Premiere Pro CS6 – Trim Tools

Trimming has seen a total overhaul in Premiere Pro CS6, and with its new features, Premiere’s timeline editing tools are among the best in the industry.  The new feature set gives you the power to do almost all of your main editing functions without ever switching tools.  Featuring the best of both Avid’s Smart Tools and Final Cut Pro 7’s timeline editing functions Adobe has designed what is truly a powerful and exciting new editing environment.
These new features are covered fairly extensively in the video, but of course, there are many many more features that we did not have time to cover in this brief overview.  Trim functions include, but are not limited to:

Any shortcuts mentioned refer to Premiere Pro CS6’s new set of standard shortcuts and are specific to the mac platform (PC shortcuts may vary slightly).

• Use the selection tool to perform trims, ripples, and rolls, making it easy to do all of your editing without switching tools.  Slipping and moving clips and edit points can also be done from from this tool using the keyboard.
• By default, using this tool will perform a trim that will leave a gap between the point you are trimming and the next edit point.  The arrow will be red and pointing in a single direction.
• If you hold Cmd on the keyboard and click at the center of an edit point you will be performing a ripple edit.  The arrow will be a red and point to the left and right.
• If you hold Cmd on the keyboard and click just to the left or right of the edit point you will be performing a roll edit.  The arrow will be green and point in the single direction you are rolling.
• This can be reversed so that ripples and rolls are the default and that trims require the Cmd key.  This can be set in Preferences, Trim.
• You can slip the selected clip or clips from the Selection tool by hitting Cmd+Opt+Left or Right Arrows. (Add Shift to move more frames at once, 10 by default.)
• You can move selected clips by hitting Cmd+Left or Right Arrows. (Add Shift to move more frames at once, 10 by default.)
• You can move selected edit points by hitting Opt+Left or Right Arrows. (Add Shift to move more frames at once, 10 by default.)
• Timecode based editing for moving clips or edit points.  Select the clip or click directly on the edit point and use your numeric keypad to add or subtract frames to your clip.
• Selecting the clip will move that clip by the amount typed.
• Selecting the edit point will trim the clip, or can ripple, or roll depending on how you selected the edit point (see the bullet point above this).
• Use negative numbers to move the clip or edit point backward.
• Use frames or seconds.  For instance you can type in “-5+Enter” which will move 5 frames, or type in “-5.+Enter”, which will move 5 seconds.
• Use the new Trim Edit command by hitting T on the keyboard.  Demonstrated best in the video.
• Select edit points, and hit E, to have the clip trim to the playhead (if there is enough head or tail material on the clip to do so).
• Select multiple edit points by holding Cmd and dragging over the points you wish to select or holding shift and clicking on them (cmd-shift if you are using the ripple or roll features mentioned in the first bullet point).  To add more once a group is selected, hold Cmd+Shift then drag over the additional points.  Then perform any of the editing actions listed above and below.
• You can ripple trim the next or previous edit points to the playhead  by assigning custom keyboard shortcuts for these action.  This is great for creating rough cuts, but please note, in its current implementation it will delete any transitions you have between clips, slightly limiting its overall use.

With my background as mainly a FCP7 and earlier editor, but also someone who has used and tested Media Composer 6 and earlier, I can say I truly think that despite a few quirks, Premiere Pro CS6 offers the best timeline trimming of any program that I’ve worked with.

As a bit of a side note, as a FCP switcher, the biggest hurdle is still Premiere Pro’s patching methods which are fairly similar to those of Media Composer.  I find that I am still struggling with my patching and ative tracks way too often, making overwrite edits from the keyboard more of a hassel than anything.  My biggest gripe is that if I perform an overwrite edit, any active track will be overwritten as opposed to just my Patched tracks.  In other words, if I have an audio only edit and my audio is patched to track 1, and I have video tracks also active, an overwrite edit will write black over these tracks too!  For Avid guys, I guess this is great, for me, its a pain.  That said, I do think Adobe is very much listening, and I would hope to see improvements in this area in the future, or at least options.  We can, of course, only hope and feature request.

Credits: Thanks to John Gumaer for doing the intro sound design.