Watch an editor review a cut and the mouse barely moves. The left hand rests on J, K and L. The picture runs fast through the parts they already know, stops right where something looks off and steps back two frames to the bad cut.
Then watch a producer or a client do the same review. They drag the playhead, overshoot, drag it back, hit play, pause a beat too late and write “around 0:40”, because finding the exact moment again would take another minute.
None of this is an editor’s secret. Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut all use the same handful of keys, and some browser review players borrow them. An afternoon of using them is enough to change how long a review takes and how precise the notes come out.
In short
- L plays forward, K stops and J plays backward, and in Premiere and Final Cut a second press of J or L speeds playback up.
- The arrows step one frame, while Shift plus an arrow jumps five frames in Premiere, one second in Resolve and ten frames in Final Cut.
- I and O mark a range you can loop or comment on.
- Review in passes: one straight watch, a notes pass on the keys and a last straight watch, with audio notes at normal speed.
What J, K and L do
L plays forward, K stops and J plays backward. In Premiere and Final Cut, a second press of L speeds playback up (Final Cut goes as high as 32x), and J does the same in reverse.
Your fingers stay on the three keys, so you can run through a stretch at double speed, stop the moment something catches your eye and go back to it without reaching for the mouse.
Hold K down and it does a second job. In Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro, holding K and tapping L moves one frame forward, and tapping J moves one frame back.
Hold K and L together and the picture creeps forward slowly, at half speed according to Apple’s guide for Final Cut. Editors use this to find the exact frame where a shot changes. They shuttle close, stop and inch up to it.
Someone giving notes needs to land on the right frame just as much. A note on the right frame gets fixed in one pass, while a note on “around 0:40” comes back as a question. That problem is the whole subject of our guide to giving video feedback.
Frame by frame, in and out, loop
The left and right arrows step one frame back or forward. Holding Shift makes the jump bigger, and how much bigger depends on the app.
When you need to know exactly which frame you’re on, the last field of the timecode counts it, and our post on how to read timecode explains how to read it.
I marks an in point and O marks an out point. Together they define a stretch of the video, and most of what you do with a stretch, like looping it or commenting on it, starts there.
Looping a two-second range three or four times is the quickest way to hear whether there’s a click on a cut or whether the music swells over a line of dialogue, two things that are hard to judge from a single listen.
The space bar plays and pauses in all three editors, and most apps have a key for the first and last frame (Home and End in Final Cut, for example).
Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut compared
The core is the same in the three big editors. The differences are in the modifiers, which is where people moving between apps trip up.
| Premiere Pro | DaVinci Resolve | Final Cut Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Back, stop, forward | J / K / L | J / K / L | J / K / L |
| Faster | J or L again | Shift + J / Shift + L | J or L again, up to 32x |
| One frame | ← / → | ← / → | ← / → |
| Shift + arrow | 5 frames | 1 second | 10 frames |
| In and out | I / O | I / O | I / O |
| Loop | Loop button in the monitor | Cmd + / | Cmd + L |
These are the defaults from Adobe’s, Blackmagic’s and Apple’s own shortcut lists, with Mac modifiers (Ctrl takes the place of Cmd on Windows).
All three apps let you remap every key, so an editor’s machine may not match the table. If a key doesn’t do what you expect, the keyboard settings will show what it’s bound to.
The Shift + arrow row is the one that catches people out. Five frames, one second and ten frames are very different jumps, and someone used to Premiere’s five frames jumps twice as far in Final Cut.
A review pass on the keyboard
This is one way to review a three-minute cut with the keys, without turning the review into a technical exercise.
- Watch it once at normal speed, start to finish, without stopping. That first viewing is the closest you’ll get to how the audience will see it, and pacing problems only show up when nobody interrupts the video.
- Go back to the start and do the notes pass. Run through the parts you’re happy with at double speed and stop with K as soon as something catches your eye. Back up with J or the left arrow, find the frame and write the note there, rather than on the moment you noticed it a second later.
- For anything that lasts, like a lower third that stays up too long or music that buries a line, mark it with I and O and let it loop. Hearing the same two seconds four times settles most “is it just me?” doubts, and the note can say where the problem starts and where it ends.
- Be careful with speed. Double speed is fine for checking that a shot is there and that the text on screen is spelled right. It’s a bad way to judge sound, because audio played fast hides pops and sudden level jumps at the edit. Do your audio notes at normal speed.
- Finish with one more viewing from the top at normal speed. Notes written frame by frame sometimes work against what the whole piece needs, and that tends to show up on a last straight watch.
How this works in RecReview
The review player in RecReview uses the same keys, and anyone who opens the review link on a computer can use them, clients included. Press ? on the player to see the full list.
L plays, a second press goes to 2x and a third to 4x. J does the same backwards, showing the picture without sound, and K stops. If the video is already playing, L goes straight to 2x.
When you shuttle backwards or faster than normal, a small orange label next to the clock shows the direction and the speed. Hold K and tap J or L to move a single frame.
When you stop with K or pause, the player returns to the speed you picked in the speed menu, which runs from 0.25x to 2x. The < and > keys step through those speeds, and 1 and 2 jump to normal and double speed.
For slow motion, step down to 0.5x or 0.25x, since holding K and L here only moves one frame. The speed you pick carries over to the next video for as long as the tab stays open.
The arrows move one frame at the file’s frame rate, and holding one down keeps stepping. Shift with an arrow jumps five seconds, not five frames as in Premiere. Home and End go to the first and last frame.
I and O mark a range, which shows up next to the clock, and X clears it. Shift + L repeats: with a range marked it loops the range, and without one it loops the whole video.
C pauses and opens the comment box at the current frame. With a range marked, the note covers all of it, and a purple bar under the timeline shows where it starts and ends.
Without a keyboard, Mark range in the comment box marks five seconds from the current frame, and you adjust it by dragging the edges on the timeline. While you’re typing a note, the letters go into the note and not to the player. There’s more on notes pinned to the frame on the time-coded comments page.
When you compare two versions side by side, the shuttle only goes forward. L speeds both cuts up, and J slows them down and then pauses.
