Splice
Also known as: join, splice point
The join between two shots, a term carried over from cutting film and still the plainest word for what an edit is made of.
Updated
What it means
A splice is one join. An edit is a list of them, and everything else about editing is a decision about where each one falls. The rest of the craft is elaboration on that.
The word comes from physical film, where two pieces were cut and taped together. Nothing is physically joined now and the vocabulary survived, along with the mental model that went with it.
In a modern application a splice is a Cut on the timeline, with no frames removed on either side unless somebody trims them. The join exists first and the trimming follows.
How it works in practice
Adding splices is the first pass of any assembly. Cutting a long file into candidates leaves a row of joins, which is what a Rough cut is before anything has been arranged into an order.
Where each one lands is the actual craft. Cutting on action decides most of them and music decides the rest, and nothing else in an edit gets a vote on it.
Removing a splice is as common as adding one. Two adjacent clips from the same source joined back together is how an over-cut section gets repaired, since the frames were never gone.
What to watch out for
Splices without reason accumulate. A sequence can end up with joins that do nothing, left over from trimming, and each one is a place for an error to hide in later on.
Audio splices are the ones that get noticed. A join in a continuous Ambient sound track is audible where the picture cut is not, which is why sound is usually handled separately.
Every splice is a chance to break Continuity. The more joins a sequence has, the more opportunities exist for direction, light or equipment to change without anybody noticing at the time.
How RawClip handles it
The assembled sequence is a list of joins chosen from the action and the music, with each clip trimmed before it is placed. Removing or adding one afterwards is ordinary timeline work and does not require rebuilding anything that came before it.