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?

[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.

[markuscone]

I know what you are saying. In Ableton live and most sound programs you simply click and hold the track and drag it up or down. Track 3 then becomes 5 etc. 

[Todd KCCO]

yeah, it's way too sloppy. If they just gave you the ability to click on the track and move it up and down, snapping it between tracks, that would be amazing. Sony Vegas had that ability 12 years ago. This is easily achievable, and is way cleaner.

[DavinciWhite]

So here I come with my input
but I bring no solution. Sorry!

I have three multicam theater show sessions; each of them had more or less the same arrangement of cameras, but one day we had more cameras, other day we had different settings, and so on. 8 cameras + 12 audio, more or less.

Created a timeline and made the arrangement for one of the shows: then I decided to duplicate the timeline so I can have the same cameras in place all the time. I named all Video & Audio tracks (First Cam, Sony cam, Shotgun Left, Shotgun Right, Line ... ) 

Is just a pity I cannot do what you have suggested... move the entire track (with all its attributes, especially with audio eq/track mixer) to another position. Now if I want to rearrange I have to add new track, rename the old track, be sure that EQ sound is correct, and so on... 

I just wanted to say that some of us like to put name and eq track, and it would be an amazing feature for multicam sessions to be able to move the whole track up/down. This feature is usually available in apps for phones/tablets. 

(another topic will be the option to separate the multicam preview from the monitor preview...)

Thanks for reading! And good luck with your projects. 

[Todd KCCO]

100% - Sony Vegas had this feature right from the first version of the software 20 years ago. All I had to do was click on that track header, where is says the name, solo, mute, volume... click that rectangle and pull the entire track up or down. It was a beautiful thing.
Premiere (the wanna be king of editing software) - you need to create a new track, lasso all the clips on the track you want to move, hold shift and drag up or down over another track to the new track. Now you have a blank track under where you took it from. Delete that track.
If you missed any clips, they are now gone.
As you said, if it's audio and you have track volume adjustments etc, you have to then redo those as well.

Such an easy ask... yet, 20 years in and not an option.

Todd

[mrWho]

This is the end of 2023 and Adobe still hasn't included this feature. Small video editing software like Filmora has this easy way to move a video track up and down but PP doesn't. Shame on you Adobe.

[dpalkowski3]

agreed. way too long to not have implemented this, I've been looking for the feature for at least 5 years in this app. Adobe: go ask Avid how they do it with Pro Tools 😛

[DavinciWhite]

Following the joke... Avid should ask themselves how to implement it in Avid Media Composer! 

(didn't use it in a while, but I suppose that option is still in classic mode like Premiere)

[trashcaneron]

Crazy you can't move tracks around in 2024 and you have to manually copy and paste instead... silly

[Kenneth352975897j2w]

I'm an amatuer with a tiny bit of experience with Vegas Pro (a few years ago), but lots of experience with DAWs.  I'm also a software developer with loads of experience.  My brother asked me to make a video with him as a for-fun project for a Super Bowl party.  I said I'd help, but we'd need to get a green screen for what he wanted to do.  He provided one.  I shot the video of him singing in front of the green backdrop with a Panasonic UX series camera.  Format was mp4.  I recorded audio in camera from two mics... one hand-held and one overhead for sync purposes.  So dual mono, not stereo.  Bringing the footage onto the timeline was a breeze.  After some searching I figured out how to separate the left and right audio tracks, which was necessary. But I never did figure out how to separate the video from the audio.  This wasn't important until I got ready to use chroma-keying.  The footage, which is just one 3-minute clip, is on V1.  To do chroma-keying I need it to be higher in the stack than the background, right?  But aparently there's no easy way to accomplish this.  (Which astonishes me, frankly.) Any suggestions?  I wa supposed to deliver this to local TV tomorrow. 

[Kenneth352975897j2w]

I'll just add that after having spent significant time syncing the camera footage with other audio assets, I'm loathe to start over.  But if I'd known the peril in advance, I suppose I could have put the background material on V1, and then brought the camera footage to V2.  If I had done that, would the audio have still gone to A1? Thanks in advance. 

[Jeffrey24092419vzou]

I confess that I much prefer Final Cut Pro (which is trackless), but I'm pretty sure your problem in Premiere can be easily solved by unlinking the audio from the video.

[DavinciWhite]

As suggested, the fastest way is uncheck the "linked selection" in the timeline. I attached a screenshot showing the button 

With that button greyed, you will be able to move video and audio separately. 

[Kenneth352975897j2w]

Thanks, all.  As I continued to explore, I found lots of ways to handle it. 
And you're right, not difficult if you know what you're doing. 
Project was completed in time.  Again, many thanks. 

[dpalkowski3]

Sure, just select the clip, right click and choose unlink.

[Please turn off all auto reply crap on your phone when answering by email, mod]

[jeffbottom]

this is insanely frustrating, I wonder if there isn't a simple way to do it via scripting?

[dpalkowski3]

Doubtful, since the track structure seems to rely heavily on index numbers, so dragging track 2 on top of track 1 or vice versa would screw up some internal logic. Better to get rid of the index numbers altogether, e.g. pro tools. Name tracks as you like, and drag them however you want.

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone



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[Todd KCCO]

In my experience with Sony Vegas, if you move track V1 to above V4, V2 would then become V1, and the old V1 would now read V4.
It would just automatically rename the track after releasing.

Todd

[Jeffrey24092419vzou]

In Final Cut Pro you can rearrange them freely. Strictly speaking they are not traditional tracks, but "Roles" and "Sub-Roles" which function similarly.

[R Neil Haugen]

Always interesting to see the various ways these apps work.

[Noncent$]

I'm a little late to this conversation but I think believe I know what your looking for cuz I was too. Double click on one of the tracks and instead and clicking "Add Track" make sure you click on "Add Tracks..." and that will allow you to create a track in before or after another. This doesn't fix your moving problem for tracks lines, but if you plan ahead accordingly, I think this should work.

[Andrey_Kochergin7969]

the end of 2K24. big update just came out. AI stuff is everywhere, "supadupa" features here and there, but PP is still here! stupid s*t. why the f we still should change order of tracks that way? so annoying 

[Charismatic_heart5F91]

A whole new generation of nl editors have NO idea what they're missing.  I've been editing both linear and non for 35+ years and Premiere is a hot inefficient mess compared to Vegas in 2025.