[James Fleming]

Thanks Dennis. I tried importing using the Media Browser pane but I’m still getting the same problem. Also CS6 Premiere does not recognise all .r3d files. Some it says are an ‘unupported format’ even though they are exactly the same format as the clips that do import. I’m having this problem with every .r3d media based. Can anyone help?

[James Fleming]

Hi Reubin,

It turns out FCP 7 and I think also Adobe Premiere Pro aren’t scriptable but I was able to develop a macro for FCP however I found a better way. The macro took 6 seconds to execute and I had to switch between FCP and automator as well so took about 10 seconds. Much too slow. Instead, I programmed a sequence of accessible keys (number keys 1-6) with a series of shortcuts. I then press those keys in sequence in a fraction of a second and voila! The editing action executes. I now use it all the time. It was a bit hard to find but I finally located all the short cuts I needed in Premiere too and did the same thing there. Now I can have two sequences open, one with the rough cut and one with the footage. I can watch the footage in almost real time and set in and out points as I go on the canvas. I press 1-6 and it picks up the selection, plonks it in the rough cut sequence and jumps back to the footage sequence in the blink of an eye and I keep going. It’s made my editing ridiculously fast. You can’t export keyboard shortcuts in Premiere but if you PM me, I’ll send you my FCP keyboard shortcut file if you like.

Best,

James.

[James Fleming]

Thanks so much Glenn and Reuben. I was having the same difficulty and I was tearing my hair out trying to switch to Premiere from Final Cut. I just haven’t been able to edit anywhere nearly as quickly because I’m forced to use the mouse all the time. The next challenge (feature request please Adobe?) is to be able to program multiple keys to do the same thing as you can in Final cut. [The shortcut preferences window needs some serious rethinking adobe]. For example, I have programmed a sequence of shortcuts similar to Glen’s above into the keys ‘2,3,4,5,6’ in FCP 7. This means in FCP I can just hit those keys in a row and it takes the footage I’ve selected between my in and out points, copies it, changes to the next tab (sequence) pastes it and then flilps back to the the tab/timeline/sequence I was working in. This means I can watch through the rushes and build a sequence of selects almost in real time!

Ideally, I would be be able to program that sequence into one key and Bang! Final Cut would run the whole sequence. I tried doing that in FCP using Automator but Automator is too slow – it took about 6 seconds to execute it. As a hot key sequence, it takes half a second.

Now try doing this in Premiere… The first hurdle is that to program a sequence like that means you lose any other short cut keys because (idiotically) Premiere only allows you to program one key to each action so in the above sequence ‘paste’ or ‘insert’ would always be say ‘4’ and you’ve lost your normal hot key. Ideally it could be both, as in FCP. The next problem is that programming a sequence often means you need to do the same action twice. In my sequence ‘4’ and ‘6’ are both ‘go to next tab’. Premiere can’t do this so the best I could come up with was ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’ ‘5’ ‘4’ which is not as quick for the hand to execute. The aim here is to avoid the mouse and to automate mechanical tasks as much as possible. I’m going to look into scripting this stuff. FCP isn’t scriptable. Has anyone had any luck scripting Premiere? Someone here on Creative Cow suggested Video Toolshed’s Video Macro but if it’s macro/automator based it would be too slow for this kind of task as automator takes several seconds to execute. Scripts should be instant. Cracking this is really important. Using sequences I can now cut a short doco or promo in 3 hours that used to take more than a day, not to mention the fact it has eliminated repetitive, boring, injury inducing actions and made my work more intuitive, direct and creative. Come on Adobe, lift your game! Get this and other simple FCP 7 functions right and pro editors will come flocking over as we all know FCPX sucks ass.