Trimming on the Timeline

Trimming, which is the process of adjusting the beginnings and ends of the clips in your sequences, is a really big deal in Premiere Pro CS6. Adobe have done an enormous amount of work to turn the trimming features into something quite wonderful. I'm going to run through each of these to give you an introduction to the techniques you will use all the time in Premiere Pro. But the trick to it is always to try them out, hands on, and experiment. This is probably the only way, really, to learn how trimming works. I've got two simple clips on the timeline here.

And I switched off the audio monitoring, so we're going to get a pretty clean experience with not a lot of rumble from some of these cameras. And let me just drag over a little bit, resize my timeline a little bit, maybe zoom in a little bit. So, let's look at this bike race cable four shot as an example. The simplest way for me to trim this clip is to simply hover my mouse over the end of it, Click and Drag. And as I do, you'll see up in the Program Monitor at the top right I'm getting the frame that I'm kind be on. When I release the mouse I've trimmed, I've left the gap. Pretty straight forward.

I'm just going to Undo. Now, If I do the same thing again but I hold down the Ctrl or the Cmd key and Click and Drag, I'm getting the same information in the Program Monitor. But I'm also getting on the right in the Program Monitor, the first frame of the clip after this one. And you'll see why in a moment. When I release the mouse, it's going to move that shot, so I'm making an adjustment to the position of that shot on my timeline. I'm going to undo again. If I drag from the left, I'm clicking by the way, away from the clip to deselect it.

Because these markers on the ends of the clips, called Trim Handles, and I don't want those anymore because I'm going to be creating new ones. If I click on the left and use the red mode here, this overwrite mode, the same thing as you'd expect, I trim off the beginning of the clip. Just undo that, click Away, hold down the Ctrl or the Cmd key, and hover the mouse 'til I get the arrow. Click again, and drag to the right. And this time, look what happens to the position of the two clips. This is the Insert mode, the Film Editing mode version of trimming.

I've trimmed off the beginning of the clip and they've shunned it over to the left to fill the gap, moving up the timeline, moving earlier in time. Just undo that. So broadly speaking, the yellow modes are ones that will lead to things moving on the timeline, and the red modes are ones that will leave things where they are. Now, here's another way. Over on the tools panel, I've got a number of different tools I can use for trimming. I must warn you now, it's quite likely if you're a new editor with Premiere Pro that you're going to accidentally choose one of these tools.

Either by pressing the wrong key with shortcut, cuz they've all got keys with shortcut or just by accidentally clicking. It still happens to me now. So maybe, I'm just a bit loose with the keyboard shortcuts but I've been using it for a while and I still do it. The keyboard shortcut to memorize is this one. It's V for Victor, which is the Selection tool. This is the Standard tool. So, if you ever get any timeline weirdness, it could be just that you got the wrong tool selected. Press V and have another go. Now, the second tool on the list is for selecting clips, but the third one is the Ripple Edit tool. And the Ripple Edit tool gives me the yellow mode without me using the Ctrl or Cmd key. Personally, I never used it, because I know I can use the Ctrl or Cmd key to achieve the same thing.

However, notice that I've got two clips back to back here. So, if I go to the third option on the list here for Trim tools, which is the Rolling Edit tool, I get a double headed red icon. Now, I'm not going to be able to trim left with this. Because I can see, from that bike race cable shot, I don't have any handles. I'm on the first frames of the clip. But I'm going to Click and Drag to the right. And now, as I drag, you can see on the left, I'm getting the last frame of the first shot. And on the right, I'm getting the first frame of the second shot. So, I'm actually adjusting the timing of both clips at the same time. There we go.

Now, because I'm adjusting both by exactly the same amount, this type of trim is not going to adjust the duration of your tracks. It's not going to change the duration of your sequence at all. For a lot of the trimming operations that you'll apply, these three options are pretty much all you need. The yellow mode at the start or the end, the red mode at the start or the end, or the dual roller, Rolling Edit option. So, here I can Click and Select and move the timing of my edit, that's pretty much enough for most of the trimming operations.

This tool here, the Rate Stretch tool doesn't actually trim the contents of the clip. Instead, it changes the playback speed. If I drag left, you'll see I get a new percentage here in the brackets, and this is now playing at 137% speed. It doesn't seem so useful like this. But imagine another scenario. If I just Undo, press V to get the Selection tool, add a little gap. Let's say that I discover on my timeline, I've got this little gap. And I just need to get rid of it, and I don't have any media to put in it.

Well, one option is to use the Rate Stretch tool. Drag out and use the snapping to fill the gap. I've got Snapping turned on, and now I've got a bit of slow motion, and it still looks okay. It's slightly slow but you can pretty much get away with it. So, the Rate Stretch tool is actually your best friend in some situations, just Undo again, press V to get the Selection tool then go back, so I've got no gap here. And then, we've got these two tools, the Slip tool and the Slide tool. And these are really powerful. I'm still convinced that the Slip tool is the single most powerful unique feature that non-linear editors have.

Simply because it bends the rules of reality in my brain. I'm going to select this tool and I'm going to click in the middle, of this bike race cable shot, and I'm going to start dragging. And as I do, you'll notice. In fact, before I do this, let me grab another shot. I need to show you this with another clip. Let me zoom out a bit, move these down the timeline a bit, and put another shot in. There we go. And then, we just trim out the end of that, so I've got some handles. Good. Now, you'll see why I've done that. If I go to my Slip tool and Click and Drag, look at what you get in the program monitor.

At the top left, I'm getting a little thumbnail there of the clip before the one I've clicked on. Nothing's changing in that as I drag around inside this clip. Top right is the first frame of the clip after the one I'm clicking on. And then at the bottom, I've got the first and last frames of the clip I'm clicking on. And you'll see that as I'm moving, this is making an equal adjustment to both. So, what I'm doing is rolling in position the contents of this clip. I'm not going to change the duration of it because if I drag left, I'm extending one end and shortening the other. And if I drag right, I'm extending the other end, and shortening the other again.

So the net result is that the duration stays exactly the same. But the content changes. This Trim tool is fantastic for cutting action. You'll find usually that when you're cutting movement, one end of the clip matters and the other is not so important. So, this is really great for maintaining the timing of your edit. The Slide tool is the same idea, but the opposite way around. Now as I Click and Drag, you'll see the first and last frames of the clip I'm clicking on aren't moving. They're at the top. And instead, I'm seeing bottom left, the clip before.

Bottom right, the clip after. And when I let go, the clips moved on the timeline. I've effectively shortened this clip just as I've extended this clip, the duration stays the same. But I've moved the middle clip along the timeline. That's a slide trim. Now, if I double-click on one of the ends of this clip, I'm going to go into a Special Trimming Monitor mode. And now I can Click and Drag on the left, and I'm trimming the left side of this edit, or I can click and drag in the middle.

I'm doing a Rolling Edit, or I can Click and Drag on the right. And you'll see I'm dragging and adjusting the third clip here, the one on the other side of the edit. So, this is a Dedicated tool. I can click and use the mouse to make adjustments. I can even click and add a transition effect in between these tow. This is a new tool in Premiere Pro CS6. I'll just undo that transition effect. There's also a dedicated Trimming Monitor in Premiere Pro. I just click away, go up to the Window menu, and choose Trim Monitor.

And this brings up a big version of the trimming tools we were just looking at. It works effectively the same way. I can Click and Drag to make an adjustment, there we go. But I get a bit more information. I can see the handles, I can do one frame or five. I can use a jog controller for the center of the edit, or just the clip on the left. Let me move up a bit so you can see here. Or just the clip on the right, you can see I'm adjusting that. And I can jump to the previous edit and the next edit, there's a lot of controls like this in the trimming monitor.

It's a pretty useful tool. Although again, I have to say almost all of the trimming I do, I do directly on the timeline just using the Ctrl or the Cmd key. So, that's trimming on the timeline with Premiere Pro CS6.