Trimming and track select forward tool

Antje,

As someone who was originally trained on Avid, then became a trainer for FCP, what are you struggling with? For me, you must lay out the advantages and disadvantages of each NLE concept and be accepting of that so you can move forward to adapt and harden your new skills.

The main difference between Avid and Premiere Pro is that Avid has modes: Segment Mode, Effects Mode, Trim Mode, while Premiere Pro (Final Cut Pro v.1-7 also used this) has a "modeless" paradigm. The freeing part is that you don't need to switch modes to get a quick trim done. The not so good news is that Premiere Pro can be a little unruly in this regard. You need to tame that uneasy feeling with a barrage of shortcuts and simple strategies. 

Trim Edit Mode
You have a Trim Edit "Window" that apes trim edit mode in Avid. This works pretty well if you like adding and subtracting frames as you loop around a cut. That said, most Premiere Pro editors probably do not even use it, they prefer Timeline trimming. Double click on any cut with Ripple or Rolling Edit tools or press Shift + T. The nearest edit is grabbed as a rolling edit. Switch to Ripple Trim and then locate standard trims by toggling Ctrl + T. Use Option + Arrow keys for trimming while looping, as described below.

Timeline Trimming
You can trim several quick ways in the Timeline. I use these techniques:

• Tops 'n Tails: deviously, the fastest way to trim in the Timeline.
  • Press Q to trim the incoming edit to the playhead.
  • Press W to trim the outgoing edit to the playead.
• Extract: works like Avid.
  • Mark In and Out around trim
  • Press the apostrophe key ('). The clip or portion of the clip is removed
  • Useful for pasting the section you removed elsewhere in the sequence
  • I prefer extract over Ripple Delete as the removed section is copied to the clipboard, which I think is an advantage
• Edit Selection and Option + Arrow shortcuts
  • Select the edit as Ripple or Roll trim with either tool or via keyboard shortcuts for edit selection
  • Use Option + Left or Right Arrow keys to trim single frames
  • Use Shift + Option + Left or Right Arrow keys to trim multiple frames
• Extend Edit with "E" shortcut
  • You can select an edit, and then extend it as a rolling edit trim by pressing "E."
• Trim tools and their shortcuts
  • Ripple and Rolling Edit tools are there for your to grab and use. Nice to know the keyboard shortcuts for quick selection. I use these rarely and only for rough trims.

I'm sure I have forgotten something obvious, but I hope this advice helps a bit. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll be happy to answer if I can.

Thank You,
Kevin

Track forward ... set locks on tracks and then you move only those unlocked tracks.

How does Avid do this? I love to hear how other apps work. There's always ideas there.

Trimming can work very quickly in Premiere ... when you watch someone like Jarle Leirpoll or Christine Steele whip down a line doing tight adjustment trims to a rough-cut sequence it's amazing. It takes a bit of learning how this app needs to be setup ... and the steps you need to take ... to do it the way you feel most comfortable. I've seen incredibly fast trim work done by people taking very different processes through it.

Both Jarle & Christine have their own preferences for setting keyboard shortcuts and particular trimming tools/processes to do the job. I've watched them set individual frames through constant playback as trim points while blasting clip after clip down a line ... and they were going so fast I couldn't actually keep up with every step.

Neil

Anyone going from Premiere to Avid has issues with Avid. Going from Avid to Premiere is the same thing. We get used to one way things are done, and ... there are with each app some things that are easier to do than with others.  When we hit something that was "easy" in the other app but not so obviously so in the new app it's maddening. Those stick out at us and are very annoying.

We often don't think that much about the things that are easier than they were in the other app. There are always things like that. But we naturally pay more attention to what annoys us than to what just worked.

Premiere has a ton of things that are already mapped to keyboard shortcuts ... and many, many more that the user needs to set. Some of the things that are mapped in Premiere as it ships are not of use to you ... and many things that aren't currently mapped would be. So it's up to the user to go into the Keyboard mapping panel and start fixing it for you.

At times, it's puzzling trying to find something. And another issue is quite a few of the keyboard shortcuts are "panel-focus specific". They only work when a specific panel has the blue outline that it is "selected" at the current time. That drives me up the wall at times as you need to select the panel first (which can be by shortcuts) and then apply the keyboard shortcut for the change you want.

I do highly recommend Jarle Leirpoll's most excellent, detailed, and truly massive tome  "The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro ". The real-paper version is over 1200 pages. It was written as an ebook, and I've had it by my computer anytime I'm working in Premiere for some time, and when I saw a real paper copy at Adobe MAX last fall, it was to me a cheap acuisition. It's even faster to search the paper book than my tablet's ebook reader.

One of the major emphases of that book is getting it done fast. Using the keyboard shortcuts and ever trick in the program to get things done quickly and accurately. 

It's got a great section on editing at speed. Meaning all the trim possibilities.

Neil 

Please fix this? Really.