App Economy vs App Profligacy in PPro

[ETorr]

Escaping the "Too many commands for one feature" trap.

In storytelling: "Narrative economy" & "brevity is the soul of wit"

In post: "App economy is the brevity of edit schedules."

Case in point:

Avid's single "Add Dissolve" command

vs

PPro's two commands: "Apply Video Transition" + "Apply Audio Transition".

Avid: Add a dissolve to either a picture or sound track, same command works in two contexts.  App economy.

Take it to PPro: Applying a Video Transition to an Audio track.  It's like adding the quadratic equation to a sheep.  Two keyboard shortcuts where one would suffice.  App profligacy.

You could argue that the benefit of the PPro's 2-command approach affords users a default video transition of one length, an audio transition of another.  But a context-sensitive command could point to either as needed.

Mercifully the example above is no longer the fetter it once was: at long last there's the newer "Apply Default Transitions to Selection", PPro's track-agnostic context-sensitive smart command.  Smarter still, PPro retained the original two commands for those who have become accustomed to using them.  An excellent have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too.

But examples of "app profligacy" persist in PPro.  Looking for solutions:

- "Reveal in Project" vs "Reveal Sequence in project".  Sure you can use PPro's superbly conceived keyboard mapping system so that the same keystroke runs the former command in the Source Panel and the latter in the Timeline Panel.  But a context-sensitive "Reveal In Project" could be more powerful:

    • Reveals the source from the Source Panel (as it does)

    • Reveals the sequence from the Program Panel (For some reason this can't be customized via Keyboard Shortcuts ??)

    • Reveals the sequence from the Timeline Panel, if no clips selected

    • Reveals a selected clip if if the Timeline Panel is active and a single timeline clip is selected.

- Apply Default Video/Audio Transition From/To Playhead

This is a welcome, innovative feature, but again, 4 commands yet missing that one additional that substitute for the four: "Apply Default Transition From Selection To Playhead" i.e. Select your transition, plant your playhead, execute command.  One shortcut for 4 options.

More to come...

[Peru Bob]

Have you been here:

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[ETorr]

But of course.

[excited_Genie16B8]

You could argue that the benefit of the PPro's 2-command approach affords users a default video transition of one length, an audio transition of another

I'm making use of that capability on my current project.  Works a treat.

[ETorr]

Jim_Simon  wrote

You could argue that the benefit of the PPro's 2-command approach affords users a default video transition of one length, an audio transition of another

I'm making use of that capability on my current project.  Works a treat.

Indeed, and agreed, but a context-sensitive version doesn't necessarily undermine that.

If it's a dissolve added to video, it chooses your default video.

If it's a dissolve (or fade / cross dissolve) added to audio, it choose your default audio.

Indeed the smart option Adobe already added to their command library, "Apply Default Transitions to Selection" effectively replaces "Apply Video Transition" and "Apply Audio Transition".

The OP celebrates this welcome development and goes on to point out other places to do like-minded improvements.

[eikonoklastes]

There's probably a snarky comment about Discussion Economy vs Discussion Profligacy in here somewhere. . .