Drop that Razor Blade!

Perhaps this is a familiar scene in your editing life:  You position the playhead at exactly the right spot on the timeline for a cut, then you switch to the Razor Blade tool (hopefully you do that by typing B and not by using the mouse, for God’s sake), then you bring the blade in and “snap to” the timeline to make your cut (you might also have had to hit N to turn snapping on), then, of course, you hit A to switch back to the Selection Tool and away you go. Well, I’m about to give you a bit of your life back (or give you a raise–it’s your call):

This excellent command is called “Add Edit” and it’s elegantly simple. When you hit CTRL V, an edit point (cut) is created at your Playhead’s current position. Sure, there are times when you have to cut certain layers and not others and the “BB” Razor Blade tool (which cuts all layers) is often useful, but ya know what? I have a smarty-pants keyboard shortcut answer to that as well (involving the dreaded “Toggle Auto Select” function), but that’s a “Ninja Level” shortcut for another day.  Today, just try using CTRL V for all your simple Track 1 cuts.