[Mike Molenda]

I ran into some similar issues recently while screwing around with 5DtoRGB – which, like QTchange, writes TC from the camera metadata to transcodes. Proper TC for the first frame of the clip should have been 22:04:43:00. Premiere read it as 22:03:23:14, a difference of one minute(!), nineteen seconds, ten frames.

So I decided to test this out. Using the Canon E1 plugin for FCP7 Log & Transfer, which also generates TC based on the camera metadata, I created a ProRes Quicktime and imported that from my Capture Scratch into Premiere. Start TC read as 22:04:43:00. No problems. I also generated ProRes QTs from the same footage using AME and MPEG Streamclip, and brought in the straight h.264 from the card as a control. Picked an arbitrary frame, 00:00:09:09 (22:04:52:09 in the E1 transcode), and everything matched up across the clips.

So it seems like the problem is a disconnect with how Premiere treats 23.976 TC generated by different sources, such as QTchange or 5DtoRGB? But this is something that Avid and FCP7 seem to be able to account for…

It’s distressing, to say the least, given how widespread the use of DSLRs (particularly the Canons) shooting 24p has become. The wacky side-effects that come from merging second system audio certainly don’t help anything, either.

[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.

[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]

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?

[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.

[Mike Molenda]

Making sure the Academy Leader Generator conforms to different aspect ratios is probably pretty low on Adobe’s priority list.

I thought the Leader generator was kind of a cool addition to CS5.5. If only because it was a quick and easy way to add a 2-pop before sending your cut off to mix. And these guys seem to have found a creative use for it.

[Mike Molenda]

I noticed they are referring to it as “The next version of Premiere” and not “Premiere CS6.”

I’m guessing Adobe is going to rebrand it as “Premiere Pro X” just to make everyone absolutely lose their sh*t.

[Mike Molenda]

[Steve Brame] “Such as during the move from film to digital, or linear to non-linear, or 8-track to cassettes.”

Yeah, but I don’t know that I’d put it in such sweeping terms. There’s clearly a niche that will need to be filled in FCP’s absence, and Adobe (and others like Grass Valley and Lightworks) seem to be glad to finally be getting a second glance.

But Avid wants a piece of that pie just as much as anyone else. Seems like they were just as quick as Adobe to jump on the “company that cares” bandwagon. And really, I don’t see a lot of incentive at the moment for a seasoned Avid editor to make a permanent switch to something like Premiere for long-form projects.

Adobe does seem like they’re netting a lot of FCP converts, though, present company included. So we’ll see what comes of that.

I think there’s a long way to go before Premiere becomes viable enough in the market to make knowing it a skill that’s high in demand. It’s an uphill battle, and I think Adobe is doing really great things, but widespread adoption is certainly not a given like the eventual turnover to digital. Looking forward to seeing what they do with CS6.

[Mike Molenda]

[Steve Brame] “Which brings up a point – if an editing platform is to be considered for feature film work, wouldn’t it be better to use one that has had a steady rate of improvement and consistently answers it’s user’s concerns, rather than totally pull the rug out from under the pro user base at a critical time?”

Bear in mind that the whole FCPX fiasco went down less than a year ago. And Premiere hadn’t really been branded as “the one that answers its user’s concerns” in a big way before then. Not a whole lot of time to turn an industry around.

Even though it’s in its death throes, FCP7 is still viable, so I don’t think there was a dire need for every FCP editor to make a switch overnight, be it to Premiere, Media Composer, or FCPX. Quite a few FCP users were even still happily on version 6 at the time of FCPX’s release.

I think it’s going to take a big name player (I’m sure more than a handful of indies have already done it) cutting a feature on Premiere to prove it can be done before the software really gets taken seriously. Fincher’s boys cut his last two or three features on FCP, and seem to be big fans of conforming in After Effects. It will be interesting to see what they do in the wake of FCP Legacy. I’d be willing to bet a rep from Adobe is being real friendly to those guys.

It’s also going to take Adobe seriously stepping up their game (yet again) in CS6. As stated before in this thread, there are still many small nagging problems that I think will continue to turn a lot of pro users off until they are addressed.

[Mike Molenda]

Using the Track Select Tool (shortcut: A), hold down shift to select all tracks. You can select all tracks to the right of wherever you click in the timeline, so click just to the right of the CTI. Switch back to the regular Selection Tool (V) to grab and drag the selected clips/tracks.

Now here’s the stumper: There doesn’t seem to be any way to select tracks BACKWARDS in time (to the left), or select one track in both directions.