What's the point of the source window?

Cheers all for the comprehensive replies, when I'm the next LucasArts I'll give you a shout out - promise!

I'll give the source panel a whirl on my next project - I hadn't considered the multiple-use-of-a-clip scenario, that alone tips the scales in my mind.

For this reason, I have swapped out the source and program monitor on my screen (a curved LG monitor), so that my program monitor sits in the middle of the screen.

Using the source monitor is one way of working; use it however you prefer.

Another reason came to mind. Sometimes you haven't settled on how the sequence should work, so you want to try out some ideas in the Project panel or bin first. When you do this, hover-scrubbing the clip thumbnails is useful for getting a quick read of what's in each clip as you change the order of the clip icons. If the clips are untrimmed, it can be a pain to try and sequence things because unwanted material sticks out of both ends of the clips. If you trim them all first in the Source panel, now you have nice clean trimmed clips that are much easier to hover-scrub and sequence in the Project panel.

All of that is even more important if you use the new Freeform view for working out sequencing ideas in the Project panel or a bin. As you drag to group and rearrange the clips to work out your story, it's much easier if the clips preview only the parts you actually want to use. If the clips are already trimmed, then when you decide on the sequencing you can just hit Automate to Sequence, and when that finishes pushing the clips into the Timeline panel, your sequence is largely done already.

Another thing about the Source monitor is you see the un-altered clip, without any changes done on any sequence applied.

It's also used when you have media with Master Clip settings such as ArriRaw, r3d, BlackMagic raw, or some of the log media.

Click the Master Clip tab in the Effects Control Panel and Premiere automatically opens the clip in the Source monitor.

Neil

I understand where you're coming from because sometimes, I just throw all the clips into the timeline and start cutting off the ends. But the Source panel gets more valuable as your projects scale up. The more source clips you have, or the more sequences you create within a project, the more efficient it is to bulk-trim your clips in the Source panel first. For example, if you have a clip and it's going to be used in 3 sequences, it's a lot less work to trim to In and Out points in the Source panel just once. If you did not use the Source panel, then you would drag the clip into 3 sequences and have to trim it 3 times, not just once. Sure, you could also trim the clip in the first sequence and copy and paste the trimmed version to the other two sequences, but the point is that if you trim a clip in the Source panel, it is now already properly trimmed for all of the additional times you might need to reuse it in a project.

Another time the Source panel is useful is when the original clip is long and you only need a few seconds of it. Instead of dropping a super long clip into the timeline and have to zoom and scroll around a lot to trim the ends and magnify the little bit left over, you pre-trim it in the Source panel and only the short bit you care about gets dropped into the sequence.

You asked “why would Adobe have added that feature.” The answer is that Adobe didn’t invent that feature. The concept of Source and Program views goes all the way back to 20th century videotape-based editing, where you would have physical Source and Program monitors as a left/right pair on your editing desk. The Source monitor would display the contents of the tape in the source videotape deck, and the Program monitor would show the output of another tape deck, which contained the tape where the program was being assembled. You would mark your In point and Out point in the source tape deck, hit a button, and it would copy that segment to the Program tape deck.

This is why most of the video editing applications out there use the Source and Program window configuration: It was how the video industry was used to editing programs before video editing could be done on computers. Some newer applications such as Final Cut Pro X have tried to reinvent the editing interface based on the notion that maybe it's time to move beyond a source/program metaphor designed around how we used to edit video in the previous century. Some people agree with that, others still prefer to work using the Source/Program model.

I kinda work mostly like you where you put all the stuff into timeline but that's mostly dependent now on how 'serious' I am about the project. And I like doing my own manual (stacked video) cross dissolves, and don't want 'handles'.

But basically the source thing lets you browse through the media files in your media pool to just review them. It also ( this is a big thing now that most people do ) allows you to make IN and OUT selection ( the exact frame range you want to "use" on the timeline) and drag only that portion to your timeline.

I use it now a lot more than I used to.

For one thing, you can make cuts and delete unwanted 'handles' of the clip once it's on the timeline, as you fine tune the edit.

You can do all the same stuff doing it the way you are, and you might like using the source monitor to speed things up a little.

beware... you need the screen size to really see both source and program monitors. My laptop is worthless for editing and that's one of the reasons. Screen too small. 

hope that helps explain ?