Deselect videos

[davidm6207557]

I'm an experienced user and I made a mistake but kind of knowingly.

I have a video of about 20 minutes which I want to break into pieces of 4-6 minutes. I imported it, edited, and am now nearing the point where I want to break up the sections.

The problem is how. One way to save the first section is to save the file under a new name then highlight every video after section 1, then delete. But this will take forever; some of the individual videos are less than a second long.

Another way is to highlight everything then de-select all videos in the first section then save. This will take less time but still be long and tedious.

What would be great is a way to highlight a section... then everything following that section (without clicking each individual video). Is that possible?

The issue comes down to mass selecting/de-selecting; is it possible to highlight consecutive videos, other than by clicking each one?

[Bill Sprague]

I'm not sure why you can't highlight what you want to delete.   

Have you considered the work area bars and outputing only the section marked?

[davidm6207557]

As I mentioned, I can highlight what I want to delete, but that would entail highlighting and deleting dozens and dozens of videos; I'd like to avoid the time it would take to do that.

Work area bars sound ideal but I'm not sure they're part of Elements. If so, can you tell me where to find that option?

[Peru Bob]

Work Area Bar:

[davidm6207557]

I'm using Elements 15 and my timeline looks different than yours; there doesn't seem to be a Work Area bar, even when I expand "Markers"...

BUT – I noticed under "Timeline" an option for "Render Work Area" so I knew it must be somewhere. I searched the Elements User Guide (which I'd done before to no avail) and discovered, in Shortcuts, the shortcuts for setting Work Bar in and out points.

So I designated a very small area and saved, which Elements is doing right now – because of the length and complexity of the file, it's going to take at least a half-hour.

But, assuming it works, this solves my problem. Still, I'd love to know if there's a Work Area bar (as opposed to using shortcuts to set in and out points) in Premiere 15. And it'd be much simpler if there was an alternative to highlighting the entire video with ^a; that is, something which could highlight all videos going forward or backward from a specific point.

[davidm6207557]

Bad news; I designated work area in and out points, rendered manually then exported, and it exported the entire file, not the work area alone. How can I export the work area alone?

[Ann Bens]

Make sure you select work area in the export settings.

[davidm6207557]

I was looking for something like that but couldn't find anything in the Export window or Project Settings or Preferences – where would it be?

[davidm6207557]

Found it – Export & Share/Devices/Custom/Advanced/add comment/Choose name/Share WorkArea bar only

But the saga continues; when I exported, it did indeed only save the work area section but the quality was bad – there were motion trails on the smallest motion. I tried saving with higher quality, same thing, but it shouldn't matter, should it? Why wouldn't I get the same quality saving a work area section as I do when saving the whole file?

[davidm6207557]

My apologies, Ann – there's a "Share WorkArea only" box on the main screen. (How could I have missed it?)

And the quality issue is more complicated than I thought; I checked an earlier export of the entire gigantic file and it has the same issue, which has never happened to me with any other video in 6 years of Elements use. Anyway, I'll now try saving WorkAreas in higher quality and cross my fingers.

Meanwhile, if anyone has thoughts about whether there's an accessible WorkArea bar in Elements 15, and/or a way to highlight videos going forwards or backwards from a specific point, I'd love to hear.

[davidm6207557]

Got it! From the User Manual (which I swear I use but it's not, to my mind, particularly user-friendly)...

• To select sequential clips, drag a rectangle (marquee selection) that includes the clips you want to select.

• To add a range of clips to the current selection, Shift‑drag a marquee around the clips.

So now I probably won't even need WorkArea; I can temporarily delete large sections of the large video, export what I need, then Undo, rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, I tried multiple export quality settings on this video and there was trailing on everything, including 4k. That had the least, though, so I'll use it, but it really piles up the kilobytes.

Anyway, I think I'm – finally – all set. Thanks to everyone who helped!