There’s a tip that I wanted to share with you, which increased my productivity with Premiere Pro tremendously. And it’s very simple: customize your keyboard shortcuts. But make it wisely.
Use the search box
First tip: make use of the search box which is present in Keyboard Shortcuts dialog in Premiere. There is a ton of shortcuts, and if you know the proper name, or even part of the name, it’s easier to type it in the search box, and browse among the remaining entries, than to wade through all the options.
First and foremost – track selection
Separated from source patching in CS4, constantly improved, but still hardly perfect, track selection tends to be one of the most annoying things if you don’t remember about it (like wondering why match frame shortcut does not work). It has also been pretty cumbersome. But in CS5 we got a nice addition that allows us to finally make it more of a feature than a nuisance.
Assign keyboard shortcuts
Then assign
Track selection is vital to every editing operation in Premiere, and once you get used to the new shortcuts, I assure you, that you will never go back, and will be ready to strangle anyone who would like to take it away from you.
Perhaps you might also find it useful to assign Toggle Target Audio 1-8” to
Be mindful that shift+number shortcuts are assigned to panels, but if you change them you will not be notified about it! And there will be no undo, you’ll have to revert these changes manually.
And while we’re at it, why not map labels to
Manipulation of In and Out Points
Setting the In (
The most important one: Clear In/Out – map it to
Clear In and Clear Out is not something I use very often. If I want to change the In, I just set an In in another place. However, if you find yourself using them often,
On the other hand Go To In, and Go To Out tend to be useful, and I map them under
Mark Clip also tends to be useful for many reasons, gap removal included, and I tend to have it under the slash key
Setting Render Entire Work Area to
A few more tips
An idea that navigating markers should use the
Another function that I often use is Add edit, and Add edit on all tracks. Default
Speed/Duration and Audio Gain – who says that invoking dialogs needs a modifier key? Map them to
Ripple Delete – default
Two real kickers and trimming
The next two will save you tremendous amount of time during editing. I used to perform this operation with a mouse – when I felt that I had to make a cut, I ripple-trimmed my next edit point by dragging it with a
- Ripple Trim Next Edit to Playhead –
] - Ripple Trim Prev Edit to Playhead –
[
They take time to get used to, because the shape of the characters is opposite to what it does, but their position is correct. I still sometimes press the incorrect one, but they are a real timesaver, especially in connection with track selecting. However, if you find yourself thinking too much, you might consider switching them, and seeing if it doesn’t work better for you.
There are also two of the less often used – Extend Next Edit to Playhead and Extend Previous Edit to Playhead, which I tend to map to
I have never used Extend Selected Edit to Playhead. Ever. Perhaps I still don’t know something about editing, but I have not come upon a situation where I couldn’t replace it with any other available option.
Sometimes however I find it useful to immediately move to the nearest edit point and select correct trim mode. Therefore I usually map the following:
- Select Nearest Edit Point as Ripple In to
Ctrl +] - Select Nearest Edit Point as Ripple Out to
Ctrl +[ - Select Nearest Edit Point as Trim In to
Shift +Ctrl +] - Select Nearest Edit Point as Trim Out to
Shift +Ctrl +[
Transitions
For a moment I toyed with an idea to assign
Interestingly, in CS6 you can specify a separate shortcut to add each of the following transitions:
- Audio Crossfade
- Video Crossfade
- Dip To White
- Wipe
If you tend to use any of these, definitely apply a shortcut to it. Also, if you use any other transition often, like for example Dip To Black (why it’s not in the list I have no idea), then use this one as a default transition, and apply a shortcut to Crossfade. Possibilities are really interesting, and I sincerely urge you to explore them.
Finally
Here is the .kys file for all of you lazy and impatient people to download:
Bart's keyboard shortcuts (24778 downloads )
Feel free to use it and distribute it as you wish. However, I strongly urge you to explore keyboard shortcuts on your own.
To install the shortcut keys you need to exract the .kys file to the following folder (substitue $username and $version for appropriate values):
- c:\Users\$username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Permiere Pro\$version (Windows)
- ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Premiere Pro/$version (OS X)
I hope you’ll find these tips as useful, as I do. Enjoy.
The most useful keyboard shortcut primer I’ve ever seen for PPro. Bless you!
This really helps. Thanks for taking the time to post these shortcuts.
Track selection alone was amazing. I feel eternally indebted to you. I’ve been wondering how to do that for ages.
This seems so small but is absolutely great and saved my an ENORMOUS amount of time. Really thanks a lot for sharing!