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Can someone assist a haggard and grissled FCP editor with a few minor nuances?
– In FCP, I could select just the video of a clip and hit option-up arrow to move the video up a track. Anything similar in PPro CS5.5?
– Can someone explain the use of the two track selector controls? What are they used for and why do I have to select v1 AND video 1 in order to make an edit on to v1? Are any of these akin to the autoselect boxes in FCP?
– Can I reposition a timeline clip in program side without loading it in to the source side? (Image and wireframe in FCP)
Sorry if these are rudimentary, but I’m crawling before strapping on the jet pack, and I’ve got a bit of rug burn.
Most appreciated,
Jeremy
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14 Replies
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[Jeremy Garchow] “- In FCP, I could select just the video of a clip and hit option-up arrow to move the video up a track. Anything similar in PPro CS5.5?”
I haven’t found it and can’t find it in the keyboard remap options.
[Jeremy Garchow] “- Can someone explain the use of the two track selector controls? What are they used for and why do I have to select v1 AND video 1 in order to make an edit on to v1? Are any of these akin to the autoselect boxes in FCP?”
These are like Avid where every track is considered off until you turn it on and patch it. FCP operates like every track is on until you deselect or lock it.
The left side are your source tracks. The right side are your timeline/record tracks. If you want your source V1 to go to V2 of your timeline you “patch” V1 to V2 – that is, click and drag V1 on the left so it’s across from V2 on the record side. Now activate both if they aren’t activated. When you cut your video in (insert or overwrite edit) it will put V1 source onto V2.
Gotcha’s – If you don’t activate V1 on the source side but you activate V2 on the record side you are telling the system to overwrite whatever is on V2, but overwrite it with nothing (aka – delete it). This can mess up your edit, but is also very powerful if you need to get rid of stuff while you’re editing. You can patch V1 to V3 and activate V2 and V1 on the record side, then insert V1 source. You’ll insert edit V1 source onto V3 as well as push down V2 and V1 in your timeline.
However, if you activate V1 source and don’t activate V2 record no video will be cut into your sequence. The rule is, if timeline track is active it looks to the source side. If there is something active on the same track is overwrite/inserts that. If there is nothing active on source side but a track is active on the record side it overwrites “nothing” (think of it like gap clips in FCPX) or inserts gaps.
Also, look at the box to the right of the speaker. Those are sync locks. Turn those on to sort of “magnetize” the timeline. If you have them on and insert edit to V2 it will keep everything else in sync and move them down too.
[Jeremy Garchow] “- Can I reposition a timeline clip in program side without loading it in to the source side? (Image and wireframe in FCP)”
Select the clip in the timeline, go to the Effects tab and click the work Motion. Now you can move the clip around in the program monitor. Not nearly as elegant as wireframe in FCP and selecting Motion isn’t keyboard programable. I’ve think I’ve submitted a feature request for this but can’t remember. I’m going to again just in case.
I started on Avid, been on FCP for about the last year. Premiere Pro is a mash up between the two. What it does well it does really, really well, but it’s missing quite a few functions to make it a super fast, keyboard driven editor (like Avid), and missing quick access functions like wireframe and moving clips up and down tracks like FCP.
Feature request time! The more of these they get the more likely they’ll implement them.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Thank you.
The more I messed around, the more it started to make sense.
It’s powerful, you can do a lot, but it seems to aggravate the tunnel de carpal.
It’s very logical when you need to move things around in the timeline or paste from other timelines, lift/extract edits, etc. It does seem to require a lot of clicking, though and require a lot of moves just to delete what you want in a fancy way. And when there’s a lot of audio, its goofy as you can’t just activate the record side once and have the rest ripple down. 10 channels of audio? 10 channels to activate plus whatever needs to turn off, instead of an option click to pick the “top” level to ripple down from.
It gets a bit weird when doing source side edits in to the timeline.
[Michael Hancock] “You can patch V1 to V3 and activate V2 and V1 on the record side, then insert V1 source. You’ll insert edit V1 source onto V3 as well as push down V2 and V1 in your timeline.”
A ha. Interesting, I didn’t see or try that. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s powerful, you can do a lot, but it seems to aggravate the tunnel de carpal.”
You can map a lot of stuff to the keyboard – the default keyboard has almost nothing mapped to it, and if you loaded the FCP keyboard shortcuts it’s not really the most efficient way to use Premiere because the track functionality is so different. I spent about 2 days remapping my keyboard, playing around, remapping my keyboard, playing around. I’m getting pretty comfortable with it now and find myself reaching for my mouse less and less (but still more than I like).
[Jeremy Garchow] “It does seem to require a lot of clicking, though and require a lot of moves just to delete what you want in a fancy way.”
I completely agree about the clicking. There are very minor changes Adobe could make to eliminate many of them, and I’ve been sending them in as Feature Requests. Track selection and patching needs reworked so the source side auto patches when you change source track selections (with this you could patch/unpatch source to record with just the keyboard), you need to be able to quickly deactivate or activate tracks (for example – in Avid you click and drag through them to deactivate/activate multiples at once, like the Eye on Photoshop layers), adding and deleting tracks is very cumbersome. It’s so close to being a great NLE in so many ways but still needs some fine tuning. It’s still too mouse driven.
[Jeremy Garchow] “A ha. Interesting, I didn’t see or try that. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.”
Also, sync locks. Very, very powerful and makes it easy to insert some audio and move other tracks down or up, keeping sync. Like the magnetic timeline from FCPX but with an off switch and track dependent.
Overall, what are your thoughts on Premiere and how much time have you spent on it? I’ve been testing it heavily for about 3 weeks now and I’m very surprised at how much it’s grown since the early days.
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Michael Hancock
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[Michael Hancock] “You can map a lot of stuff to the keyboard – the default keyboard has almost nothing mapped to it, and if you loaded the FCP keyboard shortcuts it’s not really the most efficient way to use Premiere because the track functionality is so different. I spent about 2 days remapping my keyboard, playing around, remapping my keyboard, playing around. I’m getting pretty comfortable with it now and find myself reaching for my mouse less and less (but still more than I like).”
I keep the shortcut window open constantly. 🙂
[Michael Hancock] “Overall, what are your thoughts on Premiere and how much time have you spent on it? I’ve been testing it heavily for about 3 weeks now and I’m very surprised at how much it’s grown since the early days.”
There’s a lot to like. I can’t say too much as I haven’t spent a ton of time in it quite yet (I actually took some time off over the holidays, much needed!). I’m seriously looking at it though. There’s great things in there, and it is obvious Adobe is serious about this. I like that. I am still getting acquainted with it, but it’s going well.
I was thinking the other day that even though Im not a motion graphics designer, but an editor, After Effects has been the program I have been using the longest throughout my career. It has survived the multiple NLE changes for me (Avid, M100, FCP) and I’m sure whatever’s next I’ll use it there too. I’m going to be trying out linkage between PPro/AE. All the motion designers we use are heavily AE dependent, so PPro is actually a logical fit for us when we tee up projects for designers.
I thought that originally cs5.5 was having issues with my Kona card, but I think that my SAN might be the issue now, which is kind of disconcerting. More testing is needed, but I have some strong hunches it’s SAN related.
I really really want to like it.
I would also probably have to get Cuda-ized, but it’s not super clear on where to go, especially since we still use Color a lot which is more ATI based. And as much as it might be passé, we probably aren’t getting rid of our Macs soon, (or ever) as long as Apple still sells desktop computers that are more expandable than iMacs. We use a mixture of desktop and laptop, so Cuda is more difficult there as well.
PPro does feel like a natural next step in the wake of FCP7, but although we are a small shop, I’m not a one man band. We need to think about what’s going to work best for all of us. Really looking forward as to what cs6 might bring. Time will tell. Thanks a lot for those tips, I’ll give them a shot.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I keep the shortcut window open constantly. 🙂 “
Smart man. If you figure out how to shift a clip up or down a track with the keyboard, do tell. I can’t find it anywhere. And don’t you wish they had a graphic layout of the keyboard and the ability to map a command to more than one key? Drives me crazy. Sent several feature requests on keyboard mapping today.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I was thinking the other day that even though Im not a motion graphics designer, but an editor, After Effects has been the program I have been using the longest throughout my career. It has survived the multiple NLE changes for me (Avid, M100, FCP) and I’m sure whatever’s next I’ll use it there too. I’m going to be trying out linkage between PPro/AE. All the motion designers we use are heavily AE dependent, so PPro is actually a logical fit for us when we tee up projects for designers.”
Let me know if you test the dynamic link functions where you can ‘Make New After Effects Composition” directly from Premiere Pro. I’m leery of it. Tried it a few versions ago (can’t remember which one) and it seemed to really, really slow the programs down. Plus we’re on shared storage and often “borrow” from each others projects. If I link to CompA and another editor starts changing it, it’s going to change in my timeline too. Seems too dangerous in a shared environment.
Instead, I’ve been setting my edit up in Premiere, select the clips I want (usually all of them), hit copy, open After Effects and hit paste. Fills the project window with the media, rolls out the timeline in the comp. it’s bloody brilliant. If I change a shot in Premiere I just Copy/Paste it back into After Effects, then copy/paste effects and keyframes from the old shot in After Effects to the new one. Simple, fast, and reliable. [JUST TESTED: You can copy/paste from AE to Premiere too. This is getting ridiculous (in a good way)]
[Jeremy Garchow] “I would also probably have to get Cuda-ized, but it’s not super clear on where to go, especially since we still use Color a lot which is more ATI based. And as much as it might be passé, we probably aren’t getting rid of our Macs soon, (or ever) as long as Apple still sells desktop computers that are more expandable than iMacs. We use a mixture of desktop and laptop, so Cuda is more difficult there as well.”
We don’t have any machines that are CUDA activated either. We have 2008 MacPros with nVidia cards but the graphics cards don’t have enough onboard memory to enable the Mercury Engine. One machine is ATI. I wish we had a couple PCs – so much power, so little money, and the OS’s are barely different anymore, and once you get in the program the OS doesn’t matter.
That said, I run the full CS Suite at home on a 2011 2.7Ghz iMac with 16GB of RAM and can crunch through DSLR footage all day, even if I’m using the system drive as a media drive (I need to remedy that). Premiere really doesn’t need a CUDA card to play most things back but I imagine it would really help, particularly with effect playback.
[Jeremy Garchow] “…although we are a small shop, I’m not a one man band.”
Same here. Our post department consists of three editors/motion graphic artists with five machines tied to an Editshare.
Exciting time to be in post, huh?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Michael Hancock] “If you figure out how to shift a clip up or down a track with the keyboard, do tell. I can’t find it anywhere.”
I don’t think it’s there, although your earlier tips gave me some ideas I’ll try tomorrow.
[Michael Hancock] “Plus we’re on shared storage and often “borrow” from each others projects. If I link to CompA and another editor starts changing it, it’s going to change in my timeline too. Seems too dangerous in a shared environment.”
Do you share the same projects at the same time? We share media, but never projects. (FCP)
[Michael Hancock] “I wish we had a couple PCs – so much power, so little money, and the OS’s are barely different anymore, and once you get in the program the OS doesn’t matter. “
Whew. I can’t get rid of our macs quite yet. I understand the pcs are faster and perhaps cheaper, but I won’t be able to convince the other guys in the office, or myself, to use windows. We have a bootcamp partition and we curse, a lot, when having to use windows. I guess we’re snobs.
[Michael Hancock] “Premiere really doesn’t need a CUDA card to play most things back but I imagine it would really help, particularly with effect playback.”
I have been testing ProRes 444 Alexa footage and 4k HD red epic footage and getting a lot of dropped frames. I think it’s my San, though. Maybe.
[Michael Hancock] “Same here. Our post department consists of three editors/motion graphic artists with five machines tied to an Editshare.”
Extremely similar to us, but we have a metaSAN system (ironically with a Windows controller).
[Michael Hancock] “Exciting time to be in post, huh?”
Certainly no shortage of action lately!
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Do you share the same projects at the same time? We share media, but never projects. (FCP)”
We don’t open the same projects at the same time – FCP and Premiere, as you know, operate on “last to save wins” project sharing. But we do work on the same project file, just one at a time. Everything is stored on the EditShare, we never work local. That’s why I was hoping we’d move to Avid, but the cost of training and software was just too much (I’m the only one in the building with Avid experience). Premiere was basically a free switch.
Here’s how we share projects (probably the same way you guys do):
If I need to work on a project when another editor is in it I open the project and immediately Save As, appending the filename with the next ascending number (Project A is saved as Project A_01, the Project A_02, etc…). It works well, and when the project is done we can combine the final sequences into a master project if necessary.
With After Effects projects we often open the project, duplicate a comp we need to change and work on the duplicate. Sometimes we screw up, though, and duplicate the comp then work on the original (the duplicate remains untouched, preserving the original work). That’s why I don’t think dynamic link between AE and Premiere will work for us – mistakes happen and they can be a pain to fix. Easier just to copy/paste.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Whew. I can’t get rid of our macs quite yet. I understand the pcs are faster and perhaps cheaper, but I won’t be able to convince the other guys in the office, or myself, to use windows. We have a bootcamp partition and we curse, a lot, when having to use windows. I guess we’re snobs.”
PCs are cheaper when you build them yourself, no doubt about it. The top end HP workstations are the same or more than the Mac, but they offer more expansion slots, you can load them with more RAM, and you have a much greater choice of graphics cards. But, you have to run Windows and if you don’t like Windows you won’t like the HP machine.
I’m platform agnostic at this point. I’ve built Linux boxes to play around in for home use, have Mac at home and work, Blackberry and Android cell phone and my wife has a Windows laptop (my Windows laptop dies and was replaced with an Android tablet). If I pushed for a move to PCs here I’d probably be blacklisted – we have, maybe, 2 PCs in the building and a shrine of Macs dating back probably 15 years. Even accounting has Macs (running Windows). All said there are probably 50 – 70 Macs in our building.
That said, I’d love to add a couple of PCs to post if for no other reason than to build a render farm and one dedicated PC edit station/Resolve. Then we could do a direct comparison between the OSes for speed and reliability relative to cost.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I have been testing ProRes 444 Alexa footage and 4k HD red epic footage and getting a lot of dropped frames. I think it’s my San, though. Maybe.”
What is your playback resolution set to? I just tested some Alexa ProRes 444 footage and at half resolution it plays back great – at full resolution I too get dropped frames. It might not be your SAN.
When I get the time I’m going to test Avid’s new 444 codec (I think it’s available now) to see how it does. DNxHD seems to play back better in Premiere than ProRes, from my informal tests, but anything ProRes below 444 does fine at full quality. I might have to dig up some more 4K Red files and test those at full quality too, but I’m pretty sure when I tried it before I had to drop to half for playback.
Have you noticed that when you drop a 4K file into an HD or SD comp and have Premiere set to Resize Footage to Comp it doesn’t change the scale values in the motion tab? Huge oversight. Do the same thing in After Effects and it tells you it scaled it down to 33% or whatever of the original clip size. Sent a feature request on that one – I hope others do too because it needs to be fixed ASAP.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Michael Hancock] “That’s why I was hoping we’d move to Avid, but the cost of training and software was just too much (I’m the only one in the building with Avid experience). Premiere was basically a free switch.”
Same as us, really.
[Michael Hancock] “Here’s how we share projects (probably the same way you guys do):”
Actually, all projects are kept local. If someone needs something else, we ask for it, and then move that something to the SAN where the other person picks it up. What I like about the PPro/AE project system is that it can import actual projects (AE has had this for years and years). That way you can make a copy and whittle down just what you need to give to the next guy, and then save that and put it on the SAN. We did the same with FCPX, then would just copy/paste from one project to the next on the local side.
Not entirely the most efficient way to work, but it does keep the mistakes down, and also builds in some redundancy.
[Michael Hancock] “That said, I’d love to add a couple of PCs to post if for no other reason than to build a render farm and one dedicated PC edit station/Resolve. Then we could do a direct comparison between the OSes for speed and reliability relative to cost. “
Absolutely. That would be a good test. For us, it’s about support. While I do a lot fo editing, I’m also the defacto “IT” guy (and I’m not an IT guy). I can troubleshot other people’s issues from anywhere using LogMeIn, and I just don’t know how to trouble shoot windows. I have enough on my plate, learning a new OS (and supporting it) is a bit too much at this stage. I hope Apple at least keeps making a platform that is good enough for us pros to work on.
[Michael Hancock] “What is your playback resolution set to? I just tested some Alexa ProRes 444 footage and at half resolution it plays back great – at full resolution I too get dropped frames. It might not be your SAN. “
I’ve tried them all. ProRes 444 is not that hard to playback, and it drops frames all over the place in CS5.5. There’s no issues in FCPX or FCP7. More testing is needed with the SAN.
[Michael Hancock] “When I get the time I’m going to test Avid’s new 444 codec (I think it’s available now) to see how it does. DNxHD seems to play back better in Premiere than ProRes, from my informal tests, but anything ProRes below 444 does fine at full quality. I might have to dig up some more 4K Red files and test those at full quality too, but I’m pretty sure when I tried it before I had to drop to half for playback.”
Yes, but Avid makes it hard to make MXF files without buying Avid software. i would be curious to see if it performs better than ProRes, though.
[Michael Hancock] “Have you noticed that when you drop a 4K file into an HD or SD comp and have Premiere set to Resize Footage to Comp it doesn’t change the scale values in the motion tab? Huge oversight.”
I did, but I noticed that if you right click on the clip and choose “Scale to frame size” it fixes it. What’s weird is that there’s a “general” pref to turn this on by default, but it doesn’t seem to work.
Jeremy
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[Michael Hancock] “You can patch V1 to V3 and activate V2 and V1 on the record side, then insert V1 source. You’ll insert edit V1 source onto V3 as well as push down V2 and V1 in your timeline. “
Damn, I thought you meant push the layers down vertically, not horizontally.
I do see what you’re saying though!
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “While I do a lot fo editing, I’m also the defacto “IT” guy (and I’m not an IT guy). I can troubleshot other people’s issues from anywhere using LogMeIn, and I just don’t know how to trouble shoot windows. I have enough on my plate, learning a new OS (and supporting it) is a bit too much at this stage. I hope Apple at least keeps making a platform that is good enough for us pros to work on.”
If you’re the IT guy too, definitely stick with what you know. Having to keep up with your editing duties as well as learn the IT side of Windows and be on the hook if the systems go down = hair loss and hypertension! We have an in house IT guy so I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Actually learning how to navigate Windows is easy. Networking and dealing with shared storage isn’t. Call Zelin for that.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Yes, but Avid makes it hard to make MXF files without buying Avid software. i would be curious to see if it performs better than ProRes, though.”
Not MXF files – Quicktime files encoded to DNxHD444. The only way to make an Avid .mxf is with an Avid. But you can download their codecs from their website and decode/encode Quicktimes with them all day long – for free! Mac or PC. I’m going to start testing all the flavors of DNxHD in Premiere and compare it to ProRes. If we get equivalent quality but DNxHD is easier on the systems we’ll encode to that moving forward. Otherwise, we’ll stick to ProRes.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I did, but I noticed that if you right click on the clip and choose “Scale to frame size” it fixes it. What’s weird is that there’s a “general” pref to turn this on by default, but it doesn’t seem to work.
“If you toggle the General Preference on, it doesn’t affect any footage you’ve already imported. It will affect all footage imported after it was toggled, though (it will scale it to comp size when cut into a sequence). And vice-versa. I learned that watching the Adobe TV stuff because I thought the toggle switch was broken. Apparently I was just holding it wrong. 🙂
Regarding the right click “Scale to Frame Size” – when I do that in the sequence it doesn’t change the Scale value in the Motion setting in the Effect tab for the clip, but it does scale the clip to fit the comp. Does the scale value change on your system? For example, if you take a 1000×1000 picture and cut it into a 500×500 comp then Scale to Frame Size the scale value should change to 50 because it’s been scaled to 50% its original size, but it doesn’t on my system. It scaled the 1000×1000 pic to fit the 500×500 comp but the Scale value stays at 100. Very weird behavior.
I’d be interested if you system acts the same way or if I have bug on my computer (note – it happens on the MacPro at work and iMac at home).
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Michael Hancock
Editor
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