* My Adobe Premiere Wish List

  Adobe Premiere CS6 is now out (along with the whole Creative Suite) and folks seem to be digging it. Awesome!!!  So far I’ve tried out Lightworks (which is free) ,FCPX, AVID, and a little bit of the new Smoke.  

I find Premiere Pro to be the most welcome replacement for the former Final Cut Pro 7 crowd BUT I do have some things I’d like to see amended or addressed.

Things on my wish list for Adobe Premiere CS6.5… (in no order of importance)

1. RECONNECT CLIPS needs major help. It’s just not easy for more than one clip and at the least there’s not a smart search function like in Final Cut Pro. It’s too basic for many of today’s workflows. 

2. SCALING A CLIP to accurately fit timeline size BUT NOT downsampling clip data.  Right now you can either import a clip and let Premiere downsample it the timeline’s size but zooming into it loses resolution OR a checkbox selection to have the clip come in at 100% but Premiere leaves it zoomed in on the timeline. You have to manually fit the the 100% clip to fit the timeline yourself. Although this is really cool in the proxy workflow is it possible to make it smart enough to do the matching for us as a third option.  Possible? Please?  

3. FIND IN TIMELINE - I NEED THIS!!!!!!!!  Not JUST FIND but FIND ALL/MULTIPLES as well.

(Clarification) Maybe the better wording is SEARCH FOR CLIP(S) based on NAME (or criteria). SEARCH FOR _________ or SEARCH FOR ALL NAMED_______  Premiere highlights them and then you proceed with DELETING, ADDING FX, MOVING ALL TO ANOTHER TRACK, CHANGING LABEL COLOR,ETC.  In FCP7 you could even search for all Transitions by name as well.  

4. How can you adjust computer monitors playback offset versus the NTSC monitor. I have a 2 frame delay.  How do we even disable computer screen playback?

5. PASTE ATTRIBUTES just pastes EVERYTHING. In order to remove things you didn’t want to paste you have to PASTE ALL — THEN REMOVE elements. That’s like inviting everyone to a party then telling the people you don’t know to leave once they’ve arrived. Silly.

6.  Implement the SCROLL WHEEL to increase EFFECT parameters and even better… to move the AUDIO SLIDERS!!!! This would be awesome!

7. DELETING A CLIP from the bin DELETES it from the timeline completely.  Opps and scary!  If there’s such a connection between clips this way then why does #8 happen?

8. LABEL COLORS of a clip in bin don’t change what it’s already color labeled in the timeline. Must always do it before you add to timeline. Can we get this to be smarter?

9. MATCHFRAME needs to matchframe from a selected clip no matter what track it’s on thus overriding that whole outdated Target Track activation process. 

10. DISABLE CLIP needs to look more DISABLED - especially when the the Track is OPENED larger it is difficult to tell visually especially with other color labels in the mix.

11. STOPPING A RENDER completely kills the clip render. OUCH… NO PARTIAL CLIP RENDERS!!! Think about an 8 hour (NESTED for instance) render that stops and can’t pick up from where it left off… (insert profanity) Better yet, beat FCP7 and incrementally save rendering as it renders so if there’s a crash during a render you don’t lose all of it as well.

(AMENDMENT) If you have 10 clips in a row and it rendered 3 full clips and you stop it, those 3 DO remain rendered. Just to be clear, NO PARTIAL RENDERING OF CLIPS THOUGH. So, a 20 minute clip render stopped saves or adds NO RENDERING) [reworded and thanks Eric Addison]

11.5 RENDER MULTIPLE TIMELINES - Go away for lunch and let Premiere render everything not just the active timeline… seems logical, please? 

(www.retooled.net has a workaround to help with this in addition to great PPro Help Videos)

12.  When using the ARROW POINTER to lower audio levels, please make this ICON much easier to see and use. Seems too difficult. You have to OPEN AUDIO triangle to assist and grabbing the YELLOW line wants you to be way to precise.

It should be more responsive and visually easy because we use this all the time. It even disappears once you start volume changes with the mouse so the pointer icon needs a makeover to something less point-y.  (FCP7 worked great and FCPX has it down smooth and fast - NEED TO GET IT MORE LIKE THAT)

13. TARGETING TRACKS still feels like too many steps. This is way outdated. 

14. Is there an OPEN ALL TRACKS to LARGER shortcut or do we have to do this MANUALLY?

15. BLADE TOOL ***SUPER ANNOYING**** needs to have SNAPPING TO ability and not ALWAYS be free position roaming. Kills the purpose of using it, right? ADD THIS PLEASE!

16.  WORK AREA?  Ehhhh….glad you can shut it off now in the timeline menu. Render IN to OUT and Render Selected clips is more intuitive and faster. 

17.  SET BIN feature. Make a MERGED CLIP and it just goes to root level. Can’t we make it go into a folder of our choice? (I’ve also found Merged Clips audio don’t always transfer audio sync xml to FCP7 thus far. Some yes, some no. hmmm)

18.  MUTI-TAP keyboard commands. R for a tool and R+R for another similar tool.  Sure, the FCP way but it is very economical.  Possible?

19.  TIMECODE DISPLAY for MULTIPLE TRACKS of video and audio. The way it is now is a decent step but not implemented correctly.   (Thanks to @editblog there is an INFO window that CAN accomplish this in a small scale so it’s addressed, just not ideal. Final Cut Pro’s overlay TimecodeS feature was far better and color coded to reveal in or out of sync. 

21. We really can’t alter a sequence’s settings once it’s been created? Or timeline placed clip’s timecode? Or interpret footage?

22.  PASTING has to have proper tracks patched other tracks turned off to work right.  Again, the track selection thing. 

23. SLIP TOOL should be able to actually NUMERICALLY SLIP the clips you choose. (There is a workaround but it’s wastefully silly)  Select SLIP TOOL and type in + or - numbers. That’s it. Please do this. This is what the slip tool is about. 

24. Making type bigger option?

25. Got to get used to RIGHT CLICK and let go versus RIGHT CLICK AND HOLD menu navigation - this is just my issue I guess. 

26.  Being able to use the ZOOM tool in the SOURCE and PROGRAM monitors to shrink and grow the viewing percentage.  Even zooming in the audio waveform tab would be cool. It’s a real pain when you want to zoom here or there into image and out or to look at edge detail for instance.

27. FRAME RATE and FRAME SIZE possibilities beyond the obvious. CUSTOM. 4096x4096 48fps.     

28.  *** BIG ONE FOR ME**** BEING ABLE TO MOVE CLIPS in TIMELINE UP and DOWN tracks with keyboard shortcuts. JUST COPY FINAL CUT PRO ON THIS - it works great.   Also, just moving tracks to other timelines seems to slip slide-y if snapping is off. Need a modifier key to control this better as well.

29.  AUDIO TAB for waveforms needs to be connected to VIDEO. We edit VIDEO AND AUDIO.

30.  COLOR OF LABELS are named really silly names.  Do I have to manually change these? Seriously?

31. AUTOMAGICALLY zoom to fit timeline when first clip is added  - and move the playhead to the end. I understand this works with other edits except when you drag and drop clips. (small detail I guess)

32. TRACK SELECT  requires holding Shift key to select all tracks and not just one track AND annoyingly you must continue to hold the SHIFT KEY down during the move or it will default back to one track only.  I don’t mind them being two separate tools - I use the ALL TRACKS SELECT and never use just the single track select at all. 

33. XML EXPORT exports everything… all sequences even if you don’t want them.  (@editblog pointed this out to me)

34. ***AWESOME REQUEST I TOTALLY WANT CREDIT FOR WHEN YOU DO THIS**** Imagine a 23.98 TIMELINE but set to display 29.97 DROP FRAME timecode instead - This is a common problem, you cut the show in 23.98 but you need to insert commercial breaks and exact timings based on a 29.97 DF output to tape. (Basically you start the output at hour 1 much like the start of a 3:2 pulldown cadence pattern)

 IF a preset timeline for this was a choice it would begin from 01:00:00:00 and do the 29.97 drop frame math thereafter. Could even be clever and do the exact math for the bars and tone previous to hour 1 as well. You do have a setting to display 29.97 NDFTC currently, but NOT Drop Frame TC,

35. I’d like a simple SELECT ALL TRACKS DOWN and ALL TRACKS FORWARD tool.

36. PANNING AUDIO should be super simple in the timeline… and it isn’t.  Also should be able to keyboard raise and lower audio db in + or - increments of at least 1. 

37. Can Premiere’s AUTOSAVING take place in the background instead of popping you out of another program you might be working in to show you that Premiere is saving for you?

38. A thought really - Create a super quick and simple way to add TimeCode Burn-Ins to movies that need to be made or have been made already. I use Toki Time Code which works but Adobe could do this in app or with a simple app.  We need TimeCode or watermarked burn-ins all the time in the PRO world. 

39. Adjusting CROSSFADES displays amount of frames you are adding NOT how long the crossfade actually is… how about both perhaps? Also, can you make the crossfade ICON occupy the size of the whole top to bottom of clip - not just the little top part?

40. What is a keyboard shortcut to move through tabs?

41. 1280x1080 footage via xml from FCP to Premiere Pro translation doesn’t have correct pixel aspect ratio. (you can interpret footage to correct this but I mention to get the translation to be corrected so you don’t have to do this to hundreds of clips)

42. Your built in 3-way color corrector is still kinda lame. Colorista from Red Giant is way better.  

43. I like the way the SMART TRIMMING checkbox in preferences works except that it is either Double sided trim or (YELLOW) ripple trim.  I’d like to be able to have a choice of this having single (RED) side trim as the default instead of Ripple. Narrative audio editing and cutting out off camera words is used more than ripple in this case AND holding down two keys to not destroy timeline sync feels backwards in this way. Can you let us choose this smart behavior tools?

The unchecked status (which is the default) is a possible choice and more friendly with the single sided (RED) trim, except the challenge is now dual roller needs the modifier key.  To keep going into Preferences to check and uncheck this based on need seems a bit to much. Thoughts? 

Your SMART TRIM works so much better than AVID I must add. 

44. DSLR FOOTAGE doesn’t read Time of Day Timecode from .THM file even if you copy the whole folder structure correctly.  Magic Bullet’s Grinder and Canon’s plugin for FCP7 can read this an append the code to the movie but in Premiere it doesn’t appear to happen. Would this make Mercury Playback to slow? If it isn’t possible best to tell us it isn’t possible ASAP - I tend to use this timecode for proxy burn ins at least. 

45. The twirl open triangles in the Project Bin need to be more “sensitive”. Increase the “ACTIVATE”  area around the triangles. Way to tight for speed. 

46. DOUBLE CLICKING CLIP in timeline opens the VIDEO in the SOURCE window. How about holding a modifier and double clicking OPENS EFFECTS in SOURCE window. Like OPTION opens AUDIO for instance except the tab for VIDEO would still be there to go to if you wanted which it isn’t now. 

47. PLUGINS -We need a better way for developers to make plugins for us. In FCP we could even create and modify our own. FCPX is kicking ass at this. I know you saying you’re talking to developers but you’re only talking to the big ones. Companies that have a budget for these things. You’re not friendly enough for little, inventive plugins that make workflows sing. Even a small company like Intelligent Assistance making things for FCPX . We need Adobe to be more interesting in THIS department. 

__________

[ADDITIONS]

6/24/12

48. Adobe started out strong with the SPEECH ANALYSIS feature but it’s not really accurate enough to use…STILL.  If this really worked it could be amazing for users or interested potential users. 

49. I thought this worked before in an early build of Premiere CS6 but dragging a clip with EFFECTS added to a FOLDER in your BIN doesn’t bring the EFFECTS from the timeline clip… VISUALLY…

It’s weird, you see that the EFFECTS are listed in this copied clip, but looking at the video, EFFECTS are NOT added to the clip visually. Edit this copied clip into the timeline or try to copy filters from it. Nope. Doesn’t work. It’s still a NO EFFECTS version. ????

In FCP7, I’d use this method for saving a INTERVIEW COLOR CORRECTION for instance. Make the first INTERVIEW look like you want and drag this clip to a COLOR CORRECTION bin. You could then COPY and PASTE ATTRIBUTES to ALL other “like” INTERVIEW CLIPS this way.  WIth FIND IN TIIMELINE feature - super easy!!!!!

You also can’t DRAG an EFFECT and it’s settings to save in a BIN inside your project either. Super Bummer!

In searching for a workaround, you CAN take a stack of filters you’ve added to a timeline clip, SELECT all the filters in the stack you want to preserve for later and RIGHT CLICK and SAVE AS PRESET. Give it a name and you’ve saved it to you’re SYSTEM presets. This works, BUT it’s global. Open any other project and those Presets are tied to your system NOT just that one project you working on.  Doh! Send the the project file to another computer or editor - Um… he doesn’t have your presets obviously.

This I guess is an ADOBE concept that kinda’ works but doesn’t beat the way if works in FCP7 or AVID even.  SAVE EFFECT TO BIN at least AND/OR copy clip with FX to bin. Possible?

       

50. (A reminder from @pauldv)  Set IN and OUT and copy and paste that IN and OUT elsewhere into timeline. Currently, it highlights obviously, but you can’t copy/select and/or paste it.  Bonk.. hit to the head!

(Paul also adds, you would need to BLADE those sections to select and cut and paste… BUT THERE’S NO REMOVE ADD EDIT FEATURE yet!!! Great Point, man.) 

[*also the damn blade tool doesn’t respond to SNAPPING either! See #15]

Thanks @pauldv

51. How do you load a SEQUENCE in the Source Monitor and insert it into the timeline NOT nested? Like in FCP we’d have to hold the CMD modifier key for instance. Is this possible? Also, could maybe the default not be NESTED? Do any of us really need nesting in this case?

__[END ADDITIONS]_________

SUGGESTION/RANT: Also, talk to FILM editors and let them tell you why they won’t or don’t use Adobe. Seriously, I mean the guys that are day to day editing the actual feature films and/or television shows.  They have specific needs regular (and even pro use editors that edit other kinds of material) can’t even imagine a need for.  With this information in your pocket and in your app,  learning Adobe Premiere won’t be a wasted effort on the new and upcoming users headed for Hollywood. 

If you think about it, real world filmmaking guys usually don’t understand what Mercury Playback - Flux - Gigawatts even means.  They just need things to work and be predictable. They need to work with other editors or graphics people AT THE SAME TIME - maybe on connected machines or even in other parts of the world.  Dynamic link is cool for the individual station but arguably most stuff in the pro world is done by multiple people in multiple locations.  THAT is a workflow that needs to be buttoned up.  We send shots to SHOP A and the audio to POST HOUSE B.  The basics like simple match frame editing needs to be in place. Like having a super easy way to view and raise and lower or even pan audio, Looking at audio waveforms etc. After Walter Murch made his comments to Apple and they made changes…  the program became a gem. Final Cut Pro managed to saturate a locked industry rapidly and began being used to edit Academy Award nominated and winning feature films. All users win from this.  If the pros can use it then everybody can welcome using it. 

Sure, Apple messed it up and shut it down.

Just know that that program worked its way into this world so don’t ignore the idea that some of Premiere could be helped by taking a look at how things worked in Final Cut Pro and just doing just that. Beat it or imitate it.  

Just don’t get so caught up with Mercury Playback and 100 real time streams so much that simple basic day to day needs get overlooked. 

I’ll probably keep adding to this list and amend anything that someone points out I completely overlooked. 

Thank you so much Adobe… and to Apple… ______ ____!!

Be sure to send ADOBE Premiere Feature Requests at: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform