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Edit your video by editing its transcript in the Script panel on the right side of the editor (show or hide it with the sidebar icon beside the playback controls, labeled Toggle sidebar, or press Shift + S): select words to cut them, keep only a section, or copy it to a new clip or video. You can remove words but not rewrite them; to change the wording viewers see, edit the subtitles.

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Accessing the transcript

The transcript lives in the Script panel on the right side of the editor. You can click any word to jump to that point in the video, or select text to cut, keep, or copy sections. The same right-side panel also contains the subtitle text editor. Open the panel menu and click Subtitles to switch from the editing transcript to the words viewers see on screen. Click Back to script to return.
If the active clip has no audio, the Toggle sidebar button stays visible but is disabled and shows This clip has no audio when you hover over it. Select a clip with audio to open the Script panel with the button or Shift + S.
You can also open the transcript from the Cut tool: click Cut in the toolbar, then click Show transcript at the top of the Cut panel. The Script panel shows the transcripts for all clips in your video at once, each in its own labeled section. Click any clip’s header to jump to it, or click any word to seek directly to that moment. The active clip’s header is highlighted.
Each clip’s transcript becomes editable as soon as that clip is ready. If another clip is still transcribing, you can continue using the transcripts for your ready clips.
Tella transcribes each clip’s audio individually. Uploaded video files use the file’s audio track. For clips recorded in Tella, audio playing inside a screen recording is not transcribed separately. Transcription uses the microphone audio captured with the clip. For more on when transcripts are generated and what to do if yours is missing, see retranscribe a video.

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If a clip’s transcription fails

If Tella cannot transcribe a clip, its section in the Script panel shows Error: Transcription failed. This can happen when a clip is too short for speech recognition. You can continue using the transcripts for your other clips. To try again, retranscribe the video. If the clip has no usable speech or is only a fraction of a second long, re-record or replace that clip instead.

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Jump to a word in the video

Click on any word in the transcript sidebar to jump to that point in the video. This lets you quickly preview and locate specific parts without scrubbing through the timeline.

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Select words in the transcript

Click and drag across words to select a range of text. The selection highlights in the transcript. Double-click a word to select only that word. Triple-click a word to select the whole sentence it belongs to.
If any clip in your video has a Thai transcript, triple-click selects only one word because sentence boundaries aren’t detected for Thai yet.

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Search the transcript

Use transcript search to find specific words or phrases across your entire video without scrolling.
  1. Open the search bar with Cmd + F (Mac) or Ctrl + F (Windows), or click the magnifying glass icon in the Script panel header.
  2. Start typing. Matches are highlighted in the transcript as you type. Search only includes words that remain in your video, so text you have cut is not returned.
  3. Use the up and down chevrons next to the search field to step to the previous or next match. The video seeks to each match as you navigate, and the match count (for example, 3 / 12) shows where you are in the results.
  4. If there are no matches, the search field turns red.
When you navigate to a match in a different clip, Tella automatically activates that clip and seeks to it. For more flexible searching, click the sparkles (✨) button on the right side of the search bar to enable AI search. Instead of matching exact words, AI search understands natural-language queries, so you can describe what you’re looking for rather than remembering the exact phrasing. For example, you can type things like:
  • Where do I talk about pricing?
  • Find where I mention the onboarding flow
  • What part explains how to get started?
When AI search is active, the placeholder text in the search bar changes to prompt natural-language queries. While your query is being processed, the sparkles button shows a spinner. Exact keyword matches are highlighted right away, and AI results are added when the search completes. Click the sparkles button again to switch back to regular keyword search. Tella remembers which mode you last used.

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Cut words from the video

  1. Select the word, phrase, or sentence you wish to remove.
  2. Press the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard, or click the Delete button in the editor.
  3. The selected text will be removed from the transcript and the corresponding section will be cut from the video timeline.

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Keep only a section

If you want to keep a specific section and remove everything else:
  1. Select the desired text.
  2. Click on Keep only this.
  3. All other parts of the transcript (and video) will be removed, leaving only the selected section.

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Copy a selection to a new clip

You can create a new clip from a selected portion of the transcript:
  1. Select the words you want to extract.
  2. Click Copy to new clip in the toolbar that appears.
  3. A new clip containing only the selected section is added to your timeline.
This is useful when you want to isolate a specific part of a clip for reordering or applying different edits. You can undo this action with Cmd + Z (Mac) or Ctrl + Z (Windows).

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Copy a selection to a new video

To create an entirely new video from a selected portion of the transcript:
  1. Select the words you want to extract.
  2. Click Copy to new video in the toolbar that appears.
  3. A new video is created with the selected section, and it opens in a new tab.

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Undo and redo transcript edits

You can undo and redo most transcript editing actions, including cuts, deletions, and copying to a new clip:
  • Undo: Press Cmd + Z (Mac) or Ctrl + Z (Windows), or click the undo button in the editor toolbar.
  • Redo: Press Cmd + Shift + Z (Mac) or Ctrl + Y (Windows), or click the redo button in the editor toolbar.

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Hide deleted text

  • Open More actions in the Script panel and click Hide deleted to remove deleted text from the transcript view.
  • Click Show deleted in the same menu to reveal it again.

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Fine-tune cuts on the timeline

  • After making initial edits in the transcript, you can switch to the Timeline for more precise adjustments.
  • Zoom in: Use the zoom controls to get a closer view of your edits.
  • Adjust segments: Click and drag the edges of segments on the timeline to fine-tune the start and end points down to the split second.

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Can I change the words in the transcript?

No. You cannot change the actual words in the Script panel; you can only remove them. To fix the words viewers see on screen, edit the subtitles instead.

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Edit the subtitle text

  1. Click Subs in the toolbar.
  2. Click Edit subtitles at the top of the Subtitles panel.
  3. Edit the subtitle text and timestamps in the right-side Subtitles panel.
You can also open the Script panel, open its menu, and click Subtitles.

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Delete or restore a single subtitle word

Right-click any word in the subtitle editor to open a context menu:
  • Delete: hides the word from the subtitles without cutting it from the video.
  • Restore: brings back a word you previously deleted.
The menu is also available on deleted words, so you can restore them without leaving the subtitle editor.

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Split a subtitle block

In the right-side Subtitles panel, you can choose where a new subtitle block starts without changing the words’ timing or cutting the video.
  1. Click a word to edit it, then place the caret just before the word where you want the next block to start.
  2. Press Enter. The remaining words move into a new subtitle block, and the video jumps to preview it.
With the caret at the end of a word, Enter splits after that word instead. At the start of an existing block, it leaves the boundary unchanged. With text selected or the caret inside a word, Enter saves your edit without splitting. You can also right-click a word and choose Break subtitle after, or press Shift + Enter while editing a word to add or remove a break after it. A return-arrow marker appears after words with a manual break.
Splitting and joining work on the original spoken-language subtitles, not translated tracks. Select the original language in Subtitle language before changing subtitle breaks.

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Remove a subtitle break or join blocks

To remove a manual break, click its return-arrow marker and press Backspace or Delete, or right-click the word before it and choose Remove subtitle break. To join a subtitle block to the one above it:
  1. Click the first word of the block you want to join.
  2. Place the caret at the very start of that word, with no text selected.
  3. Press Backspace.
This can join blocks separated by a manual break, punctuation, or a pause. The subtitle block-length limit still applies: blocks that only split because they exceed the lines-per-block limit stay separate, and Tella shows a message explaining why. Removing a manual break may also leave blocks separate if an automatic boundary still applies.

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Undo every cut in a clip

If you’ve made changes you’re not satisfied with and wish to revert to the original video:
  1. Open More actions in the Script panel.
  2. Click Reset all cuts.
  3. This will restore your clip to its original form.

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Why the Script panel and subtitles can show different words

The Script panel and your subtitles don’t always show the exact same words, and that’s intentional. They serve two different goals.
  • The Script panel is an editing tool. It reflects what was actually spoken, including filler words like “um”, “ah”, and “mm”, along with false starts. While Trimming, these are kept visible so you can find them and cut them from your video.
  • Subtitles are what your viewers see. To keep on-screen captions clean and readable, Tella automatically filters out filler words and disfluencies. They won’t appear in your burned-in or downloaded subtitles even if they’re still spoken in the video.
So if you notice a stray “um” in the Script panel that isn’t in your exported subtitles, that’s expected: the Script panel is editorial (built for you, the editor), while subtitles are presentational (built for your audience). The two may diverge further over time as Tella surfaces more editing detail in the Script panel while keeping subtitles clean. If you want to remove a filler word from the video itself (not just hide it from the subtitles), cut it from the Script panel, choose Remove fillers from the Script panel’s More actions menu, or use Filler words in the Cut panel.
Last modified on October 6, 2026