Easily swap the track arrangement (shifting tracks up or down)

[Todd KCCO]

Hey all,

Is there a way to shift an entire track up or down placing them in the order or arrangement you want?

I want to be able to grab V1 and move it to where V3 is, so that it's above the other footage on V2.

Or grab A6 and pull it up to A2, Making old A6 now A2, and previous A2 is now A3.

Curently (as far as I know) you have to highlight all the clips on the track and bump them up when highlighted.

2 problems accure, if you bump up and land on the track above it will overwrite the clips above, or if you unlink the audio video you may misalign sound from video.

How is this not a feature? When I started out 15 years ago with Sony Vegas, it was available. 15 years later I still can't do that in Premiere, or am I missing something?

[Michael Grenadier]

a couple of ways to do this.  Lock all video tracks except your source and target track (not necessary but an additional layer of safety) . .  Make sure your source video track is on in the patch panel of timeline.  Put your playhead on the first frame of the source track and select all clips.  Hit command-x (cut all) . Then turn off the source video track in the target part of the patch panel of the timeline.   Make sure the target track is the only track selected in track target section of the patch panel of the timeline and hit command-v.   Pretty simple.   Can give you a few other ways, but this seems the simplest to me.     If my language is not clear it's probably not my fault.  Happy to send a screen grab to make this clearer if you want.

[Todd KCCO]

No I totally understand what you are saying. I know that is an option so thank you.

What I'm saying is, I should just be able to click on V1 and drag it to V3. Easy, one manouver.

Why do I have to lock tracks, cut and paste and all that stuff. It should be easy click and drag.

When you have 16 layers of audio or 8 layers of video, with an hour project. It can get very confusion (as you know) when grabing clips and moving them to and from. By grabbing a track and simply moving a track, it eliminates all risk of missing some or writing over some.

[Michael Grenadier]

I understand your frustration, but if you make sure your entire
timeline is displayed, and create a new track in the desired position,
lock all but your source and target track, this should be pretty
simple. Gotta say I do this kind of thing all the time.

just saw your latest email, If you lock the audio track before you do
the move it should work fine. You could also turn of linked selection
for the timeline.

Working in 2019, so not sure what works in CS6

[Todd KCCO]

The most perfect solution other than to simply allow me to click and drag a track up would be to lock the tracks above, highlight my clips and to nudge them to an empty track above or below, however, if you have a locked tack in between you can't nudge. You have to click and drag and again, run that risk of moving footage.

yes, I can turn on snapping, yes I can make a marker to keep it all aligned.

It doesn't change the fact that the best solution would just allow me to click and drag a track up or down.

[Jeffrey24092419vzou]

I was just trying to do this in Premiere Pro and ended up here.

Final Cut Pro has the feature Todd is describing. Instead of having traditional fixed audio tracks, you assign "Roles" and "Sub-Roles" to different types of audio based on whatever criteria you choose. Those Roles appear below as Audio Lanes which function much like tracks, but without being bound to the stucture of the video layers. With Audio Lanes displayed, you can drag to reorder, collapse, or expand as needed. See example: https://youtu.be/aj02dYSaTos

It is surprising that you can't do this in Premiere Pro. What difference does it make how the audio tracks are ordered if I want to change the it for some reason?

[Paul Henry98A6]

Trying to do this in Premiere as well and ended up here like you. I agree with you, should be a feature, and agree with Todd OP.

[salvo34]

PPro is a little more sophisticated than vegas IMO. Although I had vegas and liked it OK.

When I first got PPro ( CS3 ? ) I didn't have a motion pic camera, so I used an animation to begin to learn the program. Drew stuff in photoshop and imported layers ( with alpha), and put on different video levels ( tracks)... and got the timing down with music ( one audio track) and added soundFX ( more audio tracks, some overlayed ).

You need that precise control when doing stuff and I think PPro does a good job of letting people find the right workflow for what they are doing.

first edit using CS3

1:40 approx time

a nyc guy follows his nose instead of his brain and this leads to trouble.

https://vimeo.com/383130405

[Todd KCCO]

Thank you. I should mention that I have been using Adobe Premeire for the last 9 years, so this isn't new to me. (not meant to sound snarky)

I am quite proficient at Premiere and After Effects.

My work pace is increasing all the time and I am always looking to speed up my process. 

I chose premeire over FCP because premiere does allow the user much greater freedom on their exprerience.

I also spent 7 years, as an editor for tv using AVID. So Premeire is the preferred choice based on intreface and user experience.

However, there are some things like swapping track arrangement or locking selected clips in place on the timeline or locking markers that Vegas had that would make this experience flawless in my eyes. 

[salvo34 · Accepted solution]

yeah, but if you're linked to audio when moving video ( and that audio also wants to move when you tell it to via video track selection ( and that link to audio).. then it gets messed up... you could overwrite the audio at that point or push it ... you're right it's complicated... and I think you can go to the far left and move the tracks ( like move V2 up to V1  ? ) but I don't remember really.... I'll open cs6 and see if I can do that...

I don't have new subscription stuff.

🙂

good luck !

[Todd KCCO]

That's what I'm saying, I want to be able to just click on V1 at the left and highlight the whole V1 track, then click and drag it up or down. It shouldn't even change anything else excet that arrangement. It would be beautiful and quick and eliminate the chances of overwriting clips. 

[Todd KCCO]

This is exactly what I mean. The current method has a lot of chance for errors if you are not careful in what you are doing.  Selecting clips, unlinking audio to video.. shifting up or down. It's archaic.

You are absolutely correct, but they don't have that option you speak of to go to the far left and click the track. That is exactly what I want them to do.

[Jason Souliere]

All I get from these forums is that Premiere users are a different breed, obviously paid by the hour where efficiency isn't a concern.  I have been editing since nle was new, starting out on Media 100, then Premiere, Final Cut, then discovered Vegas at version 5, and it has many more user friendly and highly efficient single-click functions than Premiere.  I don't need Vegas to "integrate" with anything else as colour correction and basic compositing are all right in the software, accessible from the timeline. This is likely what makes Premiere more solid than Vegas. So our choice is, restarting Vegas a dozen times or clicking a dozen times in Premiere to do a single action 😕 

I have to swap my V3 with V7 in Premiere now, so I'd better get going - the sun is starting to set....

[R Neil Haugen]

I would suggest your specific needs and practices are different from many others. Which might get a valid view of the "situation".

While I see this would be incredibly handy for specific needs, I've never needed this personally. And from talking with others from more than a decade of NAB shows, SMPTE event and several MAX events, along with both this and the BM forums for years ... this isn't something mentioned a lot.

It's like some of the color things I would dearly love changed ... would be awesome for me and a relatively small subset of users. But the vast majority of the user base wouldn't notice, except for the ones angered that the devs had wasted time on some stupid color change.

We are all different in how we work.

Edit: And just to be clear, I would welcome the change requested in this thread, and have upvoted this idea every time it's come up. I know it would be so handy for other users, which it always good.

I'm just offering an alternate view of why this hasn't been changed already.

[Michael Grenadier]

don't detect any snarkiness in your posts...  and always a good idea to tell us what your experience level is.   I understand what you're saying and can never hurt to post your frustration in case you're missing something.    Wondering if there's a way to edit your sequence into a new sequence (not as a nest but actually using the source clips).  Think there used to be a way to do that in fcp7.   Anyone?   

[salvo34]

I think Mgren's last message is the best answer for you.

If you wanna make feature requests there's some link for that somewhere.

I hope you continue to come to the forums to improve the program and also maybe help others, as many have come from avid and fcp and vegas like you, and you know a lot. Thanks.

🙂

[Todd KCCO]

I will definately ask for it as a feature request. I have done that in the past but thought I'd see if was actually a thing first.

Like maybe all I had to do was to hold option and do it lol.

There are sooooooo many time saving things that you kind of happen upon or you see in a tutorial and you're like damn, I've been doing it the long way the whole time.

I appreciate your responses. Thank you for taking the time.

[Ann Bens · Accepted solution]

Select Track Selection Forward Tool (A).

Hold down Ctrl and click on first clip

Drag everthing up or down (dont let go of the ctrl) to new empty track.

[Steve221]

But isn't this just creating a new track and copying clips? Not MOVING the track.

Wouldn't you have to recreate matte assignments, etc?

[R Neil Haugen]

Each of these post-processing apps has bits of the UI that work real well ... and some other part that is done vastly better in a different app. What the ... ? ... is the typical user response there. And you've hit one thing that seems like it should be an obvious thing, but ... obviously ... ain't for someone somewhere in development.

UserVoice is the place to go for these both to get them to the engineers (they do read them all) and they get collated and delivered to the upper managers who determine budgets.

Yea, you can move tracks the way mgrenadier notes, and after doing it a couple times, it's pretty quick ... relatively. So I imagine the engineers may be thinking there's an easy enough method that other things are more seriously in need of engineering time.

I'd rather be able to grab a track header and move it myself. Seems SO eminently logical to me ...

Neil

[Todd KCCO]

Thank you for the link. I agree, it's almost like apple missing obvious everyday interface features that should have been a thing years ago. There are developers who recognize this and create apps to use those features but year after year, apple does not integrate them into the base OS.

Anyway I will now post it in user voice. 

Thanks again,

[Michael Grenadier]

I think if we asked the programmers about this, they'd shake their heads and say it's not simple to make this happen (but what do I know).  Every time you add a feature, you're creating things that can go wrong and it can be really hard to predict how well it'll function on the variety of OS's and hardware that are out there.   That said, the program is so deep, that it's very easy to miss a better way to do things...  so let's mark this as a great post...  

[Doctor_St@s]

I think it's pretty obvious that Premiere should have such standard feature to move tracks up/down in order to change their overlay priority. To avoid "linked audio track" issue developers could just make some warning message that "You need to unlink your Video Track's audio if you want to change the Track Order".

The way it functions now is tooo clumsey IMHO. You have e.g. 3 hours project with 10 video tracks, each one consists of thousands sequences, transitions etc... You want to swap V5 and V6 because you need V5 in front of V6 in overlay order. Nowadays (if I'm not mistaken) in 2020 you have to create New empty V11, hunt for red october do a lot of pixel hunting, lock V1-V4, drag all other 3 hrs containments up one track with all those glitches (because it seems to be having to recalculate all previews etc.) Then you've to lock V5, V7-V11 and select and move V7 (that once was your V6) clips down to V5, then to lock it, unlock V8-V11 and all its thousands of trimmed clips, drag'em one track down and then to remove that useless V11.

Seems a bit overwhelming compared to the "track icon drag&drop" process, alas we still have to make it hard way.

[Jeffrey24092419vzou]

Here's how it works in Final Cut Pro: https://youtu.be/aj02dYSaTos

[Todd KCCO]

@Ann Bens  - Nah, this is not what I want. I fully understand you can shift tracks up or down, change the hierarchy easily.

I want to be able to swap tracks up or down, on top of or below other tracks easily, without having to select all the clips. Currently, if I had tracks V1,2,3,4 and I wanted to move V1 up to where V3 is and move V3 down to V1, I would have to:

Create an empty track between V2 & V3, select all the clips on V1 track, hold SHIFT, drag them up to the empty track. Then highlight the V3 track clips, hold SHIFT, and drag them to V1. If my project is long, I may have to zoom in and out to make sure I have all the clips selected, then zoom in as I shift up or down to make sure they are not shifting on the timeline.

If Adobe made the track selectable:

I click on the left in the area of where it says V1... It highlights the track, you then drag that track to V3... now your tracks are in the order of V2,V1,V3,V4. I then click the V3 track and drag it down to V1 original position, now they are V3,V2,V1,V4.

2 clicks and I've completely rearanged the hierarchy just like that. FASTER... time is money! Anything Adobe can do to speed up my time is money in my pocket.