More Keyboard Shortcut Secrets in Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Did you know that the same keyboard shortcut can do different things inside Adobe Premiere Pro CC?

No, I didn’t either.

I’ve spent the week wandering around the Help files for Premiere. While a little weak in plot, it has a great cast of characters. In my wanderings, I stumbled across some interesting facts about creating keyboard shortcuts that I want to share with you.

(Click image to see larger view.)

For instance, why are some key caps purple, others green and some are both?

The answer is:

• Keys shaded in purple are application-wide shortcuts.
• Keys shaded in green are panel-specific shortcuts.
• Keys shaded in both purple and green represent the panel commands that have been assigned to keys that also have an application command already assigned to them. (Panel shortcuts supersede application shortcuts when you are in that specific panel.)

So, for instance, take the letter R. It has three different shortcuts assigned to it, depending upon which panel is in focus (has a blue box around it):

• In the application, it accesses the Rate Stretch tool
• In the Capture panel, it rewinds the video tape
• In the Titler panel, it selects the Rectangle tool.

The application shortcut always takes priority, EXCEPT when you are in the Capture or Titler panels.

The Delete key has the most shortcuts assigned to it, depending upon which panel is in focus when the Delete key is pressed:

• Effect Controls panel
• Effects Controls panel menu
• Effects panel
• Essential Graphics panel
• History panel
• Project panel
• Timeline panel

APPLICATION AND PANEL SHORTCUTS

According to Adobe’s Help files:

• Commands can be assigned for application shortcuts and command shortcuts.
• Application shortcuts function regardless of panel focus (with some exceptions) and panel shortcuts function only when the panel is in focus.
• Certain keyboard shortcuts work only in specific panels. This means that you can have more than once shortcut assigned to the same key. You can also make use of the pop-up window that shows only a certain batch of panel shortcuts (for example, only for the timeline).
• When a Panel Shortcut has the same assigned shortcut as an application Shortcut, the application shortcut does not function when that panel has focus.
• You can search for commands in the Command List, which is filtered by the search criteria. You can also assign shortcuts by clicking in the shortcut column and tapping keys on their keyboard to create the shortcut (including adding modifiers).

A warning indicating a shortcut conflict appears when:

• An application shortcut already in use by another application shortcut.
• A panel shortcut is already in use by another command in the same panel.
• A panel shortcut overrides an application shortcut when that panel has focus.

NOTE: I illustrate a warning a little later in this article.

CREATING A SHORTCUT

The easiest way to create a shortcut is:

• Select the Modifier keys you want to associate with this shortcut

• Drag the Command name from the Command List and…

• Drop it on the key you want to associate with this command.

In the example above, I am creating Cmd + Option + C as the keyboard shortcut for All Caps.

The fastest way to create a shortcut is to click just to the right of the Command to open a text entry box, then type the shortcut you want to associate with this command.

I ESPECIALLY like that we can associate more than one shortcut with the same command. Again, click just to the right of an existing shortcut to add a second shortcut. (In this example, I clicked to the right of Option + Space, entered Option + P, then Premiere changed the order of the display.)

If there’s a conflict, the new shortcut will remove the old shortcut and Premiere will warn you. (This is the warning message mentioned above.)

Add as many shortcuts as you want, when are done, click OK to save your new entries, or Undo to undo the most recently created shortcut.

Cancel will abandon all your changes and close the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

EXTRA CREDIT

You can learn a lot more about keyboard shortcuts from this Adobe Help file:

helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/default-keyboard-shortcuts-cc.html

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