Pr CS7 Feature Requests

[Jim Curtis]

I am excited about getting my hands on CS6, and congratulate the Adobe team for their hard work. 

However...

I haven't seen anything in the web pages or videos about these features that are vital to working editors, already requested by me and many others, but still not implemented or announced here:

http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2012/04/premiere-pro-cs6-whats-new-and-changed.html

Please join me in requesting these features be implemented ASAP:

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Ability to save track or clip based audio effect user presets.

A Scrub Audio shortcut toggle - NOT a user pref.

Ability to map multiple Keyboard Shortcuts to the same function (a la Avid: E & R keys, same as I and O).  Very convenient for two-handed editors.

Show Match Frame (Add Edit) function.

Heal Match Frame (Add Edit) command.

Dupe Detection indications in Timeline.

Shortcuts to Scale image zoom in Source and Program tabs.

Temporary Snap on or off (AKA Reverse Snap Behavior) keyboard modifier.

More obvious indicator that Timeline Snap is on.

Indicator on Clips in the Timeline that indicate Frame Blend is enabled.

Ripple Sequence and Chapter Markers.

Ripple Audio Track Keyframes.

Ability to save user/custom transition presets.

Constrain clip time movement between tracks by holding shift key, just like all other applications.

Lasso multiple keyframes.

Constrain keyframe values while holding shift key and moving them in time.

Clip Label only works on AV clips.  Not V-only.  Please make it work on V-only clips as well as AV clips.

A Track Matte function that allows us to pan and scale the clip being matted without affecting the matte size or position.  CRITICAL!

Ability to change the dimensions of a Sequence after it's been created.  (Actually, this may be in CS6; I'm not clear.)

Make it possible to solo and mute audio in the Timeline panel; not just the Audio Mixer.

Make it brilliantly obvious when audio tracks are being soloed (or muted); not some tiny little icon that's 1/100 the size of the interface. When you mute or solo a track in the Audio Mixer, that should be indicated in the Timeline icons and tracks as well, perhaps by shading or color, stripes, etc.

Please give us the ability to copy between in/out in a Sequence and paste elsewhere.  Workaround is to add edits (razor) where you want the in and outs before you can copy that region.  Or, you can set in/outs and lift or extract, then immediately undo.  This is a time waster; counterproductive.

No Auto-Saving right in the middle of an operation or playback, please.  Make it wait for a few seconds of inactivity before it kicks in.  No auto-saves when no changes have been made; long periods of inactivity.

Please make all Adobe apps NOT force the computer system to switch to the app that's launching or saving after that operation is compete.  It's VERY ANNOYING to be typing an email and have Adobe switch apps for me when it decides it's ready.  VERY ANNOYING.

Please after using Clip > Scale to Sequence, DO NOT have the new Scale factor in the Motion tab change the clip's scale to 100%.  That's misleading, confusing and I see no good reason for that number to change.  If I'm using a HD clip in an SD Sequence, I want to know exactly how much more I can scale it up before it exceeds the actual scale of 100%.  So, rather than it showing me 100%, it should show 40%, or whatever the real scale factor is.

Provide a way to save TRACK AUDIO FX settings.  I work in a native Sequence to edit, and copy and paste it into an AJA sequence for color correction.  ALL my TRACK BASED AUDIO needs to carry over into the new sequence.  Without a way to save my settings, I have to manually recreate them by jumping back and forth between the old and new sequence.  Time-killer.

Change the paste behavior into a new Sequence to exactly match the track configuration from the "parent" (copy from) sequence.

Have the Program monitor remember the Zoom level for each Sequence; don't have Zoom scale set universally by the project.  When switching between Sequences of different size, we have to reset the Zoom level each time (and with the mouse, too; not a keyboard shortcut).  Time waster.

Consistent Mouse Wheel behavior across all apps in CS, please.  Ae, Au, and Pr have different scroll wheel behaviors.

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I intend to submit these to Adobe AGAIN a nanosecond after I discover they're not in Pr CS6.  I hope you will all do the same.  And share your suggestions with us.  Strength in numbers.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

[excited_Genie16B8]

make trims and tweaks in real-time

Your other option here is to apply effects after all trimming and tweaking.

[Soothing_Dewdrop16B7]

There should be a CS6.5 revision before CS7 and I expect it to be full of new features, bug fixes and offer better integration between SpeedGrade and the rest of the suite.

[the_wine_snob]

Jim,

I have not read the entire thread, so this might have been addressed above, but:

Temporary Snap on or off (AKA Reverse Snap Behavior) keyboard modifier.

Does toggling the Snap ON/OFF, via the S key, not work in this case? Perhaps I am missing something.

Off to read more.

Good luck,

Hunt

[Jim Curtis]

Bill Hunt wrote:

Does toggling the Snap ON/OFF, via the S key, not work in this case? Perhaps I am missing something.

What I'm advocating is an enhancement.  Snap Toggle does work - it's either on or off, but what I'd like is a temporary disable of whatever state the Snap state is by using a modifier key.

So, let's say you mostly edit with Snap enabled.  You could temporarily disable Snap in a drag operation by holding down a modifier (like the S key).  This behavior is in FCP7, and I used it a lot.

[the_wine_snob]

Jim,

Got you. Thanks for the clarification.

Also, my apologies for getting to this thread so very late. Guess that I was out of the country, when it started, and until Ann's tip on the Pen Tool, had just not seen it.

As for an indicator, whether Snap is ON/OFF, I agree. Something that the human eye can see would be nice...

Good luck with the requests.

Hunt

[John T Smith]

And, just announced a few days ago, network support is coming...

Adobe Anywhere http://forums.adobe.com/message/4682127

-Announced September 2012 for "future versions" of Premiere Pro

-NO information on pricing or availability date

[the_wine_snob]

And, just announced a few days ago, network support is coming...

That is great!

Hunt

[Arsinn12]

All good points.

Temporary Snap on or off (AKA Reverse Snap Behavior) keyboard modifier.

Can't say how many times I've wished for that.

Constrain clip time movement between tracks by holding shift key, just like all other applications.

That would be handy.

Make it possible to solo and mute audio in the Timeline panel; not just the Audio Mixer.

No idea why it is not there, this seems like a no brainer. At the very least a context menu to achieve that quickly a la PS' Show/Hide Layers would be nice. This also goes for expand/collapse tracks and so on.

No Auto-Saving right in the middle of an operation or playback, please.  Make it wait for a few seconds of inactivity before it kicks in.  No auto-saves when no changes have been made; long periods of inactivity.

Indeed. The Auto-Save function is very much useless as means of backwards recovery. Often all you get is 5 projects which are just like your current project so if something goes wrong (as it often does with this crash magnet of a  software) - good luck. Retarded and yes, very annoying when it kicks in.

Make it brilliantly obvious when audio tracks are being soloed (or muted); not some tiny little icon that's 1/100 the size of the interface. When you mute or solo a track in the Audio Mixer, that should be indicated in the Timeline icons and tracks as well, perhaps by shading or color, stripes, etc.

Consistent Mouse Wheel behavior across all apps in CS, please.  Ae, Au, and Pr have different scroll wheel behaviors.

Adobe seems infatuated with tiny controls and off the cuff UI behavior. This has been going on for ages and I want to strangle the person(s) who are responsible for that. One needs to fevereshly hunt for the right pixel to click on to get the context menu or action desired; Mouse clicks or wheel works in some windows w/o focus and doesn't in others; They seem to have missed the obvious that when you press ALT in Windows it switches over to the app menu (nothing new either, been like that forever) so expanding/contracting the timeline with Alt+Wheel always results in lost focus and required extra clicks/operations at best, doing something undesireable at worst; Dragging effect into timeline clip leaves focus in Effects panel. WTF!?; Can't begin to count how many times I've mangled my project because when selecting items the UI for some reason goes into renaming mode for example.

In PS I can focus into a value and adjust it with the mouse wheel: good. In Premiere you need to drag an imaginary slider or just outright type the value in. Good luck adjusting effect or any other values by a tick (or two even) with the mouse.

I would also welcome ability to re-shuffle audio tracks on timeline either with drag or move up/down

Another thing is (Context) Menu management. Why can we do it in PS but not Premiere, mind boggling. Why do I always have to see 20 million items many of which I have no need for. All that is good for is constantly searching for the right item on the menu. Although I use PS CS4 so that may have changed there too now.

Is it really so hard to provide content based custom actions? I don't have Audition, how about being able to create a custom menu item whereby I can edit my asset item using MY program?

Why is the option to for example Edit in Photoshop, displayed (albeit grayed out) when that item cannot possibly be edited in PS and Premiere knows it? And that goes for other items as well. I'd love to see things and only things relevant to my work environment and its state. I don't need to see full lists of everything every time. I don't care for exporting to Apple formats, why can't I hide those presets so my drop-down menu is manageable? I don't care if it takes me 2 weeks to set the UI up according to my needs, but it should be possible.

And one more. "Clear" means just empty everything in a container. It is highly unintuitive to call action "Clear" when in effect it removes selected item(s). Here's a tip: "Remove" has been used for that by everyone else and for good reason, too.

[Jim Curtis]

Arsinn12 wrote:

And one more. "Clear" means just empty everything in a container. It is highly unintuitive to call action "Clear" when in effect it removes selected item(s). Here's a tip: "Remove" has been used for that by everyone else and for good reason, too.

Excellent points as well.  This reminds me of another feature request.  Currently, if you have a stack of effects on a clip, you can either remove them all at once, using the remove Effects feature, or one at a time by selecting and deleting.  So, if you have six effects and you want to remove three, you can't shift or command click the three you want to remove, then hit delete.  To have that ability would be a time-saver.

[excited_Genie16B8]

expanding/contracting the timeline with Alt+Wheel always results in lost focus

It works properly for me, at least back to CS5.

[Marc_3950]

You have wrote alot there in your post, I hope the developers GET IT, since they are not dealing with clients like we are they don't understand we wnat to be able to do it easy and fast and not alot of motions we have to go through to get the job done. they think they are doing there job putting options in wierd places and we all sut back and say why did they put that there. Just think we could make them look really good if they would listen more.

They should never take features away from a program they leave what they have and add to it . Example i know some of you out there run Premier Pro 2.0 you can burn and do some limited authoring from the timeline. Now why didn't they just leave all of that simplicty and when you clink D.V.D. layout encore opens up and wow your up and running i still use 2.0 for that reason not alot of fuss. now i know some of out ther will correct me on this please do . I recently downloaded the trial version of 6.0 but i couldn't try the encore feature because it wasn't included in the trial

[Steven L. Gotz]

I believe that with the advent of the Creative Cloud, Adobe should be working on integrating the UI on all of the programs so that it feels like one big application.

Why shouldn't I be able to open the new "Adobe Video Program", gather my clips and other resources, and place them on a timeline, just like Premiere Pro, but then I should be able to toggle the track the way I do in After Effects and apply all of the effects that I would have in After Effects. When I right click on the audio, I should be able to chose "Edit Audio" and get all of the features of Audition right in the same UI. When I click back over to the timeline, all of the video and audio effects have been applied to the material on my timeline.

Why are these all treated as separate applications? I don't really think of them as separate. I think of them as "Adobe". We edit video, add effects, use 3D space,  fix our audio, all of that. We are creating a video. It doesn't matter if it is a movie destined for the big screen or a Webisode, or a TV commercial. We take video and audio and do interesting things to it to get a final result. Why not be able to do it all in one UI with tabs across the top labeled Video, Audio, Titles, Effects - etc? And when we export, why shouldn't we just ask to create the DVD by clicking on the DVD tab.

Sure, it would require sophisticated memory handling, but that is what the Adobe engineers get paid the big bucks for.

The Creative Cloud should be one application with multiple tabs. That's my two cents, and is probably worth what you paid for it, but there it is.

[Jim Curtis]

Steven L. Gotz wrote:

I believe that with the advent of the Creative Cloud, Adobe should be working on integrating the UI on all of the programs so that it feels like one big application.

Having one big application would be incredible.  Hopefully, some day, somebody will achieve this, and I'd like for it to be Adobe, mainly due to the strength of Ae.

I'm not wild how Send to Audion creates new audio files.  I'd like to be able to jump into a DAW feature, do work that would be reflected back into the NLE instantaneously.  And so on across all the apps, or functions, or tasks, or whatever you call them.

[PierreLouisBeranek]

Greetings!  I'd like to chime in with 2 suggestions I've just sent to Adobe.  Hopefully Adobe addressed these 2 issues since they probably affect every editor who uses Premiere on a daily basis:

Here they are:

Font Folders

Ability to create folders and subfolders at the top of the font list, and drag & drop fonts into these folders to organize them.  Three potential types of 'master' folders could exist, 'Program Fonts', 'CS Fonts' and 'Projects'.  'Program Fonts' would be font folders and sub-folders that only exist within the current CS program. In this way, a Premiere Pro user could create a "Wedding Videos" font folder that only has fonts that are appropriate to that type of video. Folders under 'CS Fonts' would appear across all CS programs, so a collection of fonts in a 'Favorites' folder created in Photoshop, would also be available/modifiable in Premiere and AE, etc. The 'Projects' folder would automatically create a new folder for each project created in the respective program and keep track of all fonts used in that project.  So should an editor need to reuse the same fonts that were used in another project, the editor could simply reference the font folder with that project name. For maximum usability, the same font should be able to occupy several folders, and font folders would need to have the same functionality as bins: renaming, twirling up/down, deleting, etc. 

Having zero built-in font organization, is akin to using Premiere/AE without bins, or Photoshop/Illustrator without layers.  In other words, it's a complete mess.  Why should editors have to scroll through a list of 200+ installed fonts that are completely inappropriate for a certain title, every time they want to locate and compare the 5-10 fonts that are appropriate?  Allowing this kind of built-in font organization, with a simple drag & drop interface (just like Premiere Pro allows users to create bins/sub-bins and drag-drop appropriate assets into them) would be a God-send and set Adobe apart as the first software company to address font management in this way.

Anchor keyframes toggle in Effect Controls window

Much more often than not, editors need keyframes to retain their position relative to a clip's in/out point when trimming, slipping or adding a transition to the clip. This could be done with an 'Anchor' toggle for each Effect in the Effect Controls window. By toggling on the 'Anchor' icon for an effect, all keyframes on the first half of the clip would automatically retain their position relative to that clip's in point when trimming, slipping, or extending the clip with a transition. In other words, keyframes positioned 1 and 30 frames from the clip's in point would remain exactly 1 and 30 frames from that clip's in point, regardless of future trims/slips/transitions applied. The same would be true for keyframes positioned on the second half of a clip: they would maintain their position relative to the clip's out point.

Why is this feature important to you?

Consider these common editing problems:

1) An editor adds Motion and Video Effect keyframes to a clip, but later needs to slip the clip. The content slips, but so do the keyframes, often throwing them outside the visible range of the clip!

2) An editor adds keyframes to a still's in/out points to create a Ken Burns effect, and then adds a Cross Dissolve between the still and the next still. Suddenly, the keyframes are no longer at the still's out point, and the motion effect abruptly stops halfway through the Cross Dissolve. To fix this, the editor needs to manually realign the keyframes with the clip's new out point at the end of the transition.  Now consider having to do this for 50+ stills after adding Cross Dissolves between them! An editing nightmare!

Allowing keyframes to automatically 'anchor' relative to a clip's in or out point would instantly solve these and many more all too common editing headaches, and therefore be a true God-send in terms of editing efficiency!

Comments? Ideas? Improvements on these ideas? Please share! ...and ask Adobe for these tools as well if you feel they would help you too!

[Steven L. Gotz]

Well, as far as fonts go, you have a style library in the Premiere Pro Titler. All you have to do is set up your favorite fonts at your favorite size using your favorite styles and you can just call up the one that you have named "Wedding" or "Business" or whatever.

[PierreLouisBeranek]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for your response.  However, I don't think the Style Library is an acceptable alternative to my suggested Font Folders.

Why?

1. No automation (My solution includes an automatically created folder for each Premiere Project, for easy reference to fonts used in other projects).
2. The Style Library sets all font parameters, as you mentioned, not just the font itself (so if I want to test 5 potential 'Wedding' fonts for a Title, using the Style Library would screw up my title's settings such as Size, Shadow and Strokes).
3. The Style Library only exists in Premiere Pro.  The Font Organizational tools I'm suggesting would work in all appropriate CS programs (Photoshop, AE, Illustrator, etc.) and bring much needed consistency and intelligent Font list organization across the CS suite.

Cheers

[Ann Bens]

You can make presets of any effect with keyframes relative (anchored) to the in/outpoint of a clip.

[PierreLouisBeranek]

Hi Ann,

You're right, but the fact that keyframes can be 'anchored' in an effect preset does not solve any of the issues my Feature Request addresses.

To clarify: the problem is that after applying keyframes to a clip, it is currently imposible to have those keyframes remain anchored to the clip's in/out points when trimming/slipping or adding transitions to that clip.  Without the tool I suggest, effect keyframes almost always end up in the wrong possition relative to the clip and/or to the Timeline when doing any trimming/slipping.  This is why the tool I am suggesting is so needed. 

Hope this clarification helps.

One detail I'm not sure of is whether a Keyframe anchor tool would best be applied, for simplicity's sake, on a clip basis (i.e. 1 master toggle in the Effect Controls window), or, for customizability's sake, on an effect basis (i.e. 1 toggle for each individual effect in the Effect Controls window).

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Please share!   

[PierreLouisBeranek]

Add this to the list: http://forums.adobe.com/message/5185185#5185185!  FCPX & FCP7-style subclip creation/organization. (i.e. an intelligent way to create subclips vs PP's current, ridiculously limited way)

[Guest]

>Please after using Clip > Scale to Sequence, DO NOT have the new Scale factor in the Motion tab change the clip's scale to 100%.

Well, it IS useful for some workflows like an offline/online in a different resolution. Kind of. The problem is not that it puts the scale size at 100%.

The problem is that it scales the image down to frame size, then if you enlarge the image in the edit and you do not turn off "scale to frame size", PPro effectively scales the image down, then scales it back up.

Where to scale to frame size can be particularly useful, is when you are doing an offline/online with different source resolution, eg. 4K RAW, 1080p ProRes proxy edit. So during the offline edit, you scale some footage up to 200%, because you figure that once you re-link to the 4K rushes, everything should look all fine and dandy, and you don't actually have to worry about fixing the zoom during the online. But when you are actually doing the online and you are finally linked to the 4K rushes, because of the way Premiere works, the 4k image will be shrunk to 1080, then blown back up to 200%, leaving the images with the 200% zoom looking a little pixelated. So this seemingly nifty feature just shot itself in the foot.

I've worked on shows where we did offline in SD, and then re-linked to HD during the online. One of the main issues we've had was when we used a high resolution still image in the offline (and for the purpose of the offline, we'd create a low rez version of the image to save rendering time), once we did the online in HD, we had to re-do all the scale and motion keyframes because the source frame size and the sequence frame size is different. This sort of notation would have been nice to have during the online, if it didn't send the image through 2 transform nodes.

You mentioned cutting HD in an SD sequence.. so, yea, when you need to zoom up, uncheck "scale to frame size".