Adobe Premiere Pro Keyboard Shortcut Of The Week

Slip or slide edits are used when you need to to edit a clip in a sequence while keeping the overall duration of the clips constant.


Here's and excerpt from Antony Bolante's “Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 for Windows: Visual QuickPro Guide” which explains how to use slip and slide edits.

The keyboard shortcut for the Slip tool is "Y".

Speech-To-Text Revolution on the Way?

Here's an article by Jan Ozer from eventdv.net on a new feature to be included with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

Predicting that Premiere Pro CS4 will be out in early 2009, Ozer writes: "the most significant addition to Premiere Pro is a new speech-to-text function that will revolutionize how video is edited and watched within 6 months of CS4’s ship date."

What is Speech-To-Text? It's an application that can process recorded speech and produce text. With the exception of a few applications which have to be "taught" one's vocal patterns in order to accomplish this, one typically had to manually type or hire a service to produce transcriptions of interviews or speeches. And transcription services aren't cheap.

Ozer predicts: "speech-to-text is such a sufficiently 'disruptive' feature that it will change editing and streaming preferences." He reasons that with the ability to include the transcription as metadata, "A formerly featureless lump of video is transformed into a scanable, searchable object".

Adobe already includes this feature in the beta release of Soundbooth CS4. I haven't had time to work with it, but for the type of work I do, a functional speech-to-text application would save a great deal of time and money.

Why Upgrade to Premiere Pro CS3?

Once you've committed to an application, weighing the benefits of each new software upgrade becomes an inevitable part of the process.

One issue to consider with software upgrades is to determine the resources the new application will demand. Software "bloat" can drag your once perky system down to a crawl. It's not unusual to need a RAM or even processor upgrade in order to run the latest version of piece of software. And in some cases, the "upgrade" can represent a step backwards. (Read the excellent Videoguys for their take on upgrading to Windows Vista.)


I'm happy to report that upgrading to Premiere Pro CS3 is exactly that - an upgrade. Of course there is an improved feature set for the application. For instance, a very good Time Remapping feature and the addition of H.264 codecs. The upgrade also includes Adobe Encore CS3 for DVD authoring and Adobe OnLocation, a direct to disk recorder. A complete overview of new and improved CS3 features can be found here.

However, the genuine surprise was to see that the application ran faster and in a more stable fashion than Premiere Pro 1.5 on the exact same machine. Nice job, Adobe.

Shooting For The Internet

Here's the link to a great article by Jan Ozer which appears in the August 2008 issue of event DV magazine. Ozer addresses the unique issues that arise when shooting talking head video for the Internet.

Why should Internet delivery matter? Because if you're not careful, the codecs and bit rates used for Internet video can render your piece unwatchable.

In this example, Ozer demonstrates how striped patterns in clothing are unsuitable for the Internet. Notice the rainbow and smeary artifacts in the shirt.

In addition to clothing Ozer reviews lighting and backgrounds. To sum up, keep it simple. Most video codecs handle simple images and lighting much better than complex scenes.

Multi-Camera Editing In Premiere Pro

Multi-camera editing has been a Premiere Pro feature since version 2.0.

You can use the Multi‑Camera Monitor to edit footage from multiple cameras, simulating live camera switching. You can edit footage from up to four cameras using this technique. For event videographers, this can be a huge time-saver.

Here's a video from Creative Cow's Aanarav Sareen on multi-camera work flow in Premiere Pro.