Lacoura Video

Getting started with Lacoura Video

Lacoura Video is a nonlinear editor that runs in a browser tab. It follows the shape professional editors use — a source monitor and a program monitor, a multi-track timeline, and three-point editing — with nothing to install.

Open the studio

Go to lacoura.com/video and sign in. The editor opens at lacoura.com/video/app.

Use a desktop browser. Codec support is the browser’s own, so an MP4 that plays in your browser will edit here; one that does not, will not, and the app says so per file rather than failing silently.

Make a cut in six steps

1. Import. Click Import in the Project panel, or drop files onto it. Video, audio and stills are all accepted.
2. New Sequence. Pick a frame rate and resolution. If you are unsure, 30 fps at 1920×1080 is a safe default.
3. Load the Source monitor. Double-click a clip in the Project panel. It opens on the left.
4. Mark your in and out. I and O in the Source monitor set the range you actually want.
5. Edit it to the timeline. . overwrites at the playhead; , inserts and pushes later clips right. A video clip with sound lands as a linked pair on V1 and A1.
6. Play it. Space. The Program monitor shows the sequence, not the source.

The window

• Project panel (left) — imported media and your sequences. Double-click media to load it into Source; double-click a sequence to make it active.
• Source monitor — one clip at a time, where you choose the in and out points before editing it in.
• Program monitor — the sequence as it will play. The colour-grade control lives on its toolbar.
• Timeline — video tracks stack upward (V1 at the bottom paints first), audio tracks below them.
• Inspector (right) — the selected clip’s properties.

Linked clips

A video clip that carries sound is edited in as a linked pair — picture on a video track, sound on an audio track. Clicking either selects both, so they stay in sync. Hold Alt while clicking to grab just one, or use Cmd/Ctrl + L to link and unlink a selection. Linked in the timeline toolbar turns the behaviour off entirely.

Cutting a linked pair with the razor gives you two pairs, not one block of four — each half stays linked to its own partner.

Colour grading

Select a clip and open the grade control (the palette button on the Program monitor). Exposure, contrast, saturation and hue apply per clip and show live in the Program monitor. White-balance temperature and tint are deliberately absent rather than faked — they need a per-channel operation that arrives with the GPU render graph.

Saving and exporting

• Save Project (Cmd/Ctrl + S) writes a project file to a location you pick. Browser-picked media cannot be re-opened by path, so re-opening a project asks you to relink its files; each one is fingerprint-checked so you cannot relink the wrong clip.
• Export Sequence (Cmd/Ctrl + E) is currently a realtime capture: the sequence plays once and is recorded. A ten-minute sequence takes ten minutes, and the export dialog says so. A frame-exact file export is the next major piece of work.

If playback misbehaves

Help ▸ Playback Diagnostics plays a short tone through the editor’s own audio path and reports what your browser actually did — whether it refused to start playback, started but stalled, or ran without carrying any sound. Copy that report into a message and it tells us in one step what would otherwise take a dozen questions.