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Advanced Editing Techniques: Keyboard Shortcuts

Let's take a look at some other things that I find are very useful when I'm editing. We've learned about the ripple and roll and all the trim edits, but sometimes you might have an edit point selected and you know you have enough media on the clip you say, you know something, I want that to end right there. It's like I'm listening to it, I want to extend the duration of this clip. So as long as you have enough media on the original file and you position your playhead, if you hit the E key, E for extend the duration. It will automatically, I'll do that again if you blinked, it will move the edit point to where the playhead is parked. So the trick is, select the edit point, position your playhead, hit E, and now you've done what's called an extend edit. It also works to make a clip shorter. So this is really useful if you're playing along and you know exactly, the playhead is at the right point where maybe you want to cut out a piece of B roll. Select the edit, have the edit board even s...

elected hit the E key, it automatically moves it to that location. Very, very powerful tool. I just, by the way, selected two clips on two layers. With that done, I now hit the E key and I can actually move these around and it's basing it on this one, I moved it so much it disappeared, there we go. So, you can do it with multiple layers, it's just things to open up your, the ideas of what you're playing with is that there's things you can do with holding down modifiers and selecting it and sometimes just try it, just go through the combinations, command, alt, control, I'm mixing between Windows and PC, shift control and sometimes you may even want to assign a keyboard shortcut or see if you can assign one to do something you do all the time. So, for instance, one of the things that I think is really cool in Premier is that if I right click on an edit point, I can actually change the type of trim I'm doing. You know between that red bracket or the yellow bracket of the roll, right here. So I can quickly change what I want to do and then maybe use a keyboard shortcut to the actual trim. If it's selected, I can also do control T and it will toggle, let me zoom in so you can see it actually toggles between the different types I'm in control of my trimming tool. And I can choose the type of trim I want to do. Now that's great, now I love it and I use it all the time but I really with there was a way for me to actually select that without having to go down and select it. And the capability is there, I'm panning up at pretty high zoom level to my keyboard shortcuts. Under keyboard shortcuts, I want to see if there's one to select the edit point nearby. I'm going to type in, I'm going to do some guesses and I will go like, edit, and I'll go down here and see, well through edits, I really want something in my sequence, add edit, it's hard to see. So you know, I could dig through here, but maybe I just want to go something near, oh, look at that, select nearest edit point. I don't care which one I select it as because I can always switch it with control T I just want to be able to select the nearest one. So maybe I just want to select it with a ripple in. So, I like that, I'm going to go ahead and we're going to make a shortcut for me to be able to use a capability that's built in the system but doesn't have a shortcut yet. Okay, so this is how to create a shortcut, I know that control T is how I would switch between them, so I'm going to try something that maybe has control T in it because that's easier for me to remember. If the shortcut already exists it will give me a warning if the shortcut exists for another action. I'm going to try shift control T I cheated, I actually knew that was an empty space but I'm going to go ahead and hit okay. So now, when I'm editing, and I have my cursor there if I hit shift control T it goes and selects the closest endpoint to where the playhead is. So I don't have to select it myself. Now, once it's selected, I'm using the up and down arrow keys to go between each of them and I don't have to figure out which one I want by moving my playhead. So once it's selected, I move forward and then say, oh, I don't want to do a ripple trim, I'm going to hit control T and I can switch the type of trim that I'm already doing, and I find that's a really, pretty cool. You like that? This is great, but you know what I haven't taught you how to do? Trim with keyboard. So, we have the clip selected and you want to be able to do that, you're going to be using the I believe, I'm trying to remember this stuff, watch me mess this up, there we go, that, that's how we select, I believe, and now I'm going to cheat, it's the left and right trim keys with the option, that's where I get messed up it's option on a Mac and control on a PC. So, I have this selected, option and I can move this back and forth, let me zoom in really tight so you can see Control T, this is selected, I say control T I'm holding down shift T, so I have to look down, switch it to a ripple trim. I'm now going ahead and hit option and I'm just trimming this one frame at a time with a ripple, okay? If want to trim multiple frames, shift is usually the modifier for multiple, so shift option and now I'm doing it by multiple, default being five. So, this is really good, because, sometimes you do you like, you have like a, especially with audio you know, I'm having, I just need to trim off the last bit of something and you don't want to sit there and drag it, you can and if you do like to drag, my recommendation is zoom in as far as you can because then you have really fine tuning on your drag at a frame at a time, but now that you know that you have this optional way of doing it I hold down the option key one frame at a time shift option, multiple frames, and remember earlier on, we did change a preference and this is one of the preferences that I like and that is, allowing the selection tool to automatically switch to the yellow version without holding the modifier key. The other reason I brought that in is, this is your large trim offset so the default is when you hold down that shift key is five frames, but let's say you really want to jump a second at time, as long as you know that you're in a 30 frame, do 30 frames, or 24 do 24. And now you can actually move by maybe something that's more useful, I want to lop off or add a second at a time. So again, you have a lot of flexibility and I realize this is a fire hose of information. But it goes back to the very beginning of the course where I said, I don't expect you to remember everything but if I can get it in your brain somewhere you'll probably go, you know, I know he mentioned there was a way to trim with a keyboard and you'll look it up, or you'll look at the cheat sheet. So I'd rather you be aware of like, all the power that's here and I also want to go back to the beginning because there's a lot of people who are quote, purists, if you don't, if you edit using a mouse, you're not an editor. That's what I hear from old school editors. To me, if you get a paycheck for editing or successfully complete your show, you're an editor. And if shortcuts aren't your thing, don't panic that you're not memorizing shortcuts. I have some people that edit really fast with a mouse and they know where everything is and life is good, but for those folks who like keyboards I want you to be aware that this stuff is there. And it can be quick and stylistically I do both. And sometimes I may cut a whole show with keyboards. And the next time I don't feel like remembering the shortcuts and I'm using my mouse a lot. Okay, but at least we know it's there and it's going to quicken things up. So, let's see where else I'm going with this, all over the place, no actually this is less all over the place. We'll hit ok there, so we have the trim back, trim forward, you can also nudge things, you know like nudge things. I can nudge the person next to me saying, is this over yet? But not necessarily nudging that way. If I want to move a clip I can drag it but sometimes again just like with, I'm going to end here, with trimming, you want to be a little more precise. I'm going to go ahead and unhook these by deleting that so you can see the space being built. So to nudge something, it is actually using again, the modifiers it's the alt key and the command key with shift, but the clip is selected. Okay so, alt, command, I'm on a Mac, there we go so, this is where my brain fries between Mac and PC command on a Mac, alt on a PC, if you select a clip and use the same left and right arrows that you would to trim, you can now move this by one frame at a time, okay. Again, great precision, hold down the shift key you are now nudging it by many, okay and I say many because that is based upon your settings. It should be based upon that trim offset of many. So, if you're editing and you're like me and you're jumping around and you're like, I know you want to do this, I want to do this, what do I do, I'm go, I know I have to select the clip. I know it's the left and right arrow. Let me play with my modifier keys. It's not going to be shift yet, cause that's many so it's probably gonna be on a Mac, command or option. And I know on a PC it's gonna be alt or it's gonna be control and I go, oh, does this work? Yes, does this work? No, and then I remember the keyboard shortcut. I'll be honest with you, it's not like all of these are like, oh yeah, a computer in my head. The keyboard mash is definitely one of those things eventually, if you're doing that all the time it will stick, but how hard is it to try option or command and see which one works. And remember shift is the many. So that's moving things around. We've talked about deleting before, deleting ripple deletes. And, I indicated, I want just to revisit this because it does vary on a Mac verses a PC. So I did want to point out, and we'll go ahead and we'll select this one here. Zoom into the playhead, so a ripple delete is option delete on a Mac, so if I hold option delete it will remove the clip and close the space that, that clip occupied. You notice it did not close the entire space I can click that and hit delete also and it closes that. So in a Mac it's option delete, on a Windows machine or PC it's alt backspace, okay? For those watching, for those using a Windows system it's alt backspace and that will give you the ripple delete.