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Premiere wish list
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[Tim Kolb] “This thread may continue until PPro v3 is out…”
Ever the optimist aren’t you. I’m thinking it will continue to v30 – at a minimum.
Friendly
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[David Cherniack] “Although I’m sure you don’t mean it (because you seem like an intelligent guy :), it could be inferred that you mean all workflows are equal – in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. Well, for someone who insists on an inefficient workflow (A/B editing for example) I say let them have it! Just give me the option to work efficiently.”
I mean all workflows’ efficiency is in the thought process of the operator. I’m intrinsicly an artist, I draw and nearly became an illustrator back in the day…
Keyboard shortcuts are great, but I think in terms of what I can see.A/B editing had its definite drawbacks, but it was very visual and easy to teach. A newbie could understand what media was there and therefore understand how it’s involved in the transition. I use the inline method now and I like it, but the idea of the “invisible trim” for people who are getting into the field is tough…that was the principle reason why I liked it. I can use almost anything to edit…Vegas, Edius, Media Studio Pro, Media 100…but I like what I like and I’m fastest with what I like.
I had a producer from out of town come in who needed some fast post work done as their Avid Symphony suite was scheduled tight I guess. At one point, I remember the producer mentioning how surprised he was at the speed of PPro…I mentioned that I knew my way around in it fairly well and the interface works largely the way I think…and that was probably what he saw…but to this day he insists for the way he likes to work, PPro was much faster.
So what’s efficient? If a function can be executed faster but unintuitively (eye of the beholder again) with a key, is it faster…ultimately?
If there is one thing I learned when I got involved in training and software projects, it’s that my personal mindset doesn’t have a monopoly on the best workflow for every situation and every user…
…and nobody else does either. 🙂
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net -
Steven Gotz has been kind enough to host a typestyle library and a couple of other little things I threw together for PPro…
You may like them or not…either way they’ll be worth what you paid for ’em.
http://www.stevengotz.com/premierepro.htm
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net -
[Tim Kolb] “If there is one thing I learned when I got involved in training and software projects, it’s that my personal mindset doesn’t have a monopoly on the best workflow for every situation and every user…
…and nobody else does either. :-)”
Who could disagree with this sentiment? But the point is that there ARE a large number of inefficient work flows in Premiere Pro. That’s just poor design, not different design . 🙂
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[david cherniack] “Who could disagree with this sentiment? But the point is that there ARE a large number of inefficient work flows in Premiere Pro. That’s just poor design, not different design . :)”
…and who could disagree with that sentiment? There are things that I would like changed as well.
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net -
I use it exactly that way. Especially now that I shoot 1080i – I need the room.
Steven
Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.1 / After Effects 6.5 Pro https://www.stevengotz.com
Learning Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 https://www.lynda.com
Contributing Writer, PeachPit Press, Visual QuickPro Guide, Premiere Pro 1.5 -
Greg,
[Beckt Media] “My point is that time remapping is fairly significant when compared to many of the keyboard or tool requests people are moaning about…:-)”
[david cherniack] “I guess you guys have never used an NLE as timeline efficient as edit* Otherwise you wouldn’t think so. And this is from someone who uses time warping ( an edit* name ) extensively. Believe me when I tell you that the most frustrating thing about PPro from my perspective is the inefficient, and sometimes very clumsy, way I’m forced to do things in the timeline. Maybe I’ll eventually get over it but I sure hope that the design team leaders can sit down with an experienced edit* user and get enlightenment :)”
I’ve enjoyed this thread immensely and thought I could stay out of it until today. (g) While I certainly agree that time remapping is a very necessary editorial tool, I cannot stand by while “the keyboard or tool requests people are moaning about,” are belittled. As Tim says, time remapping on the PPro timeline may not be a priority because it’s available in AE, and from what I hear the integration advances may make AE almost a part of the PPro timeline anyway.
I agree with Mr. Cherniack. Nothing beats an efficient/responsive workflow when you are slicing and dicing your source material into a flowing story and part of that efficiency and rsponsiveness rests in the lap of comprehensive keyboard shortcuts. By comprehensive I mean that virtually everything that an NLE can do should be reachable from the keyboard.
Now this doesn’t mean that I think that the keyboard is the most efficient tool for everything that we do in editorial. For some operations the mouse or similar pointing tool is more efficient, but even when it is, the NLE needs to be able to do the same operation with the keyboard, for this reason. The sorts of projects that we work on are legion and we often run up against a need to do something multiple times that involve multiple operations. With a keyboard Macro Utility (which I think should be built into any NLE) we can automate those multiple functions to a single keystroke, but not if the NLE doesn’t have access to some part or parts of the sequence from the keyboard.
Like Cherniak and Friendly, I’m an edit*or. As an example of the above, 2 years before edit* had a multicam function, and because edit* had comprehensive keyboard shortcuts, I was able to use a keyboard macro utility to program a multicam function on top of edit* that worked surprisingly well, well enough to impress one of the top edit* coders (who at the time was working on multicam in the back room). You’ve gotta realize that this was something like 6 or 7 years ago, before we had the computing horsepower to display multiple tracks at once, so my multicam feature needed an overnite render to create the multicam DVE that would allow me to see all the cameras at once, but once that render was accomplished, I could hit one key to switch on the fly to another camera and the camera that I was previously on would in a little over a second be copied from its track to the assembly track, a process that would have taken at least 30 seconds manually, and I’d be ready to go on to my next decision on the fly. You can’t do that sort of thing unless all of the operations to make it happen are available from the keyboard, whether they are normally used that way or not, and making them available is not coding rocket science, and is not going to screw something else up. It’s a matter of will and understanding the potential facility and necessity.
For those of you reading this who aren’t former or current Discreet edit*ors, let me explain a few things about the application that have made us such sticklers about some basic editing functions and so adimant about improving the applications that we consider moving to. Edit* came out of a completely pro heritage, made by the same folks who delivered the D-Vision off-line editor that was industry standard for a number of years. Thus EDL I/O was as good as it gets and media management was second only to Avid. It always captured over TC breaks better than anything in existence and had comprehensive keyboard shortcuts. Off-line/on-line works with edit* and recaptures only what you need with handles, something we sort of ignored for a few years in other apps when low data DV and cheap drives came to the fore, but is coming back to bite us with HD.
As David C. indicated the workflow was always a pleasure to use with edit*, with features like multiple bins and timelines, sub-timelines (nesting), setting I/O directly on the picons in the bins with picons that could be all the way from tiny to nearly source viewer size, source and record TC displayed in each clip along with in and out Picons and a text display of any FX applied to the clip, and an updated sorce and record TC in the status line for any point where the cursor rested, and one of my personal favorites, a timeline that could be set to update when playing at any percentage including 50% which would leave the timeline scrolling past a stationary cursor so that you can always see what’s coming and what has just past when doing fine tuning on the cut.
Edit* also has speed editing tools that I’ve never seen elsewhere. For example, you can hit the H or T keys (for heads or tails) on the fly as you watch a cut which brings up a dialog that lets you enter any number of frames + or – to the head or tail of the cut and when you hit enter the cursor moves back prior to the cut a user selectable amount and plays through the cut to automatically show you the revised cut.
Add this to the most responsive NLE on the planet for long form work. Edit* just doesn’t bog down overly much with huge timelines, and this with processors that are puny by today’s standards. On my dual 450 PIII system, I once cut a moderately edited 5.5 hour timeline because I wasn’t sure how I would break it up to lay back to tape. No one on any currently deliverable system would even consider such a work flow, yet on an edit* timeline that huge with hundreds of cuts, latency increased from for all intents and purposes instantaneous to less than 1 second. I doubt that any NLE will ever come close to that kind of long form performance in the future because we keep asking so much more of our NLE’s each year and the code gets bloated. More likely than not, with current offerings, we will have to edit shorter segments of long programs to keep responsiveness and latency reasonable, then cut and paste or import them together later.
These are some of the things that we love about Discreet edit*, and obviously, most of them have the greatest application more to long form docos than short form heavily effected stuff like spots and MTV and the majority of edit*ors had that primary focus. So, sure, as Tim says, one NLE app will be better than another in certain situations, but as David C. says, you’ve still gotta cut efficiently, what ever you are cutting. I’d like to see PPro do some heavy focus on long form work, and the tools necessary for that. Everybody else is focused on RT and kool effects, so someone should go for efficent, responsive cutting.
Gawd, I got to jabbering and forgot where I was going, so It’s time to quit.
Regards,
Ron Shook
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Ron,
Yes, as a whole, you could easily argue that these keyboard/toolset functions are more important than Time Remapping itself. If 2.0 comes out with 20+ additional workflow enhancements, I could see this being a big part of the release.
My “wish list” has a couple worflow items too…miss being able to copy/paste IN to OUT segments of a timeline for example.
My point was intended more towards the individual comments such as, “why can’t I roll edit over an entire clip”. To me, having to Delete clip, hit N, and then continue your trimming, is much less painful than what we’re up against with Time Remapping…Open AE, New Comp, Copy(3 clips and audio), Paste, Ram Preview for every change, Set Render Settings, Render, Import, Insert.
I think you’ll see continued improvements in workflow functions in PPro over consecutive releases, just like AE has evolved, but not including Time Remapping just seems to be a big void for me and others who have posted on the Adobe wish list forum. In fact, look one topic down in this forum…:-)
Hopefully we’ll all have something to smile about in 2.0…Time Remapping has just been a thorn in my side because of the pieces I work on most often.
Greg
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[Ron Shook] “You can’t do that sort of thing unless all of the operations to make it happen are available from the keyboard, whether they are normally used that way or not, and making them available is not coding rocket science, and is not going to screw something else up. It’s a matter of will and understanding the potential facility and necessity.”
Do you have an Edit* keymap? It sounds like there are an awful lot of functions not represented in the current PPro keymap…
But as I look at the keymap for PPro…there aren’t any keys left on the keyboard and many of the keyboard shortcuts are three key combinations…it seems to me there are even some four key combos…not that I bother learning those as I find them less productive than a one-click mouse action…
So I guess what sort of science it is and what else it potentially messes up might still be unknown. Not that I think anyone should stop asking for things…but I’m an editor, not a coder and I can tell Adobe what is *important* to me…but I think for me to tell them what is *easy* would be pretty presumptuous…
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net -
Tim,
[Tim Kolb] “But as I look at the keymap for PPro…there aren’t any keys left on the keyboard and many of the keyboard shortcuts are three key combinations…it seems to me there are even some four key combos…not that I bother learning those as I find them less productive than a one-click mouse action…”
Today’s NLEs have so many features that having a keystroke or keystroke combination assigned to every one is nearly impossible, but…, not every function necessarily needs to have a keystroke assigned, but it must be assignable, so that it can be assigned if needed. Edius, which has quite comprehensive keyboard shortcuts, I seem to remember has a number of functions that haven’t had keystrokes assigned to them, but are assignable if need be, but then you’d know that better than I would.
[Tim Kolb] “So I guess what sort of science it is and what else it potentially messes up might still be unknown. Not that I think anyone should stop asking for things…but I’m an editor, not a coder and I can tell Adobe what is *important* to me…but I think for me to tell them what is *easy* would be pretty presumptuous…”
I’m no more a coder than you are, but I made that possibly presumptuous statement based on what an expert NLE coder told me several years ago. That sort of thing often doesn’t get done because it’s not a glamorous new feature unlikely to find its way into a “what’s new and exciting” list and because it’s no fun, coding grunt work.
Regards,
Ron Shook
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