Did you know that you can edit videos on a tablet and using just your fingers? In Premiere Pro, you can use the multi-touch and gesture functionality to quickly edit your videos and films on your tablet with relative ease. We will cover how to use the drop zones feature which will allow you to place a video clip exactly where you want on your timeline, Premiere’s auto-collapsing panels, multi-touch scrolling of clips, timelines, and media in the project bin, we will cover the secret pop-up controller for multi-touch users, marking clips in/out points for faster (and more accurate!) timeline placement and easier editing on a mobile device, and so much more! If you’d like to be able to hack together rough cuts and spend more time relaxing while you edit video, you’re going to love multi-touch and gestures in Premiere Pro! Check it out and leave a big ole thumbs up if you enjoy this video! Thank you!
Finding the Hidden Thumbnail Controller in the Project Bin
To get the overlay when you select a video clip in the Project Bin even when you’re not using a multi-touch device, you can simply click on the little fly out menu icon next to the word Project in the tab for that little panel. Choose “Thumbnail controls for all pointing devices.” Now you can click any clip one time and you will see the overlay controls to preview the clip and set In/Out points with ease.
Marking In/Out Points to Edit a Clip Before You Edit It
You can click the play button in this overlay and then click the forward/backward icons that change to the left and right of the play button to speed through the clip in either direction. You can also use your finger (Multi-touch devices only) and press and hold the play button and move to the left or right to easily slide through the video clip. Click the { looking icon in the top left to place the In point (when the video will begin when you drag it to the timeline) and then move to another part of the video and click the } looking icon to set the Out point (where the video will finish.)
Dragging to Drop Zones
Once you have In/Out points selected (you can also just drag entire clips into the timeline or drop zones, but In/Out points tend to make editing faster,) drag that clip over to the Program monitor area above the timeline and you will see an overlay appear. These different buttons are called “drop zones,” simply drop the clip on any one of them to make it go down into the timeline in a number of different ways. You can see each in action by watching the video above.
One-Finger Features
When using a multi-touch device you can use a one-finger press and drag gesture to scan through video clips in the project bin, you can drag out selections in the timeline area, you can also use a single finger to drag clips out of the project panel over to a drop zone, or drag it directly to the timeline if you prefer working that way.
Two-Finger Features
You can pinch and zoom on most panels. You can zoom in or out of the timeline this way, you can also zoom in or out of video in the project monitor or the source monitor. You can use two fingers together and scroll up and down nearly any window, or use two fingers together to scroll horizontally through your timeline, or use two fingers together and slide them left or right across any screen area of video preview (source monitor, project monitor, video thumbnails in the project bin, etc…) to scrub through that video clip.
Auto-Collapsing Panels in Premiere Pro
A side note tip that I threw in was the Stacked Panel Group option which is uber useful when using a tablet or multi-touch in general. This will take a stack of panels and whenever you click one to open it up, all the others in that stack will collapse automatically. This way you don’t have to worry about scrolling up and down to find your panel. Click the flyout menu associated with the stack of panels you’re working with (my stack here is the sidebar of panels that opens by default in the Color workspace) and go Panel Group Settings>Stacked Panel Group. That’s it!
I hope you loved this video! Be sure to watch the full video at the top of this blog post to really get the lowdown and all the details. Thank you!
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