Streamline editing with timeline-based techniques

Source patching

I have a couple of sequences here open already.

I've got this Simple Edit which is empty, and I've got a Master sequence from the film See You Around.

Now let's start out with our Simple Edit sequence.

I just want to run through a couple of standard settings.

First of all, I've got this Bar moment clip open already and you can see with my Source Track Selection buttons that I've got Video 1 and Audio 1.

What's important to look out for is in fact these two buttons, the V1 and A1 in this case, this is telling me my available source tracks.

So, if I just position my playhead somewhere in the sequence and click to Insert or Overwrite it doesn't matter because the sequence is empty.

You can see I'm getting both the video and the audio and in fact if I turn off one of these I can edit again and now you can see I'm just getting the video.

Now obviously if I open up a video only clip you can see here we've got a little animation section with the title of the film, I'm only going to get the V1 and of course if I turn that off and make the edit, well nothing's going to happen because I've turned off all of the available source tracks.

Let's turn that on and make the edit again and there we go.

And now obviously if I open up an Audio only clip you can see we've got our waveform, I'll turn on the Audio Source Track Selection button and edit this into the sequence and we're all set.

Let's take a quick look at this in our more advanced sequence.

I've got quite a few clips already in this sequence and I need to be careful about which parts of my original media I'm adding.

I'll open up that video and audio clip and I'm going to edit this over into my sequence.

Let's choose a good moment.

I think I'm just going to press the down arrow key a couple of times here to jump in between these two clips and of course now I've got both my Video and Audio 1, so I can Overwrite, you can see that's actually gone on to my Video 1 and Audio 1 tracks.

I'll just resize a little here or I can undo, and selectively edit in maybe just the audio.

Let's turn off the video and I'm going to Overwrite edit to add this to my sequence.

I've now added that to the mix.

I'm going to undo again with Control Z or Command Z.

Track targeting

Right now, if I go back to my Simple Edit you can see that we've got our track targeting set up in a pretty simple way.

Our Video 1 is going to Video 1 in the sequence and Audio 1 is going to Audio 1.

If I pull this up and reposition it next to a different video track, well, you can see if I Insert edit now, my video is going to Video 2 and you'll notice that the track selection button is not important when you perform these edits on the Timeline.

What matters is the tracks that you have enabled in the source track selection column.

Sync locking

I'm going to resize a little here and I think I'm going to position this video just under the video track.

So, I'll drag my Video 1 up, make sure it's switched on, maybe I'll turn off the Audio because I'm going to make a bit of a composition here and I'm going to Insert edit but we have a bit of an issue here and it's a feature in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

We have a long mix-down of our dialogue down towards the bottom of this sequence and there's some music actually as well and it's been broken up by inserting this clip.

Well, that's what you should expect when you insert a clip when you've got your Sync Locks on and that's these icons right here.

So, let's undo.

If I want to leave these music and dialogue mix-down clips alone, I can turn off these Sync Locks for those tracks.

So, let's just turn these off, I think that should do it and now when I Insert the video and audio clips on the tracks that have the Sync Locks on, have all moved, but my long music track and the dialogue mix-down are left untouched which is exactly what I want.

Track selection modifier keys

Now some editors prefer to Lock Tracks and there are some useful modifier keys for this, that's Shift Alt Control in Windows and Shift + Option + Command in Mac OS.

I can hold Shift and toggle off and on all of the Sync Locks here.

I can also use the Shift key to select all or none of a particular track type and in fact while I'm on the audio track here I can hold the Alt or Option key and Mute or Solo all of the audio tracks.

The Shift key works for toggling the output for your video tracks and of course I can use the Shift key to lock or unlock tracks.

Track locking

Now the difference between a Sync Lock and a Track Lock is pretty clear.

If I turn on the Track Lock for this Audio 6 track you can see I just can't click on anything.

I can't click on this at all.

And for many editors that's an easier way to work with long music clips where for example you're adding a series of visuals.

You might want to insert those visuals and not break the music clip.

The benefit of keeping tracks unlocked is that you can continue to work on them making adjustments to clip settings and changing the contents of the track without continually locking and unlocking them.

Still let's try locking these tracks right now.

I'm going to turn on the Track Locks.

I've got my Sync Locks on but that doesn't matter for the tracks that I've locked completely.

It's not going to make any difference at all.

So now I'm going to Insert this clip and you can see just the clips on the tracks I want to modify have moved.

Track selection buttons

When you're performing edits of this kind the Timeline track selection buttons really don't do anything, but they are very important for Timeline based operations.

For example, if I want to use my arrow keys, the up and down arrow keys, to jump between clips and I've just got my Video 4 track turned on here.

I can use the up arrow to jump between those clips very quickly and easily.

I'm just jumping to the beginning of each clip in the sequence.

If I turn off the Video 4 track and turn on my Audio 6 track instead, now you can see my playhead is jumping from one end to the other just of this audio clip.

So, the playhead will only jump between the ends of clips on tracks that you've got enabled.

You can use the left and right arrow keys to navigate one frame at a time as I'm doing here left and right and if you hold the Shift key you'll go five frames at a time.

This is actually the large trim adjustment in the user preferences.

So, you can change it.

Another important use for using the track selection buttons if I turn off these tracks and I'm just going to keep turned on my Video 4.

Now I'm going to use In and Out marks on the Timeline, so I mark an in and an out with the keyboard and if I copy with Control C or Command C, I move my playhead somewhere else in the sequence and paste with Control V or Command V.

These are standard keyboard shortcuts for Mac OS and Windows, you can see I've just got the piece of the clip that was between the In and Out marks on the selected track.

So, again these track selection buttons are important just not really for editing clips into an existing sequence.

So that's an overview of some important techniques, source patching, track patching, sync locking, and track locking that you can use in the Timeline when editing sequences in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.