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Moving from FCP to PP – Some questions on performing simple editing tasks
Hi All,
I’m looking to get some handy tips and some advice from seasoned PP users.
I’ve been a FCP user for years, but unfortunately with FCPX being the disaster that it is I’m starting to get to grips with both Premiere and Avid with a view to moving away from FCP over the next year or so.
I’ve started doing some low key work on Premiere to get used to it (although I used it years ago and in fact it was the first NLE I ever used!) I feel fairly comfortable with it already, but there are a few simple things that have been bugging me and having looked online I haven’t really found many answers and it’s always good to hear from people who know the software inside out anyways.
* I do alot of Behind the Scenes and Fashion work which usually means cutting video to a piece of music whilst most of the audio from the footage itself is discarded. I know I can discard the audio and just include the video from source material by dragging it to the timeline with the film reel symbol, but is there a way I can achieve this using just keyboard shortcuts without having to drag and drop? In FCP, I really like to do 3-point edits with the audio patch in the sequence turned off. Is there a similar way of doing this in PP?
* Video and audio seem to be linked by default. Is there a way to make them unlinked and independent from each other by default in the way that you can do in FCP?
* Is there any way to apply a default video or audio transition to a clip in a similar fashion to the way in which you ctrl-click it’s head or tail in FCP? Doing so from the effects browser is OK but I just like to get away from dragging and dropping where possible. I’ve seen and had a bit of a play with the “add default transition” options in the Sequence menu, but I can’t really figure out how to assign the transition to the head or tail of a specific clip – what am I doing wrong?
* It’s rare that I need to do so, but occasionally the settings of a sequence may need to be changed after it has been created, say for example if an Editor hasn’t set up a sequence properly to match their source material (sadly it does happen from time to time!). From what I can see the codec settings are greyed out and cannot be changed if I go into sequence settings. Are these settings essentially “locked” after a sequence has been created, or am I doing something wrong?
* Bit more of a technical question and less of an editing task, but at the production company I’m currently working with we have a SAN. FCP works best with the project files stored and worked from locally as opposed to on the SAN. Is this also true with PP?
I’m sure some of these questions are a bit rudimentary for those experienced with PP, so apologies for that, but they are just little things that can make a big difference and help make the transition away from FCP all the smoother.
On a side note, I’m pretty excited to see what PP has to offer once I get really stuck in – I can see lots of potential!
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4 Replies
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– Best way that I’ve come up with to do 3-point edits without bringing sound in is to just deselect the audio tracks, then when you edit in it doesn’t bring in sound. I have audio 1-6 mapped to the 6-1 keys, respectively (in keyboard customization, search for “toggle”), like Avid’s default, for easy track enabling/disabling.
– I do not know of a way of turning on or off timeline-wide linking, but I usually either can get around that by track enabling in edit (again, made easy through shortcuts) or by ALT-clicking or ALT-lassoing on the element that you’d like to manipulate separately on the timeline to override links. On Mac, it’s either Option click or command click, I forget which.
– I have default transition mapped to CTL+T, which is very helpful. You can’t click on the cut and apply a transition, but by holding down SHIFT and dragging the playhead/time indicator to the cut that you want, it will snap to that cut, and you can easily CTL-T transition it. Make sure to setup your default length in the preferences. I like to have a different default lengths for Audio than video. The transiton will apply to tracks selected. If this isn’t working, it’s likely because the track you are trying to apply to isn’t selected. You can also move between cuts on enabled tracks with hotkeys – I have mine mapped to up and down arrows.
– Yes, changing sequence settings after the fact is a drag. Easy way to do it, though, it to create new sequence, then just CTL-A, cut and paste media into new timeline. If you need to resize everything in a timeline, don’t forget about paste attributes.
– A project file, because it’s being read/read/written with bytes of data every second, does infinitely better on a local drive.
Ryan
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* Video and audio seem to be linked by default. Is there a way to make them unlinked and independent from each other by default in the way that you can do in FCP?
To unlink audio; right click the audio clip and click “unlink” from the drop menu.
One man with courage makes a majority.
Canon 7D
Sony Vegas Pro 11
Adobe CS5.5 Master Suite -
To select and or move audio or video separately hold the alt modifier key to select just one element and then go about your editing as per usual.
If you just want to make a trim then hold the alt key and make the trim/ripple/roll,slide,slide etc…
Cheers JB
Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
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Thanks for all the insight guys, some really good tips there that have already made editing quicker and more intuitive.
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