4 Questions about Premiere 6.0

bluefugue

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I'm still struggling with a few aspects of this program, and any answers would be much appreciated.

1) How do I "push" some empty space between two clips on the timeline? Right now the only way I know how to do it is to cut-and-paste another clip in between the 2 clips, then delete it, leaving an empty space. Is there a simpler way?

2) Is there a way to automatically generate a list of all the cuts on the timeline, their source clips and the timecodes of each clip, etc.? I have tried some of the EDL functions but they seem pretty cryptic to me.

3) How do I alter the frame rate of *part* of a clip, rather than the whole clip? For instance, if I only want the final 10 seconds of a clip to be in slow-motion, how do I do that? (I've tried separating the clip into 2 clips, then altering frame rate on the second half, but they don't seem to run together smoothly when I do that.)

4) The render/preview functions seem to be very touchy. For instance, once I've rendered a particular effect (say a dissolve or a slow-mo or whatever), a change on a completely different part of the timeline will often cause the earlier effect to "un-render." That part of the timeline hasn't been effected, and the video clip is still in my Video Previews file, but the program doesn't seem to be aware of that and so I have to re-render it.

The problem is this can be very time consuming. Suppose I render a letterbox (clipping) effect over the whole picture, then I want to make some minor changes here and there (seeing how the edit flows in letterbox). If I have to keep re-rendering the letterbox effect after every edit, it'll eat up a lot of time.

...

I hope the questions are clear. #4 is the one that annoys me the most. Premiere doesn't seem to "know" when a rendered clip can be left alone and when it can't; it keeps demanding that it be re-rendered even though the unchanged Video Preview file has already been generated. I hope there's a solution to this.

Thanks in advance for any answers.
 

NurseMSIC

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Nov 3, 2001
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I just read your questions, and number 1 requires me to go into Premiere, which i will do shortly, but to answer number 3 and 4, here goes.

3) You are doing exactly what i do, but if you take for example a 30 second clip, and want the last 10 secs slow-mo, i tend to split it from the last 12 secs, slow initially 90% speed, then split again slowing the next second 80% speed, then 70% speed etc so you get a gradual effect rather than a sudden 100% to 50% or whatever. But i dont know of any other way of doing it - MAYBE ADOBE COULD ADD A GRADUAL REDUCTION EFFECT (hint). Actually there probably is a plug in that you can buy, but i dont know or use one.

4) This again isnt anything that you are doing wrong, it's the way it is. And yes, it's frustrating. Your choices are (annoyingly)
a) Dont render until you are ready
b) Get a faster processor. A 25 Ghz Pentium 20 should be sufficient with 80 Gig RAM.
c) Preview from RAM, not from your hard drive. In practice, i gave up on this though.
d) Plan ahead, and learn patience.

All in all, not very helpful, but from an amateur user of Premiere for 18 months now, i can tell you that you are not doing anything really wrong.
Video editing really does need the fastest processor /RAM / hard drive / motherboard combination you can afford, and even the best currently available isnt actually good "enough" yet.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=19557" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=19557</A>
 

NurseMSIC

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Whoops - i just re-read your question 4, and think i may have miss-answered it.
I was having exactly the same problems with Premiere 6.0.0. However there is an upgrade to 6.0.1 (and there is also 6.0.2 available) that sorts out this error in Premiere.
So it wasnt your fault at all!

As for question 1, i actually cant remember the best way of doing it but one way is to use the 'Range Select Tool' (the square highlightey thing, in 'Timeline' on right of the mouse pointer) to highlight everything, then use mouse pointer ('selection tool') to move it all across a bit.
Confused? I'm sure there is a better way, just cant remember right now....

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NurseMSIC

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Aaah, an easy question!
YES!
Just drag and drop, but you might need a plug-in for the right codecs (probably MPEG2 at least). Also MPEG2 is NOT a good format to edit with if you have a choice.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=19557" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=19557</A>
 

NurseMSIC

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Its not a good format to edit with mainly because of the way that it, er ... is.
Very scientific. Ok, so i'm not an expert!
Imagine a 25 frame 1 second video file. In one format, lets say Digital Video, each individual frame of the 25 is stored and individually available to look at, edit, etc. MPEG2 stores frames in groups rather than individually (thats how it compresses), so say you want to look at frame 23, you need to have frame 20 which is a complete frame, then 21 which has the changes between frame 20 and 21, then 22 which has further changes, then 23.

So to edit in MPEG2, you need a fairly powerful PC that has to be able to quickly mainpulate groups of pictures in an instant.

Clear as mud? Thanks.

As for the plug-in, have a look on www.doom9.org or do a search on google.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=19557" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=19557</A>