How to Ripple Delete in Premiere Pro (Shift+Delete)

Shift+Delete removes the selected clip from the timeline and automatically shifts everything after it on that track earlier to close the resulting gap, distinct from a plain Delete which removes the clip's content but leaves an empty space exactly where it was. **When to use which**: a plain Delete (or Backspace) is appropriate when you deliberately want a gap left behind — perhaps you're planning to fill that space with different content later, or the gap itself serves a pacing purpose. Ripple Delete is appropriate the much more common majority of the time during a rough-cut pass, where the goal is typically tightening the sequence's overall runtime by removing unwanted material entirely. **Multi-track behavior**: whether Ripple Delete affects just the track you clicked on or multiple tracks simultaneously depends on which tracks are currently targeted (shown via the target indicator icons in each track's header). If video and audio tracks are both targeted, ripple-deleting a clip on one can shift content on the other tracks too, keeping synced elements aligned — but this can also surprise you if you expected the action scoped to just one track. **The Extract alternative**: a closely related action, sometimes bound to the apostrophe key, performs essentially the same ripple-and-close-gap behavior but is explicitly designed to operate across all tracks at the current playhead range regardless of individual track targeting, useful for cleanly removing a synced section without needing to first configure track targeting correctly. **Undo safety**: like virtually every edit in Premiere, Ripple Delete is fully undoable with Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z), so experimenting with it to see exactly how your specific multi-track setup responds is low-risk if you're unsure how it'll behave on a given sequence. **Related shortcuts**: plain Delete for removing content while leaving a gap, and the Ripple Edit tool (B) for trimming a clip's edge with the same automatic gap-closing behavior applied to a partial trim rather than a full clip removal. **Ripple delete and linked clips**: if a video clip's audio is linked to it (a standard camera-recorded clip with synchronized sound), ripple deleting the video portion also ripple deletes the linked audio automatically, keeping them properly paired — unlinking beforehand changes this behavior if you specifically need to remove just one half of a linked pair. **Ripple delete versus Extract for multi-track removal**: while Shift+Delete typically scopes its ripple-and-close-gap behavior to whichever tracks are currently targeted, Extract (bound to a different key, often apostrophe) is specifically designed to ripple close a gap across every track simultaneously regardless of individual track targeting, which matters when removing a section that spans several synced tracks at once. **Reviewing before committing**: because ripple delete permanently changes downstream clip timing, it's worth previewing the surrounding footage briefly after the operation to confirm nothing important shifted out of an intended sync position, particularly in music-driven edits where a beat-matched cut elsewhere in the sequence could be thrown off by an unexpected ripple. **Mistake to avoid**: ripple deleting a clip on a track that isn't actually targeted (visible via the target track indicators in the track header) can silently do nothing at all rather than erroring, which confuses editors who select a clip, press Shift+Delete, and see no change — always confirm the track containing your selected clip shows an active target indicator before assuming the shortcut itself is broken. **Ripple delete near sequence markers and time-based edits**: because Ripple Delete shifts all downstream content earlier in time, any absolute-time-based elements later in the sequence (a marker placed to sync with a specific timecode, or a keyframed effect referencing sequence time rather than clip-relative time) can end up misaligned relative to their original intended timing after a ripple delete — worth double-checking sequence markers and any timecode-sensitive effects downstream after a significant ripple removal. **Comparing to Lift, the true non-rippling removal**: Lift removes a clip's content while leaving an exact-duration gap, which is the appropriate choice specifically when you need to preserve absolute downstream timing for a later replacement clip of the identical duration — Ripple Delete is the wrong tool whenever preserving that absolute timing matters more than tightening overall runtime.