Premiere Pro CS6: Interface Secrets

As I was recording my Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 video training, I came across a number of interesting interface tips that I wanted to share with you. (These are listed in no particular order.)

NOTE: For all my Adobe Training, become a subscriber. More than 200 movies, and almost ten hours of training.

EXPAND A PANEL FULL SCREEN

I love this feature!

Select any panel; a selected panel is indicated by a gold box around the panel.

Type Shift+` (the key in the top left corner of the keyboard – its called the tilde or accent key) to expand the selected panel to fill the window. Press ` to shrink the panel back down to size.

For something faster, roll your mouse into any panel and type ` (that same key in the upper left corner) to expand whatever panel your mouse is in to fill the window. Press ` to toggle back to size.

Still wilder, select either the Source monitor or the Program monitor and press Control+` — this expands the Source or Program monitor to fill your entire computer screen. Press ` to toggle back to size.

RAMP PLAYBACK SPEED

With playback stopped, press and hold Shift+L in the Timeline or Source monitor and playback will start in slow motion and accelerate to fast forward.

Press and hold Shift+J and playback will start in slow motion and accelerate to fast reverse.

With a clip playing, press Shift+L to speed it up, or press Shift+J to slow it down.

CHECK FOR DROPPED FRAMES

In the lower right corner of the Source or Playback monitors, click the Wrench icon – Adobe calls it the Settings menu – and check “Show Dropped Frame Indicator.”

A green light appears next to the timecode display in the lower left corner of the monitor. During playback, green means playback is good. Yellow means playback is dropping frames.

Hover your mouse over the yellow light to see how many frames were dropped during playback.

This indicator resets the next time you start to play a clip or sequence.

ADDING CLIP MARKERS

You can’t add markers to clips in the Timeline… but you CAN in the Source monitor:

• Double-click a Timeline clip to load it into the Source monitor.
• Put the playhead where you want the marker to appear and type M.
• Double-click the marker icon to edit it.
• Drag the marker from side-to-side to reposition it.
• Right-click on the marker icon to delete it, or access other options.

MARK CLIPS DIRECTLY IN THE PROJECT PANEL

The Project panel stores all the media for your project, similar to the Browser in Final Cut Pro 7.

• Select a clip in the Project panel to display a mini-Timeline.
• Drag the playhead to where you want the clip to start and type “I” to set an In.
• Drag the playhead to where you want the clip to end and type “O” to set an Out.
• Press period (.) to overwrite edit the clip directly from the Project panel into the Timeline at the position of the playhead.

HIDDEN MARKER PLAYGROUND

Ever wonder where markers go to hang-out? In the new Marker panel. This lists all markers in currently open sequences.

Click a marker to jump to it. View the frame under the marker. Change the In or the Out. Add or read a comment.

This is a really fast way to navigate to any marker without needed to step from marker to marker.

Oh, and the keyboard shortcuts to jump between markers are Shift+M and Shift+Command+M.

IMPORTING SEQUENCES

Premiere only allows one project to be open at a time, though each project can contain an unlimited number of sequences. Here’s a very quick way to import a sequence from one project into another:

Select File > Import.

Navigate to the project containing the sequence you want to import on your hard disk.

Select whether you want to import the entire project into its own Bin, or just a few sequences. In this case, I just want to import sequences.

In the next dialog, select the sequences you want to import.

Poof! Done.

REORGANIZE WORKSPACES

To add a tab to any frame (which is a collection of panels, each labeled with a tab), go to the Window menu and select the panel you want to use.

Drag the panel into any frame. The purple shape indicates where the tab will be placed:

• Purple shape in the center, tab is placed with other tabs in the frame; that’s what this screen shot is showing.
• Purple shape at the top, tab is placed above the frame.
• Purple shape at the bottom, tab is placed below the frame.
• Purple shape at the left, tab is placed to the left of the frame.
• Purple shape at the right, tab is placed to the right of the frame.

TO REMOVE A TAB FROM A FRAME

Click the small “x” to the right of the tab name.

RESET WORKSPACES

If, in your enthusiasm to create the perfect workspace you have so hopelessly messed things up that life is over as you know it, simply select Window > Workspace > Reset Current Workspace.

The workspace is reset back to its default settings for Adobe workspaces, or the last time you saved it, for custom workspaces.

SUMMARY

There are some very cool interface secrets hidden in the CS 6 release of Premiere Pro. I’ll explore more of these in coming weeks as I continue creating my new Adobe training.

---

Bookmark the permalink.