"And please do not forget about snapping" -- it is already on the list as BT #393.

Thanks a lot. And please do not forget about snapping. ;)

Marking this one solved too, thanks for all the feedback and discussion.

Best regards 

@MatN

I added to the Issue Tracker, a feature request to add Generators.  BT # 449.  Eventually someone will be motivated to do this (or all of the fixes and requests ahead of it will be finished) as it is a good idea.

There are a lot of things that can be done to the code to improve it for the new user but we have to be careful not to delete any capabilities that have others have come to know.  One specific example is "piping video to a command line".  Who uses that, right?  So we deleted it several years ago and one user reported that it was the ONLY thing worth having in Cinelerra, much to our surprise! so we had to rework it to get it back in.

Yes, it is an acceptable workaround, like the ones provided by @PhyllisSmith as well. But wouldn't it be much easier, specially for new users, if text, full color frames and shapes could be added to video tracks as images work now? Then they would show thumbnails, they could be easily identified and moved around, etc.

Again,my suggestions are mostly towards improving CinGG, from a new users's perspective and someone who have used many other NLE programs so far. I know CinGG is very powerful, but the learning curve for anyone who never used any or a few video editors is too steep... If there is a great feature that requires some time learning that is unique to the program, I'd say it is acceptable, like what happens to most complex apps. But for most basic things, it only makes new users go away. I know most Cinelerra long time users and developers only use Cinelerra, and it makes it very unique. My goal here is to suggest features that would improve the user experience, specially for new users. And I am sure that if most features are easily achievable using only drag&drop mode with visual hints, etc, many more people will use CinGG. Again, please, I am not bashing or saying that how it works now is bad, these are just suggestions for improvements.

Best regards

LFOM 

When I made a title-only video, I created (with Gimp) a transparent image of the desired format (HD in my case). This image I used to create a video track, and then put the effects on it. In Settings->Preferences->Interface you can set how many seconds of video one imported image should created, and you can drag it to the correct length afterwards on the timeline. Maybe this is an acceptable workaround instead of a generator?

In the last few years so many things have been added that were not in the original design so it has been difficult to add them in.  Your suggestions for improvements are duly noted and I think some of them could be added to the code (like a menu item or toggle) when working on that specific section of code.  There are too many unknown shortcuts and there should be more buttons with appropriate labels so that no guessing is involved.

Ctrl-Alt drag will "snap" the plugin (blue bar) to the end of the edit and it does turn color from a green line as you drag to yellow when lined up for the snap to let go.  Drag while holding down the left mouse button on the blue colored plugin bar when you will see the black big arrow.

Thanks for the video and explanations. Above is the behavior I was looking for. Why it isn't enabled as default and then use the key modifiers to disable it? Or, even better, make it a toggle in a menu or button in the toolbar? But it only works when dragging the edges (black arrow as you said), it didn't work when simply moving things around.

The align edits wouldn't be needed anymore if we could move things around like when dragging the arrow keys with Ctrl+Alt. 

Best regards

LFOM

For snap across tracks, I think that "align edits" under the "Edit" pulldown on the main timeline may be what you are looking for, but not sure.  Here is a demo.

    https://streamable.com/pnm2v8

The first unarmed track is used as the Master for alignment so you have to make sure you set it up right.  It may be explained better in the manual.