Trim Mode is one of the great Avid innovations, but there are cases when you don’t even need to launch trim mode to make a change. For instance, in this example, we have audio and video that have fallen out of sync by 7 frames:

To fix this issue, we’d like to slip the video back seven frames to put it back in sync. You can do this with Trim Mode, or you can do it right in the timeline. First, make sure only the layer you want to work with is highlighted:

Position the playhead over the clip you’d like to change, and just tap the Trim Left key (usually ‘,’) a few times. You’ll see the out-of-sync indicator decrease until it reaches zero:

It can be somewhat confusing at first to predict which direction the slip is going when you tap the keys. The best way to think of it is, “I am pushing the footage to the left,” and tap Trim Left. If you’d like to push the footage to the right, Trim Right. This is a great trick for eliminating flash frames (one tap and it’s gone) or fixing lip sync issues.