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Adobe Premiere Pro - Advanced Training

Preferences worth changing in Premiere Pro

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, in this video we're going to look at Preferences. I know, in the last video I said it's going to be exciting stuff, this is exciting, it's nerdy exciting for Premiere Pro. We're going to look at the preferences that are actually worth changing, not just all the preferences. Now most of these are just personal preferences, and personal peeves of mine. To change them all makes the whole experience nicer for me at least. 

The first one is in your Project window. If you open up a bin it opens up in a separate tab, and then you're like, this one, you've got this one open, and then, oh, it's a big mess down here. So what I prefer to do - I'm going to close these down - is 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', 'General'. On a Mac it's 'Edit', 'Preferences', 'General', and I like that, when I double click a bin, it just opens in place, click 'OK'. It means, now when I open up 'Footage', that same panel is updated, and I can go back, and into this next one, and back, thank you, very much. You might not like that, next preference. 

This one here is just super useful, and it's not on by default at the moment. Go to, back into your 'Preferences', go to 'Auto Save', and turn this one, it says 'Save Backup Project to Creative Cloud'. I know it's not on at the moment so just turn that on. They seem to work good, automatically back it up every 15 minutes, up until maximum of 20 versions, that's fine, but also save it to the Cloud, why not, it's useful. Let's click 'OK', Premiere Pro doesn't crash, nearly as much as it used to. You will find them, let me find it for you, there it is. 

So here's my Creative Cloud, in here, under-- I've just logged into creativecloud.adobe.com, my work, and you will find, under 'Sync Files', 'Premiere Pro', 15, whatever version you're at, auto saves, and it will just back them up in here as well. So that there, if things go wrong, you can find your project files. Yours corrupt, so you lose it, it's backed up here as well, or there'll be 20 versions going backwards. Super useful, especially if somebody else is working on your project, and you're just kind of sharing the project file. 

All right, next preference. For those of you who are using a computer that is not quite up to Premiere Pro specs, and it reminds you that every time it loads, it says, "Hey you don't have the right machine," you're like, I know, I know, and it works good enough. So I ignore it, you can go and turn that off, 'Preferences', 'General', and say, stop showing me compatibility issues every time you start up, once it's fine. Don't keep reminding me of my slow Paru laptop. It doesn't fix them, just the warning dialogues. All right, next preference. 

Now this next one is, I'm not sure if this is on by default anymore, I know, was definitely on by default, and it was a pain that I had, and a lot of my students had. It might be off by default, we'll check. So what happens by default is, wherever I move my CTI, can you see, it actually selects the clip underneath, and changes up here, in your Effects Controls, and I hated that. What we can do is, you can go to 'Sequence', and say, actually, don't, selection does not follow the Playhead. I've got something selected, my Playhead doesn't kind of keep jumping around. It may or may not be on, and you may or may not hate it, you might love it, you'll be like, "Man!" I'm going to turn that back on, because, look, it selects it every time you move. These preferences are personal preferences. 

All right, next one, don't forget to turn it off, now, next one. This next shortcut is for those of you like me, who use a mouse with a scroll wheel to do your editing, and you end up doing this. Everything is up, hiding all the time, you're like, "Oh, how do I get it back, why can't I see anything?" The scroll wheel, by default, vertically scrolls up and down the Timeline, and if you find that frustrating, like I do, go to 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', remember, 'Edit', 'Preferences' on a PC, go to 'Timeline', and say, actually, the Timeline mouse scrolling, be 'Horizontal', that's way more useful, let's click 'OK', Now I've lost them, you come back down, you there, now your scroll wheel goes back and forth. I find that helpful. 

You can do some other things, like you can still go up and down by holding the 'Command' key on a Mac, or 'Ctrl' key on a PC, and just hover above the different ones. You can still disappear them, and scrub up and down your Timelines. Another little shortcut, if you are a scroll wheel person, hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC, and it zooms in, in and out, using the scroll wheel. So 'Command', up and down now, 'Option' to zoom in and out, and the regular old, just using the mouse, with nothing, the scroll wheel, with nothing held down, will go left and right. 

Now the question you didn't ask, and probably didn't even think about, but I'm going to tell you anyway, is, "What mouse is he using?" So what is the best mouse for video editing? For me, I use this one, it's not the best mouse, it's the best mouse for me, because-- it's called the Logitech M720, it's called Triathlon, I think. Why? Because I'm just not a full-time video editor, I do as much Graphic design as I do Web design, as UX design, as teaching. So I need a mouse that can do a bit of it all, and this is a nice good compromise. It's got some extra programmable buttons, some good scroll wheel functions, you can connect it to different devices, like my phone and my iPad, which is crazy cool, and it's not super expensive. 

If you are a full-time editor, which a lot of you will be, you might want to consider some of the surface controls. So type in 'service controls' and see what's out there, like there is an amazing array of service controls, just make sure it's compatible with Premiere Pro. You can see, there's some crazy cool things, you can kind of set up to get your workflow going, plus you look like a serious legit video editor if you've got something like this on the table, but for me, my desktop service is super valuable. I've got no room for it, and I've tried it before, and I just-- it ends up in the drawer of junk, that I thought I needed, but I don't, but I know for sure, if I was a full-time editor, I'd try and look like this guy. 

All right, on to the next preference. This next preference setting, it's less of a preference, and like tuning off two preferences, that are meant to be helpful, but for me, run into too much trouble. The first one is, well, it's Snap and set in and out points. There are shortcuts on your keyboard, that somehow magically I hit all the time. I never want to use them, I never do it on purpose, but the S key, which is Snap, there's the icon version of it there. I always turn it off and it stops snapping, and you're like, "Why aren't you snapping anymore, why isn't that lining up?," you're like, "It's because it snaps off," and you're like, "Where is Snap?" Know that there's an icon there now, which you probably never looked at before, and you go like, ah, 'snap', and you turn it off. I'm going to turn that off, as a shortcut, you don't have to, I do. 

The other one that is, I don't know, I do it all the time by mistake, is I've got something selected, and I'm looking down to kind of resize my Timeline, because I'm zoomed in too far. I'm going to zoom out, and what I do is, I end up setting in and out points, because, instead of the backslash, which I want, I click the forward slash, '/', and I'm like, "Oh, not that." I'm like, "How do I get rid of that again?", and I right click and clear in and out, and then I hit the backslash key, '\' to fill the Timeline. 

I'm going to turn both of those off. Let's go to Edit, no, on a Mac it's under 'Premiere Pro', under 'Keyboard Shortcuts', on a PC it's under 'Edit', 'Keyboard Shortcuts'. I'm going to disable a couple of them. So I want to find Snap, I just typed it in there, I want to say, you are gone. So when I hit 'S' now, it's not going to do anything, and the other one is, I want to set in and out points, where is it, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, no, it's not called set in and out points, wait there. All right, you're back, it's called Mark Selection, good preparation, Dan, this one here, goodbye. You might love those, leave them in there, but know that if there are ones in there, you can turn them off.

Tthe cool thing about setting these, preferences and keyboard shortcuts is that, because Premiere Pro is this, like subscription service, and there's all this Cloud stuff, under 'Preferences,' and under 'Sync Settings', it will sync your keyboard shortcuts changes, and your workspaces, and the preferences, so that when you get a new computer, or formatted, or changed to another computer, or start working internally at some other company, you can log in with your user name and id, and it will bring them all across, and you can continue your amazing flow. One of the nice things about Premiere Pro, and that Creative Cloudy thing. 

All right, for this next trick we are going to look at the Timeline, and the way this thing snaps, by default, it doesn't snap to anything. Now you can hold down the 'Shift' key, and it will, while you're dragging your CTI, snap to everything. So that's a handy shortcut, but I like it on by default, so you can go to 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', remember, PC, it's 'Edit', 'Preferences', go to 'Timeline', and go to the one that says, this one, they all look the same, and they're moving around. So you might have to look for it, Snap Playhead. It's just going to have it on by default only when Snap is enabled, so you can turn it off by just clicking this, not the S key, because we just binned that one, but it means that they're going to snap to this. 

I find it's more useful for my flow, try it for a little while, you might hate it. You can turn it off, you want to be a bit more exact, holding the 'Shift' key down, that's what I do. There's a lot of, like getting it to the right point, and then using the Razor tool, or some of the other shortcuts. By default it just snaps, it's up to you. 

Now I'm going to cover a few shortcuts in this course, actually, loads of them, it's the advanced course. What I'll do is I'll produce a shortcut sheet, that you can print out, it'll be in your Exercise Files, obviously, hopefully in there, doesn't exist yet, because I'm still making the course, but it'll be in there in your Exercise Files, you can print them off, you should write them down, but print them off now, and you can kind of circle the ones that you think are great. All right, let's get on to the next video.