Your first project: one clip, a title, an export.

Install Grapple

1. On the download page, press Download. The installer downloads.
2. Open the installer. Grapple installs for your user account.
3. When Grapple opens, sign in with Google or your email address. For email, type in the 6-digit code we send you.

Grapple draws every frame on your graphics card through Vulkan. Updates arrive in the background as small patches, so you only install it once. You can follow this whole guide without a model; Ape and Create need one, which the model setup guide covers.

Find your way around

Grapple works on one screen:

On the left

Project, History and Plugins, as tabs.

In the centre

The Viewer over the Timeline. Most of this guide happens here. The Timeline's Graph tab, at its top, is where you shape keys.

On the right

Inspector, Controls, Effects, Create and Ape, as tabs. When you're ready to make the file, Export at the top right of the window opens the Exports panel here.

Any panel, including Scopes, Code and extra viewers, opens from the Window menu. Panels dock, float and tab, and Window, Layout, Reset layout tidies a cluttered screen. Press Ctrl+K to find any command by name.

Place a clip

1. Choose Import Media from the File menu and pick a clip of ten seconds to a minute. It appears in the Project panel.
2. Drag it from the Project panel onto the Timeline. It goes where you drop it.
3. Press Space to play and pause. Press , and . to step one frame back or forward, so you can find exact moments.

Trim the opening

1. Select the clip and put the playhead on the first frame you want. Press Q to trim the clip's start to it.
2. Put the playhead ten seconds later and press W to trim the end.
3. To lose a stretch from the middle, press Ctrl+B at each end to split there, select the middle part and press Shift+Delete. The part goes and the gap closes.

The editing guide covers ripple, roll, slip and slide.

Add a title

1. Choose the Text tool (T) from the rail down the left of the Stage, click where the title should go, and type it. Click for a single line, or drag for a box that wraps.
2. With the text selected, set its font, size and colour in the Inspector.
3. Drag it into place with the Select tool (V).

Animate the title

1. Move the playhead about two seconds in, where the title should have arrived.
2. In the Inspector, click the diamond beside Position. Position is now animated, with a key at the playhead.
3. Move the playhead back half a second, click the diamond again to add a key there, and drag the title a little way down.
4. Do the same for Opacity: 100% at two seconds and 0% half a second earlier.
5. Select the keys and press F9 for easy ease, so the title slows into place instead of stopping dead.

Play it back: the title rises and fades in. The diamond is filled when there's a key at the playhead and half filled between keys. For a quicker start, Text animation in the Inspector has style tiles such as Rise and Fade that do this by letter, word or line. The animation guide covers the Graph and both.

Fade the sound

Drag the small handle at the start of the clip's audio inward to fade it in, and the one at the end to fade it out. Audio clips show their waveform, so you can see where the sound starts.

Export the opening

1. Press Export at the top right of the window. The Exports panel opens beside the Inspector.
2. Choose the H.264 for the web preset. It writes SDR in BT.709, which plays almost everywhere.
3. Leave the range at Whole composition and the frame rate at the composition's rate, then export.

Keep the project as well as the file. The next change to the title starts from the project, where the text and keys are still editable.

Try it with Ape

Once Ape has a model, open the Ape tab and ask for the same thing. Then compare its layers and keys with yours: they're the same kinds of objects, and you change them the same way.