keyboard shortcut inconsistencies between Premiere Pro and After Effects

Alek,

Thank you so much for the post. First: Sorry, mate. I feel your frustration. I'd let the team know how you feel by filing a bug in User Voice. More info on that here. Others coming before you have also noticed this. 

As one who has been a pro editor before Adobe, I "made it a game" to never touch the mouse with each NLE I got to work with, editing only with keyboard shortcuts. Not easy, but that's definitely the way to edit. Like anything, after practicing for awhile you can really fly! You'd be surprised how many keyboard shortcuts the human brain can remember too. Repetition and reinforcement can help.

Some prefer to "map" the same shortcuts to each editing system, I was taught to learn all the native ones in each application first, then customize on the blanks under the modifier keys. You become a more flexible editor, in my opinion, with that approach.

After your master keyboard is maxed out, you can have the best of both worlds if you create multiple custom keyboard sets. So, that's what I do these days after modifyer keys dry up. I see it as a bit crazy to write over any native keyboard shortcuts. Some create special keyboards for special functions. Audio Keyboards, Effects Keyboards, Rough Cutting Keyboards, etc. and in these keyboard sets, you can be a little more free with doing away with shortcuts with functions that make no sense in that set.

In the 90s, I learned After Effects at the same time I learned Media Composer, and they felt like very different applications. I saw the use of learning the fastest way possible to manipulate video effects in AE: shortcuts. So I got to know that shortcuts are very important early on. Unlike the person that Neil described, I was one of those editors schooled in using an NLE, Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator in an integrated workflow to make wonderfully creative material. In the 90s, this was very cutting edge stuff.

I got quite good at After Effects, taught AE for awhile, and even worked on 2 famous animated features. I was not that great an animator, but I was very quick with the After Effects UI. Being fast is what made them ask me back for that second feature. Come to think of it, there wasn't even an option to change keyboard shortcuts for years. It's pretty recent, actually. You had to learn them if you were serious.

BITD, knowing all shortcuts from different systems made you a more marketable editor from a producer's POV. You culd sit down at any edit bay and just get going, and that was the cool thing to do. 

Today, that's not so important because we don't travel to post houses much anymore; as long as the work gets done. The concept of knowing the stock shortcuts and then having different sets of keyboards for different editing tasks is still very important, and is definitely the way to go. 

In the meantime, yes, we'll have to suffer knowing different shortcuts for our favorite applications. Be sure, again, to drop a note to User Voice.

Feel free to ask questions too.

Take Care,
Kevin

Oh ... btw ... you didn't even mention Audition, which hath a third, competely different keyboard shorts setup ... 😉

Neil

In real-world use, a ton of hefty-duty Ae people hardly every touch Pr ... they're fx folk.

And many editors do everything they can to avoid Ae ... they're editors for cryin' out loud ... (yea.)

So there are these two massive user-bases that work with apps that each have a long history, and were not always so compatible with each other. The Ae team is based out of Seattle. The Pr team is based out of San Jose, so they don't for the main part work in the same US state even.

So ... yea, it's confusing to those of us who work between them. And very typical for those who do, to work their keyboard shortcuts to get stuff done.

Modify away. Save & backup your custom x.kys file ... and get the work out the door.

Neil