Five Less Known, Yet Extremely Convenient Adobe Premiere Pro CC Video Editing Tricks

Adobe Premiere Pro CC has a vast array of features that make it a filmmaking industry-standard for nonlinear editing software. While many people think they’ve mastered Premiere Pro, Adobe’s meticulous craftsmanship on this favorite piece of editing software always leaves room for discovery – whether it be a hidden feature that you weren’t aware of or another way of doing a particular task.

To reveal some of those extra features, seasoned video editor Justin Odisho who is also an avid Premiere Pro user created a video that outlines five video editing tricks inside of the program that you may not know.

If you have ever tried to use the Warp Stabilizer effect in Premiere Pro, you may have noticed that the effect can’t be applied to a clip under certain circumstances. For instance, you cannot stabilize a clip using the effect when the clip uses Speed Effects, or the dimensions don’t match the sequence.

You can easily solve this problem by utilizing Nesting, which basically creates a sequence for your selected clip. Right click on the clip you want to nest and then click on the Nest button. Afterward, you can stabilize your shaky footage using the Warp Stabilizer effect.

When trying to duplicate a clip on your timeline, do you always find that you end up overwriting your edit on the first video layer? Or do you ever find that when trying to drag your video from the project bin to the timeline, either the audio or video isn’t showing up?

That’s because you need to make sure that the track you want to use is selected. You can identify whether or not a track is selected if the “A1” or “V1” (the track patch) text on the left side of your timeline is highlighted in blue. If you want to make sure you’re not overwriting your edits when you copy-paste, ensure that only the track you want to paste to is selected.

Want to save time while copying and pasting? Simply use the following trick. Rather than using your keyboard shortcuts, click on a clip, hold the alt key, and drag your mouse to the left or right. You will see that as you do so, Premiere Pro will create a duplicate for you. Now you don’t have to worry about accidentally overwriting other edits, and you can save time by immediately duplicating and placing your clips exactly where you want them in the timeline.

Shortcuts are an easy way to maximize efficiency when editing inside of Premiere Pro. Although memorizing the shortcuts is recommended, it’s very difficult to learn all of them since there are so many functions for each key, as well as when the keys are used in combination with a modifier (command, control, etc.). If you want to see a visual representation of your keyboard shortcuts, click on Premiere Pro CC on the top of your screen, then select Keyboard Shortcuts.

You’ll see a layout of each key and its functions. If you press a modifier such as shift, the shortcuts for each key will appear as well. On top of that, you can even customize your own shortcuts in the Keyboard Shortcuts window. If you miss the shortcuts from another editing program such as Final Cut, you can even import the shortcut mappings into Premiere by selecting it in the top left corner of the window.

There may be times where you want to create a still image of what you’re editing to share with others. Instead of taking a screenshot using the standard commands of your operating system, Premiere Pro actually has a built-in feature that allows you to save a frame of your edit. In the Program Editor window, there is a little camera button on the bottom. When you click on it, Premiere Pro will take a picture of what you’re editing and allow you to save the file to your computer, and even let you import it into your current project. This technique also works if you want to grab a still from the Source Editor.

If you like these tricks, make sure you check out and subscribe to Justin Odisho’s official YouTube Channel for more insightful videos and tutorials.

[source: Justin Odisho]

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