Questions about Premiere 6.0

[Gordon Cameron]

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.

[BJ_M]

its a pretty lenthy thing to reply to but might i suggest vegas video to do what you are doing ....

[Gordon Cameron]

Why? Can you explain how Vegas Video is superior re: the things I asked about?

[BJ_M]

you can move the video to any point allowing for gaps - it is easy to change the speed of a clip , per clip ..

changing one setting will not affect whatever you have done and it plays back including any effects in real time (depending on your system) ..

i admit adobe has some very powerfull features but im not a great fan of its user interface and its quarks (i like after effects though) . i prefer speedrazor (because in speedrazor i have full hardware rendering of all effects due to system) and vegas because of its ease of use ..

vegas can even export a txt EDL list .. and its main concept mpeg encoder (with some tweaking) does a pretty good job of encoding ..

it also has a good ability to mix up file types

[coxy_in_oz]

@others just suggesting to use another program is the only soln, cause u got to learn how to use that anyway.
@Gordon Cameron

Now I don't pretend to know everthing about adobe Premiere, but i have been following this guide http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/92223.php

1) How do I "push
i think a soln is to use the second mouse pointer icon, that looks like two arrows, instead of the default arrow head that points nw. this will allow you to grab everything on the time line and drag it to make space, or remove gaps.


2) Not sure

3) the guide shows "how to" by changing the speed as a + or -%.

4) The render/preview= i tried changing to render from ram, which seemed like a logical thing to do since i have 512RD, but wasn't happy with the jerk replay. only other thing i can suggest is leaving your global effects ie letterbox (clipping) until last if possible, that way you want have to re-render all the time. also, I adjust the yellow line on the top of the time line which adjusts the amount that will be displayed apon rendering.