Use middle mouse wheel button to quickly move through the timeline (Like a Hand Tool)

[Benjamin38572527ykag]

Would love to be able to click and drag my way through the Premiere timeline (i.e. After Effects) to move quicker than switching back and forth between the Selection and Hand tools. As well as using the mouse scroll wheel to scroll up and down both the video and audio layers.

[MyerPj]

You can set the timeline scroll to Vertical to be able to scroll up and down the tracks. You can also, scroll down the timeline with the setting to vertical using ctrl-mouse wheel

[MyerPj]

[AidanEdits]

Along with the horizontal/vertical timeline scrolling explained by @MyerPj, the mouse wheel also has a variety of other abilities that can be extremely useful for navigating both the timeline and the rest of the program. In the timeline, most (if not all) types of navigation can be accessed and controlled using modifier keys with the mouse wheel. These modifier keys are also dynamic and have different functions based on the position of your mouse cursor in the timeline panel. Here are all the timeline-specific options that I can think of:

1. Alt--mouse wheel:
   • Horizontal Timeline Zoom: With your cursor hovering anywhere in the main track area of the timeline (the space where your clips live in the timeline), holding alt while scrolling your mouse wheel will zoom the timeline in and out horizontally. Suppose your mouse cursor is positioned within the span of the horizontal scroll/zoom bar (as shown in image 1). In that case, the timeline will zoom towards the position of your cursor, which allows you to control both the zoom amount and the horizontal scroll position at the same time. If the cursor is outside of the span of the scroll/zoom bar, the timeline will zoom to the center of the scroll/zoom bar. 
   • Height Control for Individual Tracks: With your cursor in the Track Header portion of the timeline panel (the part of the timeline with the track controls, see image 2) hover your cursor over a track and holding alt while scrolling your mouse to control the height of whichever track your mouse cursor is hovering over. If you need to make fine adjustments to the track height, hold ctrl+alt.

 

1. Shift--mouse wheel: (has no effect when the cursor is hovering in the main track area of the timeline)

• Height Control for All Tracks: hover the cursor over the Track Header of any video track and hold shift while scrolling the mouse wheel to control the height of all video tracks simultaneously. Hover over any audio track to control the height of all audio tracks. (You cannot control the height of both video and audio tracks simultaneously). As with the individual track height controls, you can hold ctrl and shift to make more minor adjustments.

Other uses of the mouse wheel that work anywhere in the program:

• Navigate through panels in a panel group by hovering the cursor over the header of the panel group and scrolling the mouse wheel. 
  • Quickly scroll through the options of any dropdown menu in the program; for example, hover over a clips Blending Modes dropdown menu, or quickly scroll through fonts without having to reopen the menu every time you choose a font. Instead of clicking to open the dropdown, scroll the mouse wheel to shuffle through each option in the menu. Any dropdown menu with white text on a black rounded rectangle can be controlled like this.  in the program. This does not work for complex dropdowns like the Source/Program Monitor settings menu or the main Menu Bar (File, Edit, Clip, Sequence...View, Window, Help, etc.). 
• If your Premiere version is up to date, you'll likely have noticed that you can now zoom in and out on the program monitor with the mouse wheel.

 

There's definitely more, but these are the ones I could think of. Thanks to the mouse wheel, I have not used the hand tool or the zoom tool in years, and I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with all of these features if you are looking to speed up your workflow.

[AidanEdits]

Appologies for the typos in my message. Unfortunately can't edit them so If anything doesn't make sense let me know

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks for the excellent response, @AidanEdits. You'll eventually have editing privileges. Just give it a little time. I wanted to thank you for your excellent response. I ran your post through Grammarly. Check it, and if I made any errors, just PM me, and I'll fix them.

Cheers,
Kevin

[AidanEdits]

Sweet thank you for tidying up the message, Kevin!

>Quickly scroll through the options of any dropdown menu...

Only last minor thing is I accidentally made this a sub-bullet even though it is not related to the previous bullet. Maybe we could put that onto its own line so it doesn't appear as an addition to the previous point. Otherwise looks great to me!

Best,

Aidan

[Benjamin38572527ykag]

Thanks for all the great replies! I'd still like to be able to click and hold the middle mouse button (scroller) and drag my way through the timeline like in After Effects. But at least I now know that I can scroll up and down the layers on the timeline.

[MyerPj]

After experimenting for you, I'm leaving it at Vertical for awhile and see how it goes. I like also to be able to scroll the tracks (or 'layers' in AE). You can drag the program monitor around with the middle mouse button. I'm hoping (for no reason) that they add a Spacebar-Drag in PP like in AE and others.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey @Benjamin38572527ykag,

Let's move this post to the Ideas forum since it has a couple of requests here.

Thanks,
Kevin