  Release Shift when you’ve got some space between the right edge of the audio event and the right edge of the video event. Trim the audio event to the left until it snaps against the left edge of the original audio event.