FCP to PP – a few questions

[Paul Neumann]

No need to unlink audio from clip to copy attributes. Just select (or shift select for multiple effects) in the effects control window then copy and paste to the desired (highlighted) clip. You can also paste copied effects to multiple clips at once.

[Alex Udell]

[Brian Dawley] “• Is there a way to option-shift-drag clips to duplicate or do I need to do the “matchframe-then-overcut” method, or copy – paste [somewhere close) then drag into desired position?”

Nope….copy and paste is the answer…just watch your track targeting before you paste so things land where you want them to…

[Brian Dawley] “• In FCP I often would temporarily assign a color to a group of clips in the Browser so I could quickly ID them in the sequence (like for copying / pasting attributes). Can this be done in PP? I did see in a tutorial that you can find every instance of a used clip but this isn’t exactly what I’m going for.”

nope….it seems that setting label colors only works for clips before you send them to timeline….once they are in the timeline, changing the color in the project panel will not update the sequence instances.

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Eric Deuser]

I, too, am a recent FCP to Premiere convert and I’m loving it! And, yes, you can make a keyboard shortcut for “Reveal in Project.” I just did it myself. Here’s how:

– Open the keyboard shortcuts menu.
– Next to “Application” there is a drop-down menu. From that menu, select “Panels”.
– In the search box underneath “Panels”, type “reveal”.
– In the shortcut list, you will see “Reveal in Project” under the Timeline heading.
– Highlight “Reveal in Project” and click “Edit” at the bottom right to create your shortcut.

Hope that helps!

Eric Deuser

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3
Premiere Pro CS 5.5.2
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
Nvidia Quadro 4000
Blackmagic Design Multibridge Pro
2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
24 GB RAM

[Mike Molenda]

• If you do a FCP-style paste attributes (i.e. select your clip in the timeline, copy, right click the target clip and hit “Paste Attributes”) EVERYTHING from the first clip will come over. As mentioned above, you can copy-paste out of the Effect Controls tab. Or, you can Alt/Option-Click on the clip to select just your video or audio track. No unlinking necessary.

• No way to nudge a clip’s X/Y position with the keyboard. After adjusting the X/Y values by scrubbing over the numbers in the Effect Controls, though, I can’t imagine going back to doing it the FCP7 way. You can adjust the position of any element in the title tool with the arrow keys, though. Nudge it 5 pixels at a time if you hold down the Shift key. If you are trying to get a title precisely placed, you can turn on your background video inside the title tool (click the icon that looks like a film frame with an eyeball at the top right of the preview area). Also, why would you need to reposition a slug? 🙂

• As far as I know, every command can be mapped to a key. If you’re using CS5.5, there’s a search function in the keyboard customization window. If not, you have to do a bit of tedious hunting. Remember that there’s a dropdown menu at the top where you choose whether you are looking at the general Application shortcuts, Panel-specific shortcuts, or Tool hotkeys. As pointed out above, “Reveal in Project” is under the “Panels” shortcuts.

• You can assign colors to any element in the Project Panel (Browser). Edit>Label> However, certain changes (such as renaming or applying a color label) that you make to your clips in the bins affect the clips BEFORE you cut them into the sequence, so clips that are already in the sequence will retain the same name and color label. But other actions to the clips in the bins (such as deleting them) WILL affect clips in the sequence. This is one of the things I’m hoping gets straightened out in the next update.

• No way that I know of to dupe a clip in the timeline. But I like the way PP handles copy-paste so much better than FCP. Namely, that you paste to the lowest selected target track, instead of to the same track you copied from. So to duplicate a clip to the track above: park the playhead at the start of the clip, target the track above the clip, select the clip, Cmd+C/Cmd+V.

• The CTI will get stopped by a stiff breeze. I think the only thing you can do without stopping playback is add a marker.

• I think it’s assuming that you always want your lowest track to be gapless. So say you’ve got a title or something on Track 2+ that you want to be up in between video segments. I’d say your best bet would be to turn snapping on, and use the Track Selection Tool (A) with the shift key to select every track forward of the gap. Then close the gap manually by moving the clips with the mouse. Or, put some black or transparent video on Track 1 under the head of the title/video on the upper track. Then ripple delete the gap as normal.

[Brian Dawley]

Thanks for all the responses, much appreciated.

[Brian Dawley]

“Also, why would you need to reposition a slug?”

Sorry I should have been more descriptive; I meant can you move a clip/title/slug from Track 1 to Track 2 to Track 3 and vice versa with a keyboard command?

And thanks for your in-depth responses.

[Mike Molenda]

Can you move a clip between tracks via the keyboard in FCP? I’ve never had any need to do that. Since you need to use the mouse to select the clip, why not just drag it slightly to a new track while you’re down there? I suppose in Premiere you could just Cmd-X cut the clip and paste it into a higher track.

Maybe I still don’t get what you’re asking?

[Brian Dawley]

In FCP it’s Option + up/down arrow. I sometimes use this when I am nudging clips forward or back in the timeline (Option + left/right arrow… the hand & finger positions are already there). When I began thinking about the questions in my Original Post I was just going from many of my own FCP functions.

Anyway, I like how Premiere Pro moves clips around that contain transitions, it doesn’t see a “clip collision” like FCP does when you don’t have the entire clip + transitions selected.

On another note, I just remembered using whatever version of Premiere existed in 1996 for a college project.

[Mike Molenda]

Oh. Neat. I had to pop FCP open real quick to give try nudging clips around with the arrow keys for myself. I could see that coming in handy for things like syncing camera angles. I’d actually like to know if there’s a way to do that in Premiere, myself.

[Mike Molenda]

Here you go. Default Premiere keyboard shortcuts:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WS1c9bc5c2e465a58a91cf0b1038518aef7-7c2ea.html

Looks like you can nudge/slide left to right with the keyboard, but not up and down across tracks.