favorite keyboard shortcuts

[Michael Grenadier]

Thought this might be an informative thread where we share our favorite keyboard shortcuts particularly those that may not be obvious...  I've been doing this for a very long time, starting in very early versions of Avid Media Composer and FinalCut 1...  I used to obsess about keyboard shortcuts, but over the last few years, I've loosened up a bit.  But whenever I'm involved in constantly using repetitive tasks, I start exploring Premiere shortcuts.  It's pretty amazing how deep and useful this feature is.  And I'm constantly discovering useful keyboard shortcuts that didn’t seem obviously available. 

For example, I do a great deal of editing on a 2012 macbookpro when I’m working at a client’s office…. It’s a severely underpowered machine that’s pretty close to end of life since I cannot update the OS beyond Cataline, so I’m stuck on Premiere 2022…. I work with low res proxies and it works fine…. When I’m doing edits for verbal content, I usually work at ¼ resolution in the program monitor for smooth playback, but often want to review it at ½ resolution after rendering a section.  After mousing to change the program monitor resolution constantly, I thought… maybe there’s a keyboard shortcut…. The search function in the keyboard shortcuts is great and I searched ¼ and there it was, as was ½.  Just mapped them to 4 and 2. Maybe those of you who’s memory is better than mine can instantly remember your shortcuts, but it always is helpful for me to use a keyboard shortcut that’s easy to remember.  I also use post-its attached to my screen….and I often change the default shortcut to something that’s easier for me to remember…

I hope this thread will be useful to both neophytes and experts.  Always amazes me how much I don’t know in Premiere….

Happy New Year everyone.

[R Neil Haugen]

Woa ... didn't know you could map Program monitor resolution! That's awesome, gonna do that with my laptop certainly.

Q and W are my top used shorts for basic editing. Q cuts from the playhead to the beginning of the clip, ripples the timeline to the previous edit point to close the gap. W cuts from playhead to end of the clip, and again, ripples the rest of the timeline up to  that playhead location.

Transmit-Out I have set to Shift-C, so I can turn on my reference monitor when I want to, or turn it off when not needed.

As per Jarle's suggestions from his awesome and massive Premeire tome,  “The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro” I also set the Timeline and Trim prefs so I can do ripple or rolling edits purely by cursor location over/near an edit point. So I don't even need a modifier key to change edit/trim type.

Neil

[Peru Bob]

Unfortunately, Ctrl + Z is my most used shortcut.

Ctrl + K  (split clip) and  Ctrl + Alt + V (paste attributes) are used frequently.

I remapped some keys (unused Windows and Menu keys) with KeyTweak to make reaching some keys easier.

[Edited]

[Michael Grenadier]

Well my basic keyboard setup started with the fcp7 keyboard template... so I understand Ctrl Z (Command-Z on the Mac) but probably more useful to describe what it does than giving the keyboard shortcuts which may be very different on some peoples computers..  I also try and keep my go to shortcuts with a simple letter/number and single modifier key rather than 2 modifier keys..  bwdik...  That said, when I started providing support for clients and other editors with Avids and then spent 5 years teaching avid editing, I decided it was smarter to just use the default keyboard shortcuts...  

[Peru Bob]

more useful to describe what it does than giving the keyboard shortcuts which may be very different on some peoples computers.

By @Michael Grenadier

I edited my reply for clarity.

[Michael Grenadier]

thanks.  Will look into KeyTweak for my windows machine

[R Neil Haugen]

Can KeyTweak change Windows shorts? Like ... freeing the Alt key so Windows doesn't grab it?

Neil

[Michael Grenadier]

Did some research on it and it hasn't been updated in quite a few years...  and some people have had problems with it.  Maybe Peru Bob can fill us in on his experience.  When I first added a windows machine to my setup, I played around with trying something like this so the keyboard shortcuts would be a better match with what I'd set up for Premiere on the Mac.  Just seemed a little too dangerous to me...  So, I tried finding a cloning solution for windows so if I screwed something up, it would be a simple process to restore my setup to it's previous state.  Never had much luck with that although gotta say I didn't spend a lot of time on it...  Did some googling etc and the options never seemed to work as "advertised."  If and when I decide to migrate completely to windows (unlikely since most of my clients that I provide support for are on the Mac), I'll dig in to it further...

[Peru Bob]

I have it installed on Windows XP, 7, 10, and 11 computers, and it works fine on all of them

[Peru Bob]

Can KeyTweak change Windows shorts? Like ... freeing the Alt key so Windows doesn't grab it?

Neil

By @R Neil Haugen

Once a key is rekeyed, it behaves just like the key to which it is changed.

You can't change the properties of the key, but you can change which key it is.

[R Neil Haugen]

My comment had to do with my frustration that Windows overrides applications ... such as when you have an Alt-W or Alt-R combination, many others ... Windows will take over and whatever hotkey action Windows has assigned for that is what you get.

I never, ever use hotkeys for Windows, and would dearly, dearly love to kill that behavior.

As it means that setting most Alt-something combinations in Premiere doesn't actually work something in Premiere.

Neil