From the course: Premiere Pro for Self-Taught Editors

Dynamic trimming - Premiere Pro Tutorial

From the course: Premiere Pro for Self-Taught Editors

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Dynamic trimming

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- [Instructor] There are several approaches to post production, but many editors like to, first of all, build the order of the sequence and then work on the timing. And so you would probably produce an assemble edit, something like this dynamic trimming sequence that just has the clips in the correct order and then start using various different trimming techniques to remove unwanted content and then really finesse the timing. You are probably already familiar with quite a lot of trimming techniques. But I want to share one with you that many self-taught editors just don't happen to discover and it's called dynamic trimming. First of all, let me recap the two main types of trim. If I hover my mouse cursor over the end of this clip and drag to the left, I'm performing a regular trim, that leaves a gap and I'm just going to undo that. If I hold Command here on MAC OS or CTRL on windows, I get a yellow trim icon and I can drag, and this time when I release the mouse, everything in the sequence after the trim shuffles up to close the gap. These are the two standard trims. I'm just going to undo that, again. And I'm going to zoom in a little, as well. If, instead of dragging, I double-click on the end of a clip, not in the middle of the clip, but right on the end, I'll switch Premiere Pro to trimming mode, and by that I mean the program monitor will switch to trimming mode. In this mode, we've got some additional controls that you can click and drag inside the program monitor to apply a trim, you can see I've got the icon there. But that's not what I want to show you now. What I want to show you is a special combination of modes and keyboard shortcuts. So the mode is trim mode. I got into it by double-clicking on a trim handle. You can also press SHIFT + T, though that will put you into a duel-roller trim, which I can shortcut into by clicking in the middle of the program monitor. For now, let's just focus on a regular left-side of the edit trim. In this mode, if you use the J, K and L keys to playback the clip, you'll actually playback the trim handle. That's this red outline. If you press J, you'll trim the clip shorter. K will pause, and L will trim the clip longer. And all the usual rules apply when you're working in regular or ripple trim modes. So, I'm going to press J. And I'm trimming backwards, and when I press K, you can see the trim has been applied. If I press L, I'm trimming forwards. I press K, and again the trim has been applied. I'm just going to undo, and undo again. Though I'm already in trim mode, I can switch to a ripple trim by holding down Command here on MAC OS, again, that's CTRL on windows. And now I have a yellow trim handle. Notice I'm still getting a red arrow, that's 'cause I've released the Command key here on MAC OS. But that doesn't matter because when I'm using the keys, what matters is that handle. Again, I'll press J. In fact, I can press it a couple of times to trim faster. And I press K, and now the trim is applied. But it's a ripple trim and so, again, the clips move up the timeline to close the gap. And that's pretty much it, that is dynamic trimming. Set your trim handles where you want them and then use J, K and L to playback. You can press ESC to come out of trim mode. And there are keyboard shortcuts available to move between the ends of clips and choose which side of the edit you're going to trim. If I pop into the keyboard shortcuts and search for trim, we have quite a few options here for keyboard-based trimming. But what I'm interested in is these two shortcuts here. "Select nearest edit point as trim in," or, "select nearest edit point as trim out." That combined with the up and down arrows on your keyboard will allow you to quickly move through your timeline, removing the content that you don't want. I think it's fair to say that you only really know when the cut is right when the video is playing back, and that's why people so often loop play while they're trimming. But with this technique, you can play through your sequence and quickly jump from your assembly edit to maybe something equivalent to your second or third rough cut.

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