Once
that's done, you'll notice a big change in Premiere if you haven't
seen it since its 4.1 days: Lo and behold, finally there's three
point editing. This is a big plus, especially for Avid users who
have grown accustomed to it. Beyond that, there are a lot of things
that make Premiere a much more inviting and user-friendly application.
For one, you'll see lots of buttons instead of pull-down text-driven
menus. Everything is right at your fingertips. Another good example
of this kinder, gentler Premiere is Range Select, a new tool that
will save a few steps by letting you select either one track separately
or multiple tracks together to move them as a group. For example, say
you've cut out a group of tracks in the edit line, you then range
select and drag the rest of the clips back to close the gap.
If
you have a big project, don't forget the Navigator window, also
new to version 5.x. Like Premiere's brothers Photoshop and Illustrator,
this feature lets you dance around your project in either great
leaps or tiny tiptoeing. And, here's a feature of the Navigator
window that's not documented anywhere: Slippin' and a slidin'. It's
an easy way to make changes on more than one clip at once that will
you save lots of time. With the click of a mouse, in either the
monitor window or timeline slip the clip left or right to accomplish
the equivalent of adding or subtracting to your source tape. Or,
slide the clip earlier or later with the slide tool, which is like
adding or subtracting from the record reel. This is all in keeping
with the new three-point editing atmosphere that is prevalent with
Premiere 5.1.
There's more control over filters, too. If you want to use a filter
on just part of a clip, stop splitting that clip into two parts
to add the effects to one of the parts. Now in 5.1 you are able
to keyframe filters in just part of a shot without cutting up anything.
It's a simple matter of adding a filter to a clip by right-clicking
the clip, selecting Filters and clicking on the filter you want,
then click Add in the usual way. Then select the filter in the Current
window and the new Keyframes dialog box opens. Click on a place
where you'd like to add a keyframe in the mini-timeline. Then click
Edit where you adjust the attributes of that filter. Add as many
keyframes as you want! It's cool!