How to Use the Blade Tool in Final Cut Pro (Cmd+B)

Cmd+B splits the currently selected clip into two independent clips at the exact position of the current playhead, Final Cut's keyboard-driven equivalent of a razor or cut tool found in virtually every video editor. **Precision through playhead positioning**: because Blade splits exactly at the playhead's current position, getting an accurate cut point depends on first positioning the playhead precisely — using JKL shuttle playback combined with K-held frame-stepping to land exactly on the intended frame before pressing Cmd+B, rather than trying to blade freehand by clicking directly on the timeline, which is considerably less precise at normal zoom levels. **What happens to connected clips during a Blade**: if the clip being bladed has other clips connected to points along its own duration, those connections are generally preserved relative to their original anchor points after the split, though the specific connected clips end up associated with whichever of the two resulting split pieces contains their original anchor point. **Common use case — isolating a section for different treatment**: bladeing is frequently the first step before applying a different speed ramp, color correction, or removing just one problematic section from an otherwise usable longer clip — splitting out just the specific range that needs distinct treatment rather than affecting the entire original clip. **Blading across multiple selected clips at once**: if several clips are selected simultaneously across the timeline, Cmd+B blades all of them at the current playhead position in one action, useful for cutting a synchronized multi-camera or multi-layer moment (video plus a separately connected graphic, for instance) at exactly the same frame without needing to blade each layer individually and risk introducing a small frame-offset mismatch between them. **Undo-friendly by nature**: like most Final Cut editing actions, a Blade split is fully undoable with Cmd+Z, and additionally, two bladed pieces that remain adjacent and untouched can often be effectively treated as a single continuous clip again for most practical purposes, since Final Cut doesn't meaningfully distinguish a bladed-then-rejoined pair from an original unsplit clip in terms of playback. **A common mistake**: bladeing without confirming the playhead's exact frame position first, particularly when skimming (rather than JKL shuttle) was the last thing that moved the viewer's preview — remember that skimming doesn't move the actual playhead, so a Blade triggered right after skimming past a desired frame will cut at wherever the playhead was actually last set, not wherever you were most recently hovering the mouse. **Related shortcuts**: Option+[ and Option+] for trimming a clip's start or end to the playhead, a related but distinct precision-editing operation that adjusts an existing clip's boundary rather than splitting it into two pieces, and T for switching to the dedicated Trim tool for roll and ripple trims between adjacent clips. **Blading through Storylines**: if the selected clip lives inside a Storyline rather than directly on the primary storyline, Blade still works identically at the Storyline's own internal level, splitting just that clip within the Storyline's self-contained mini-timeline without affecting the Storyline's single external connection point back to the primary storyline.