A common task in After Effects is to create a reflective floor in After Effects. Rob Garrott shows you how to create one with this video tutorial from Lynda.com. This is part of a series called, “Design in Motion.” Check it out!
Design in Motion is a series of creative techniques featuring short projects using After Effects and CINEMA 4D. Taught by motion graphics expert Rob Garrott, the course covers how color correction, expressions, rendering type, lighting, and animation are used in each program, and the topics are updated weekly. Using these tips and tricks, motion graphics designers will find designing to be a more efficient process.
Want to take your Premiere Pro trimming chops to a new level? Then you’ll want to use keyboard shortcuts to trim. Memorizing a few keyboard shortcuts will help you on your way to a smoother editing workflow. Before you reach for the Ripple or Roll tools on your next project, check out the following tips.
In Premiere Pro, there are a number of keyboard shortcuts you can use to trim, including using the Extend Edit and Trim to In Point commands. You can also use an interface specially made for fine trimming, the Trim Monitor.
Extend Edit is in the Sequence Menu in Premiere Pro CS5.5
Let’s first focus on keyboard shortcuts that may assist you in trimming clips in the Timeline. The first you may be familiar with, the extend edit command. An extend edit is one where the edit point will move to the location of the playhead with a keyboard shortcut, which is essentially a roll edit. Since you cannot directly select an edit point in a Premiere Pro timeline, there must be two commands to perform an extend edit: one to move the edit point forward to the playhead and another to move the edit point backward to the playhead. In Premiere Pro CS5.5, these are called Extend Previous Edit to Playhead (E) and Extend Next Edit to Playhead (Shift+E). In Premiere Pro CS5, these are called Roll Previous Edit to CTI and Roll Next Edit to CTI. These do not have assigned keyboard shortcuts, so you must assign them in the Keyboard Customization dialog.
To perform an extend edit, do the following:
Target the tracks you wish to effect in the extend edit.
Park the playhead where you want to extend (roll) the edit point to.
Press the appropriate keyboard shortcut (E or Shift+E).
Another keyboard driven trimming shortcut is similar to an extend edit, in that a clip’s edit point can snap to the playhead. The main difference being that it will trim the in or out point, and then leave a gap behind rather than rolling the edit point. It’s called “Trim to Playhead”. This is also one that is not already set up as a keyboard shortcut, so you must assign them. Just look for the commands: Trim In Point to Playhead and Trim Out Point to Playhead. I used Control+I and Control+O.
To do a trim to playhead, do the following:
Target the tracks you wish to effect in the extend edit.
Park the playhead where you want to trim the clip’s in or out
point to.
Press the appropriate keyboard shortcut (Control+I or Control+O).
The clip’s in or out point then snaps to the playhead.
Want to trim with greater precision? Then you’ll want to be more familiar with the Trim Monitor.
Before you begin using the Trim Monitor for fine trimming, I like to set up the interface to loop with a keyboard shortcut. Looping is desirable because you can observe the cut a few times before deciding to add or subtract frames. To do so, go to the Keyboard Customization dialog, choose “Panels” and type in “Loop”. You should be able to find the proper command there. I assigned the shortcut to Alt+L (Command+L Mac OS).
Though you can trim with the mouse in this panel, I’ll be describing the keyboard driven workflow, most important to advanced editors.
Here’s how to work with the Trim Monitor:
Park the playhead on or near any edit point.
Press the T key, the Trim Monitor Launches.
Press the Spacebar to begin looping playback. Audio and video will playback repeatedly. Evaluate the cut and decide if either the outgoing or incoming shot needs to have frames trimmed from it or if a roll trim needs to take place.
To ripple trim the edit point, first select the correct side of the edit point you wish to trim. For a roll trim, select both sides of the edit point.
To set up a roll trim: press Alt+1 (Option+1 for Mac OS).
To set up a ripple trim for the outgoing shot: press Alt+2 (Option+2 for Mac OS).
To set up a ripple trim for the incoming shot: press Alt+3 (Option+3 for Mac OS).
Once you have set up the trim mode, you should see blue bars above and below the clip(s) you wish to trim.
After the mode is set, choose the amount of frames you wish to trim.
To trim backward by one frame, press Alt+Left Arrow (Option+Left Arrow for Mac OS)
To trim backward by multiple frames, press Alt+Shift+Left Arrow (Option+Shift+Left Arrow for MacOS)
To trim forward by one frame, press Alt+Right Arrow (Option+Right Arrow for Mac OS)
To trim forward by multiple frames, press Alt+Shift+Right Arrow (Option+Shift+Right Arrow for MacOS)
Press the Spacebar once more to begin looping playback. Evaluate the cut and repeat steps 4 and 5, if necessary.
If you are satisfied with the cut, you can move to the next cut by pressing the Page Down key. Press the Page Up key to move to the previous cut.
When your fine trimming is completed, close the Trim Monitor by pressing Control+W (Command+W for Mac OS).
Once you have internalized and practiced these keyboard shortcuts, you’ll be able to trim any clip just the way you want to. If you have any trim tips, be sure to place them in the comments and I’ll add them to the article.Share on Facebook
Welcome to Getting Started with Adobe Premiere Pro. Whether you’re brand new to editing, have some experience with Premiere Pro, or are coming from another editing application, you’ll need good information in order to be successful. I’ve selected specific high-quality articles and video tutorials so that you’ll have the material to be successful in your efforts.
Then, read this page describing basic workflow in Adobe Premiere Pro. Although some of the information is repeated from the video, there are additional links to resources for more information (note that the steps describing Adobe Story and Adobe On Location are optional). More info about basic workflow is in this video.
3. The fundamentals
Now that you have a basic understanding of the workflow, and have created a simple movie, you’re ready to learn more about the fundamentals of working with Adobe Premiere Pro. First, go through the steps in this tutorial to reinforce what you’ve already learned. Then, learn more about editing technique in this video tutorial.
4. Tutorials about the details
Now that you’ve got some experience with Premiere Pro, you’ll want to check out other tutorials that will give you more training with the basics. For Premiere Pro CS5 & CS5.5, see these videos on AdobeTV, and Creative Cow. See these videos on Adobe TV and Creative Cow to get you up to speed on further details about Premiere Pro CS6 tools and workflow. There is also a free video seminar to assist you in learning Premiere Pro called, “Edit your way faster with Premiere Pro CS6″ with Al Mooney.
There are also materials that you can purchase to further your learning about Premiere Pro. I think that the following resources are the best out there.
If you are coming from a different editing application, like Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer, see the materials on this page.
5. Edit more creatively and skillfully using the tools
Now that you’ve got the fundamentals under your belt, create new videos that have more elements than your cuts-only video. For example, add a title, transition or soundtrack to the video. Try techniques that may have been brought up in the tutorials, or try new things by consulting Help. In Help, you can enter terms in the upper left corner of the page. By searching this way, you’ll be using the custom search engine for Adobe Premiere Pro Community Help. If you get stuck, you can always come to the Premiere Pro user-to-user forum.
6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
While you’re still starting out, you may run into trouble. Before that happens, I recommend that you read through the list of FAQs first. The list of FAQs is located at the top of the Premiere Pro user-to-user forum. You’ll see a drop down menu of FAQs. Simply select the topic you want, and then click the Go button.
If you are interested in getting started with Adobe After Effects, see this post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog.Share on Facebook
It’s finally out! Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 was announced recently, and there is already a good deal of articles and videos that were released in support it. Take a look at each of these links for more info on your favorite Creative Suite Application.
The extend edit function is available in most mature non-linear editing programs and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and CS5.5 is no exception. The way an extend edit works is to first place the the current time indicator (CTI) or playhead either before or after an existing edit, engage a keyboard command and then the edit point does a roll trim to the CTI or playhead. To clarify, an extend edit is merely a roll trim that is performed with the playhead and a keyboard shortcut. It’s really a time saving edit function that all should be familiar with.
Achieving an extend edit in Adobe Premiere Pro is very simple, however, you’ll have to customize the keyboard first in order to have access to the function in Premiere Pro CS5 (in Premiere Pro CS5.5, they are already set up for you, so the following steps are unnecessary).
Here’s how to set that up:
Go to Edit > Keyboard Customization
Ensure “Application” is chosen in the drop down menu.
In the Keyboard Customization dialog, scroll down until you see Roll Next Edit to CTI and Roll Previous Edit to CTI.
Select “Roll Previous Edit to CTI” by clicking on the name.
Click once in the Shortcut field next to the command.
Type “E” for extend.
Repeat the process for Roll Next Edit to CTI, except use Shift + E for that command
The Set command for the keyboard will now say [Custom]. You now have a custom set of shortcuts to customize as you see fit, name it by clicking the Save As button and then entering in a name for it.
Click the OK button and the Keyboard Customization window closes.
Now that the keyboard has been properly set up, you’re all ready to go. Follow these steps to complete an extend edit:
In the timeline, target the track(s) that you wish to do an extend edit.
Move the CTI/playhead to a new position either before or after the existing edit point.
Press E to extend an edit forward to the playhead or Press Shift + E to extend an edit backward to the playhead.
Your extend edit is now complete.
This technique is the fastest way in the world to do a roll trim. It works great with audio tracks, as well.
Since we all have a need for a Roll trim in everyday editing practice, I encourage you to map your keyboard right now so that you’ll to be ready to use an extend edit in your next editing session. Doing an extend edit is far faster than reaching for the Rolling Edit tool and then clicking and dragging to make the trim.
Tip: If you target more than one track, the extend edit will function on all of those selected tracks. To see this in action, check out the following example:
Let’s say that I want to do a roll trim to line up the edit points on V2 and Title on V3 with the edit point of the clip on V1. First, I snap the CTI to the existing edit for the clip on V1. Then I select the V2 and V3 video tracks as shown:
Next, type Shift+E to Extend (or Roll) the edit point to where the CTI is positioned.
Note that all three edit points are now aligned quickly and perfectly. If the clip’s edit points are not aligned, one thing may have gone wrong: insufficient handle. An extend edit behaves just like a trim with the Rolling Edit tool and is also subject to the limits of media beyond the chosen in and out points, so be aware of that.
So, there you have it! A great technique that is used by the pros every day. Because of this function, I rarely use the Rolling Edit tool to make roll edits. It’s just too slow if you know about the extend edit function! I find that the extend edit technique saves me a ton of time in trimming and manipulating edit points of clips, graphics, titles and audio and I hope it will do the same for you.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Classroom in a Book is probably one of the best resources for learning the application. It uses a step-by-step approach that guides beginners through typical editing workflows. If you are new to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 either as a beginner or as someone switching from another editing application, I can highly recommend this book.
If you have not checked out the book yet, you can preview the content by reading the excerpts that were recently released. The excerpts include valuable information not only for Adobe Premiere Pro, but how to use Photoshop, After Effects and Adobe Encore with the application.
Here are the links to the excerpts by subject (in bold text), as well as links to corresponding content here at adobe.com:
Note: Because these excerpts don’t include the source files from the book, you’ll need to furnish your own if you want to follow the steps.
Want more excerpts? If you love After Effects, my colleague Todd Kopriva has recently written about and excerpted 3 other products that may interest you.
A new update for Premiere Pro CS5 users was released today. The Premiere Pro CS5 (5.0.3) release includes new and changed features, bug fixes, other software updates known to address problems with Premiere Pro CS5 and any other known issues.
One cool thing about this update is that it is the first one to support a mobile CUDA card (the Quadro 5000M). Now you can get the Mercury Playback Engine running out in the field.
Todd Kopriva’s blog, “Premiere Pro Work Area” includes much more information and links to the updaters. Read more about the update and find the links here:
Make sure to download the correct file, as there are two links for both Windows and Mac. One link is for the retail version and the other updates the trial download.
Great New Feature for Client Reviews
More and more, editors are working in studios that may be far away from their clients. Be it cross town or half way around the world, we’ve all had a need for remote approval of our finished video sequences.
Remote approval has always been a pretty painful process of uploading and downloading compressed files with a lot of e-mails flying back and forth. Not very efficient, is it? I can tell you from personal experience, it isn’t.
Recently, a killer new feature sneaked into Premiere Pro CS5 (5.0.2) called CS Review. CS Review in Premiere Pro is the perfect solution for the problem I’ve just described, remote approval of your work. CS Review is one of a number “services” in the CS Live feature that are integrated into certain Adobe CS5 applications. This blog post aims to get you up and running with CS Review in Premiere Pro quickly and give you tips and resources on how to use this cool new feature.
How Does it Work?
CS Review has two major components: the online Web Client (located at acrobat.com) and the Review Panel in Premiere Pro. After you’ve finished editing your sequence, you’ll create your Review using the Review Panel. You’ll encode your movie with Adobe Media Encoder and then send a link to the Review for your client.
On the web client will be a web page with a movie file is embedded into it and a side panel for comments. Your client opens the link, views the footage and then makes comments in different places in the movie. After your client completes making comments, they send an approval message back to you.
Back in Premiere Pro, you’ll be able to see the results right in the Review Panel with comments showing each place in the movie that needs a change. Click on a comment and the CTI snaps to the exact location of your comment, ready for you to make that change. Pretty dang nifty.
This video from Adobe Evangelist Terry White shows you the whole process on Adobe TV. It’s well worth checking out.
While the video is very informative, there are a few things to know before you get started with CS Review. The following section should clear up any problems you might encounter before trying out your first Review.
Getting Started
To get started in using CS Review in Premiere Pro, you’ll need to go through some important steps. The first of which is to update to Premiere Pro CS5 (5.0.2). CS Review didn’t exist until the 5.0.2 release so you definitely need to update. For instructions about how to update to Premiere Pro CS5.(5.0.2), go to this web page and follow the instructions.
Now that you’ve updated to Premiere Pro CS5 (5.0.2), you can begin to get access to CS Review. Click on the CS Live button in the upper left of the Premiere Pro interface. A menu will appear with some choices. Sign in with your Adobe ID by clicking on the link that says: “Sign In”. Don’t have an Adobe ID? Go here to here one. By the way, your client must also have an Adobe ID and Flash installed in their browser in order to participate in the Review, so be sure to alert them.
To create a Review, you’ll also need a CS Live ID. You should be able to do so within the CS Live tab. Click on “Create New Review” and you should see a “Welcome Screen”. Follow the steps in the Welcome Screen to create your CS Live ID.
If you are unable to create a CS Live ID from the Welcome Screen, do so from this link. You’ll need to register Premiere Pro from the link in order to take advantage of this feature. After registering, you’ll have access to CS Live for 12 months, free of charge.
There are a number of different ways you can begin a Review. If you want to create a new Review, you can click File > Create New Review. You can also access the Review Panel by clicking Window > Extensions > CS Review. Of course, you can also click the CS Live button in the upper left of the Premiere Pro interface and then click “Create New Review…” (right). Once you have your CS Live ID and have signed in, you can create your new Review.
Gotcha Notes: There may some gotchas preventing you from using CS Review. A number of users have reported the following problems.
Can’t sign in to CS Live? You may need to Quit Premiere Pro, restart the application, then sign in once more to CS Live. The second log in usually does the trick for log-in privileges.
Don’t have access to the Review Panel in Premiere Pro? You may need to sign in to CS Live, then sign out again from CS Live to have access to the Review Panel. Once you have done that, then the Review Panel in Premiere Pro should be enabled.
Clicked on the CS Live Tab and all it said was, “Learn More”? Click where it says, “Learn More” which will take you to the CS Live site online. Sign in with your Adobe ID and then go to the CS Review main section. In Premiere, click the Sign In option at the top of the CS Live option list and then sign in. Quit then restart Premiere. You should now have the CS Review Home and Create New Review under the CS Review options. If the techniques in the above section did not work, repeat the steps above until you have access.
Resources
Here’s a list of links that may be of help to you in finding more about CS Review in Premiere Pro CS5.
With these resources and advice above, you should have little trouble generating your first review using CS Review and Premiere Pro. Be sure to post any other issues or problems you may have in the comments section below so that others can be helped in creating their own Reviews.Share on Facebook
Dave Dugdale is not a DSLR camera expert. However, Dave is interested in learning all about DSLR production and sharing all this mistakes with others. He created a site called Learning DSLR Video.com, which aims to show others how to shoot HD video with a DSLR. The site is primarily aimed at others like Dave that are making the transition from point-and-shoot cameras to DSLRs.
Up until now, Dave has been using Sony Vegas to edit his videos. With the latest version of Vegas focused more on stereoscopic 3D than DSLR editing, he decided to take a serious look at Premiere Pro CS5. Although he doesn’t have a recommended video card, Dave seems to be very happy with Premiere Pro’s performance.
A common task in After Effects is to create a reflective floor in After Effects. Rob Garrott shows you how to create one with this video tutorial from Lynda.com. This is part of a series called, “Design in Motion.” Check it out!
