Trimming Shortcuts in Premiere Pro CS6

Trimming in Premiere Pro CS 6 is much improved from CS 5. You can now trim more like you are accustomed to in FCP & MC. I have 2 articles on Premium Beat’s Blog and Macprovideo’s hub that go into more detail on this.

This quick tip focuses on setting up your trimming shortcuts for editors coming from FCP & Media Composer.

Being a FCP Editor/Instructor for 10 years, I started with the FCP 7 trim shortcuts when I switched to Premiere Pro. Now I am using a custom mix of Premiere Pro & FCP shortcuts.

I now use the default Premiere Pro shortcuts for selecting nearest edit point (T), and  (Control + T) to cycle between the trim types (roll,ripple,standard edit). Be careful with the standard edit type (one sided red trim, it will leave a gap).

I use Control + R for “Select Nearest Edit Point as Ripple Out” and Option+ R for “Select Nearest Edit Point as Ripple In”. To Trim heads and tails (MC style of editing) I use [ for "ripple trim to previous edit" and ] for “ripple trim to next edit”. I find head and tails trim very fast, and that is becoming my default way to ripple edit (also you don’t need an edit point selected for these to work).

Extend edit now works more like it did in in FCP.  Select the nearest edit and move your play head and then press E.

From the Sequence pulldown/menu I uncheck “work area bar”, which changes “Render Effects in Work Area”  and “Render All in Work Area” to “Render Effects In to Out ” Return  &  ”Render In to Out ” Com + Return, which is a more FCP way to work.

I use the FCP shortcuts F9, F10, and F12 to perform insert, overwrite, and replace edits.

Premiere Pro dosen’t have a button for replace edit like it does for insert & overwrite, so creating a shortcut is essential for speed that you are accustomed to in FCP & MC.

As a general tip I suggest mapping anything you use often. I work a bit in After Effects & Audition so I create shortcuts for “Edit in Audition>Clip” and “Replace with After Effects Composition”. I also map “Mark Clip” to X, (Clear in/Out is Option + X),  and “Make Subclip” & “Merge Clips”. If you are using separate audio with DSLR’s, you will use merge clip a bit. I suggest investing in the Red Giant Plugin “Plural Eyes”, if you do this kind of work often.

The Premiere Pro CS6 improvements are encouraging and I am hoping for more buttons and general tweaks in Premiere Pro CS7.

If you want to make a feature request you can do so here.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform