Welcome to Tooltip Tuesday for Adobe Premiere Pro on ProVideoCoalition.

Last week, Scott and Jeff showed what features they were most thankful for in the 2024 updates.

In this last post on New Year’s Eve, we are doubling up again on what we’re most excited about and looking forward to in the next year.

Much of the Adobe future is plotted out in their public betas available through the Creative Cloud application. You can install these concurrently with your existing version of Adobe apps. Both of us are updating the betas of Premiere Pro (and Media Encoder, Audition, Photoshop, and After Effects) on a daily basis

You can find a list of the What’s New in Beta by clicking on the Laboratory Beaker icon in the top right of Premiere Pro.

We don’t feel these versions are safe for production environments but rather allow you to play with the new tools early.

What is Jeff looking forward to?

This was a very hard choice for me.

I’m a hundred percent going to cheat and tell you that my list of what I’m excited about includes key functional Improvements (multi-threaded audio conforming, Open Timeline Import and Export (OTIO), and the New Color management) along with the potential of AI features (The new search panel with Visual Search, Generative Clip Extension and Smart Masking.)

But I have to pick one – and my criteria is to pick the one that I think will make the greatest difference in everyday editing. (This is my rule – Scott may pick a feature for different reasons!)

If Adobe can nail it, it’s going to be Generative Extend.

There are tricks we’ve learned when the footage is just too short. Generative Extend can add up to 2 seconds at the front and end of a clip. Any clip.

It could be a moment before an actor speaks. It could be just extending that pan just a little longer. It could be taking that small snippet of room tone and extending it. Generative Extend will handle audio with some key restrictions about music and speech.

This is the one feature I see myself using in every edit to get the timing of moments right to give me that extra beat that the source footage doesn’t have. Whether it’s for narrative or documentary work, I can’t wait to make this part of my everyday editorial.

Nevertheless, every single one of the features I mentioned above is crazy useful. This is the one that I keep finding myself wanting to go back to old edits to make adjustments.

The caveat will be how clients/audiences will feel knowing that the material will have some AI-generated content and the authenticity of editorial intention. But that’s a topic for a different discussion.

What is Scott looking forward to?

While I have to agree with Jeff that Generative Extend is a pretty amazing offering coming in the next year (Did you read about my Burning Questions about Generative Extend?), the particular item that I’m looking forward to is rather small in execution but large in functionality. I’m really looking forward to dynamic waveforms making their appearance in the shipping version of Premiere. Dynamic waveforms are now available in the Premiere beta, and they give you real-time feedback on the waveform scaling of your audio clips in the Premiere timeline.

This makes the most sense when you see them in action.

As you see in the gif above, as you adjust audio keyframe levels, the waveforms will scale up or down to reflect the volume change that you’ve made. And this doesn’t work with just “rubber band” key-framing. Dynamic waveforms are reflected in most places that you can change the volume in Premiere. Such as, the Essential Sound Panel, Effects Controls, the New Properties panel or applying clip-level audio gain. It’s simple, useful, very responsive and will be a much-welcome addition to Adobe Premiere Pro when it ships to the full release in 2025.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

Every week, we will share a new tooltip to save time when working in Adobe Premiere Pro.

It’s not uncommon for me to end up with loads of extra tracks. I’m nudging clips up and down. I need a little scratchpad space to work. I brought in a graphic and it added tracks that I don’t need.

I don’t think there’s a Premiere Pro user who’s not familiar with right-clicking the track editor and choosing Delete Tracks…then pressing Return and forgetting to hit the Checkbox.

Sigh.

I have to do it again and still have use the mouse and make selections inside of that dialog box.

I just wanted to press a button and make empty tracks go away.

I don’t want to take away the value of ‘Simplify Sequence‘

It can do everything from deleting empty tracks to pulling out anything offline or disabled.

Super useful, but not what I want.

That’s when I discovered “Delete Empty Tracks.”

I don’t know when it was added. (Every now and then, I open up the keyboard and dig into features I don’t know.)

I assign it to CTRL + Delete key.

Easy cleanup.

Sometimes, I want to delete just empty video or audio tracks.

Another unmapped set of keys? “Lock/Unlock All Video Tracks”.

Just a piece of reference: You can “Toggle All Video Targets” with CMD 0 and Audio Targets with CMD 9.

Let’s put this all together..

Since Toggle VIdeo/Audio are at 0 and 9 with a modifier key…I’m going to pick a different modifier to lock tracks.

I picked CTRL -0 for locking/unlocking video tracks and CTRL-9 for audio – matching my remove choice.

Delete all empty video tracks?

• Control 9 (Lock all audio trakcs)
• Control Delete (Delete empty tracks, but becasue the audio is locked only empty video tracks)
• Control 9 (Unlock all audio tracks)

No mouse, no dialog box – just a tight timeline.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

TLDR: Even if you know nothing about After Effects, it’s possible to open up Mogrt, make adjustments, and create a new Mogrt. For example, you can open a Mogrt, adjust the controls, including font, and republish.

I’m going to stress you don’t have to know how to use After Effects to use this technique.

One of the beautiful things about the world of Mogrts is the variety of accessible, well-done animations. Making us faster creators.

If you’ve never checked it out, http://www.stock.adobe.com has a whole bunch of free content, including over 100 free Mogrts.

Obligatory note: There are two types of mogrts: Mogrts created in Premiere Pro and Mogrts created in After Effects. If you bring a mogrt onto the timeline and it’s yellow, it’s a Premiere Pro mogrt. Red? It’s an After Effects Mogrt.

This tip is specifically for modifying After Effects Mogrts.

Mogrts that are created in After Effects show only those controls that are intentionally published.  For example, if you built an animation and put a blur effect but didn’t publish the amount of the blur effect, Premiere can’t adjust the blur.

There are so many great Mogrts in various places, particularly for text animations.

BUT…these are never built using the clients’ font. Frequently, a Mogrt is built, and the animator intentionally or unintentionally prevents changing the font.

—————-

Here’s how you adjust a Mogrt:

1. Open After Effects.
2. File menu > Open Project… and navigate to your Mogrt.

You’ll be asked where to extract the project. Pick somewhere sensible, please. This is also a great chance to rename it if you want.

Under the Composition menu is a choice for “Open in Essential Graphics.” This opens the composition adjustments in the Essential Graphics panel.

There’s a button third from the top called “Solo Supported Properties.“

These solo (limit) the After Effects timeline to show only items you can publish as part of the Motion Graphics template.

   3. Right-click any property you want to be able to change/animate in Premiere and choose “Add to Essential Graphics“.

In the case of my Lower Third:

There are two text properties already published in that screenshot..

I want to add the ability to change the font and size. Since the text is, by default, changeable as part of a template, I don’t have to “add” anything from the timeline area. Instead, I need to Edit the Properties.

   4. For any text layers, I’ll click on the ‘Edit Properties‘ button, and then all I have to do is enable custom font selection and font size adjustment.

Let’s make it a Mogrt again.

Important note: I like changing the name of the Mogrt in this panel and adding my initials or other critical information like the client’s name.

The last step is at the bottom of the Essential Graphics panel with a button that says “Export Motion Graphics Template.” It’ll warn you that you need to save the project, of course!

I recommend adding keywords such as “title, lower thirds,” and anything else you feel is important.

This will allow you to search for specific Mogrts in Premiere quickly. Putting a client name here also in the keywords would be a great idea.

This Mogrt will automatically get published to your local Library.

Last note: Some mogrts are sophisticated. You may need to dig through multiple nested compositions to make the correct adjustment. It’s safe for you to play and experiment. After all, you’re not damaging or touching the original Mogrt.

Good luck!

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

I’ve stopped watching YouTube videos and podcasts at normal speed. I’m now used to listening to material faster.

I’ve been doing this in edit bays…well, let’s just say since the beginning.

But when I use sped-up playback in Premiere—that’s the L key pressed twice—the pitch of everything is shifted. This comes from analog tools. It’s nothing worth romancing about.

We can fix this.

There is a switch for this inside of Premiere. It’s found in the Audio Preferences.
It’s called “Maintain pitch while Shuttling.”

There is a toggle if you want to assign it to the keyboard – with this, we can toggle it quickly.

Next time you listen to an interview or dialogue- such in my tip about using the shift key with playback – you can adjust the speed, and the audio will still sound normal, making it easier for you to understand.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

Whether it’s Essential Sound, Essential Graphics, or Lumetri, Adobe has stacked multiple panels in the same frame by default. That way, you stay where you’re working—perfect for laptop screens.

My big irritation? I want to have multiple tools open.

Basic Correction and Color Wheels. Nearly everything when I’m working with people speaking – Dialog, Loudness, Repair, Clarity, EQ, and Vocal Enhancer

Most of the time, I’m working on a 4K screen. I know many editors who work with some of their screens mounted vertically for the extra real estate.

All we need to do is throw one switch underneath the Panel Menu.

With Solo turned off, we can work with multiple panels simultaneously – making us more efficient and able to access multiple tools simultaneously.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

I often need a fast way to compare sources, check out different takes, or listen to various audio reads.

The Source Monitor is perfect for this, but it’s a hidden feature often missed.

Let’s set it up:

1. Clean out the prior clips first. Click on the three lines (the panel menu) above your Source Monitor and select ‘Close All.’
2. Open any bin, grab a couple of clips, and drop them into the Source Monitor.
3. Now, you can press Shift + 2 to rotate between whatever is loaded in the Source Monitor.

By the way, Shift + 1 brings up your Project panel. You’re Shift-ing to the FIRST (1) panel you need – The Project window.

Then you SHIFT + 2  to the SECOND (2) panel – the Source.

Something to try on your own –  Shift + 5. It’s one of my favorites

They key point? Shift + 2 is the quickest way to switch between multiple performances, B-Roll, or audio takes. Combine it with marking In and Out points & using Shift + K (play from In to Out) and you’ll be comparing and playing footage faster than ever.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

Your timeline has blue lights on the left and right sides (V1, A1, etc.). The ones on the left side represent the tracks of a source clip. That would be any clip you touch in the Project or the clip in the Source Monitor.

To understand this, load a clip with audio on your source monitor and examine the lights on your timeline.

There should be video and audio patches on the left.  

These dictate where clips go to the timeline, whether you drag and drop or use common editing styles like insert and overwrite.

If you turn off the audio tracks, video clips come in as you drag them without audio. If they’re patched to different timeline tracks (e.g., V1 and A3), as you drag a clip into the V1 track, the audio will go to A3.

The simplest solution here is to reset them to the default source assignment. Right-click on the Left side of the timeline and choose Default Source Assignment.

A quick fix when clips don’t go to the tracks you want!

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

Welcome to Tool Tip Tuesday for Adobe Premiere Pro on ProVideo Coalition. Every week, we will share a new tooltip to save time when working in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Have you ever wanted to turn off video effects to restore real-time playback – perfect for checking timing? Or want to see the masking without the effects active (perfect for blurs/mosaic masking)?

That’s where Global FX Mute comes in. You can find it under the wrench of the Program Monitor.

It’s straightforward. It just stops all effects from processing. It’s available in the keyboard settings, but it is unmapped. (I don’t care what you map it to.)

It has two wrinkles.

• First, it does not bypass the Motion Effects (Scale, position, opacity)
• Second and more important, there is no visual indicator that it’s active or inactive.

To fix this, go to the plus of the Program Monitor and add it to the row of icons.

If it’s blue, then video effects are bypassed.

Global FX effects mute, giving you the power to stop effects in your Premiere timeline.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

Every week, we will share a new tooltip to save time when working in Adobe Premiere Pro.

I’m sure you’ve used the search box in the Project panel.

You may have even clicked the button to its right, creating a search bin.

But the problem is that you’re searching for everything in the project—clip names, descriptions, everything.

Let’s make a permanent version of this. Go to the file menu and choose New Search Bin.

Rather than searching everything, we can limit it to a single piece of metadata.

And if there are two things I want you to remember about metadata… it has a lousy PR group, and last week, I gave some insights on using the Metadata Panel.

In my Search Bin here, instead of just searching for the number 1, I’ve chosen to search the Scene field for the number 1

If I’ve entered that metadata, I’ve just created a dynamic search bin with only the shots from scene 1.

Based on the camera, the footage can live in bins and automatically gathered in the search bin.

The crazy thing about these search bins is once they’re built, you can import them into other projects.

There are a couple of killer uses I have:

• Items marked good. It’s a boolean. Choose the Good field and have it find “True.”
• Items offline. Choose the Status field and type in Offline. Now you know where all your offline clips are.
• Media Type Sequence. Now you have all your sequences in a single Search Bin.

I’ve been talking about search bins for…well a decade.

Want more? Here is a more profound article, including a free set of search bins to download and import to your projects.

This series is courtesy of Adobe. 

Every week, we will share a new tooltip to save time when working in Adobe Premiere Pro.

TL;DR You can assign metadata, such as scene/camera, to multiple shots via the Metadata panel.

It is said that one measurement of an editor is often how quickly they can find a shot.

Yes, it’s about the visual in the shot’s content, but it’s also about the metadata.

Metadata has a lousy marketing team. The moment people say metadata, most people’s eyes fog up, including mine.

It can be magic. A great example of this? Assigning a shot to a scene, the type of shot (closeup/wide shot/medium shot), or which camera for Multicam.

But…it’s going to be a manual process in the project window’s list view. Adding info like scene number can’t be done on multiple clips. You have to press the enter key and work your way one clip at a time.

  Wouldn’t it be great if you could just set all of them by shift-clicking?

That’s what the Metadata panel is for.

Select multiple shots, switch to the Metadata panel and then type the scene number into the Scene field. Now my footage has scene information.

You can use this as deep or as far as you like.

One warning: setting metadata overwrites existing information. This is particularly painful for me in the description field, where I’d kill to have tags.

I wish Adobe would let me append rather than replace what’s there.

Two other excellent (and less used) items? The good checkbox and/or the hidden checkbox.

At the end of the day, the Metadata Panel makes it easier to assign information to multiple clips in a single step allow you to find footage faster.

This series is courtesy of Adobe.