Premiere's surround panner is terrible, is that the only panner available?

[Sebasvideo]

I'm guessing this is a pointless question after searching the online help for panner and seeing only one result for it, but is there a way to edit 5.1 audio in Premiere that is not a complete pain? I mean, that surround panner is just awful, it can't be enlarged at all (please let me know if there is a way), and if I need to do something in a track that is not just set the panner once and forget, meaning panning a sound at different times, I have to set it to write and with the mouse move the tiny little panner more or less how I want to, and then enable the keyframe band for left and right, select each keyframe it created but the ones I want to keep, press DEL, select the next keyframe I want to delete and so on. Then I have to do the same thing for the front and rear. Oh, and if I want to do edits on the clip itself, I have to set the keyframe band to Clip keyframes. I'm exhausted after doing this for a couple of hours, can't imagine that people who use Premiere normally for 5.1 projects have to do this for the whole project.

So for Premiere editors that edit 5.1 projects, what do you do? Export each track separately, then import into Audition to have a decent panner? Or am I missing something here?

[Ann Bens]

@Richard M Knight 

[Richard M Knight]

Either use Audition or a VST3 plugin.

[R Neil Haugen]

Richard is right. The devs don't expect that level of audio work to be done in Premiere. And as the Audtion folks are the audio team for all Adobe pro video, it's the same folks running things across the apps.

So do what this system is built for ... use the audio app for major audio work. It's what Is. (Neither defending nor anything, just 'splaining.)

[Sebasvideo]

If the devs don't expect that level of audio editing in Premiere, why put it at all? Premiere is extremely buggy as it is, why add code that doesn't need to be there? Just state in the manual that if you need to do 5.1 editing, then use Audition.

[R Neil Haugen]

Sorry, but I can't follow the logic there.

There are a lot of different functions, processes, and effects in Premiere. If everything that is there at a moderately low level were yanked, as you seem to suggest, then ... a lot of folks who don't need full-on heavy effects ... would have nothing.

For example, mogrts.

You can build some rather decent mogrts in Premiere, but there's a ton of things you need to go to Ae to do. Or to have ways to restrict users in Premiere to certain choices.

Your suggestion would seem to say that they should either have everything of AfterEffects coded into Premiere ... or ... nothing.

So I would respectfully disagree.

While there are things I've wanted brought over from Audition for some time ... like the slick way to handle cross-transitions on a timeline ... I understand the general differences in the way they things work.

[Sebasvideo]

I see your point, but one thing is to have a simpler version of something that you have in another program, like working with keyframes is much better in AE, but it's something that you still need in Premiere and it's usable. It's a pain, but still tolerable.

That tiny surround panner is just a joke. Why can't they simply make it twice the size it is? How much more code would it take to accomodate each track to a graphic that is twice the size, and therefore, crosses the threshold from absolute joke into something usable. That way, people that don't require the extensive panner capabilities in Audition can still do simple 5.1 mixes in Premiere, and those who need something more refined, can do it Audition.

[R Neil Haugen]

I'd certainly agree with those comments!

Premiere's multichannel audio is not the slickest part of the program. If you think panning is hard, try hearing 5.1?!

That really needs improvement, to me more so than the panner. Danging with faint praise perhaps?

[Richard M Knight]

As is often the case programmiung resources are spent on the most reported bugs or feature requents, In the 14 years on the forum you, i think, are the first person to ask for this.