Trimming clips (CS5 and CS5.5)

Setting a clip’s In and Out points is a process called marking. You define the first frame you want to include in a sequence by marking that frame as the clip’s In point. Then you define the last frame you want to include by marking it as the Out point. In a typical workflow, you mark In and Out points for a clip in the Source Monitor.

Adjusting a clip's In and Out points after it is already edited into a sequence is called trimming. Typically, you trim clips to adjust how they play back in a sequence. For example, as you view the edit, you decide that you want to cut to the incoming clip a little sooner than you originally planned while marking clips. To fix that problem, trim the clip using trimming tools in Premiere Pro.

You can trim clips by dragging the edge of a clip. A clip's "edge" is a clip’s In or Out point, or edit point. Several specialized tools and techniques allow you to trim an edit point. These tools and techniques allow you to trim more easily and accurately, reducing the number of steps involved and maintaining the integrity of the sequence.

You can fine-tune trim edits in a sequence in the Trim Monitor. The Trim Monitor’s layout is similar to the Source and Program Monitors, but the Trim Monitor controls are optimized for precisely adjusting a cut point between clips in a sequence.

You can trim clips in the Speech Analysis pane of the Metadata panel, setting In points and Out points on selected spoken words.

• Franklin McMahon shows Ripple Edit, Rolling Edit, Slip, and Slide tools in this video from the Layers Magazine website.
• This excerpt from the “Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Classroom in a Book” introduces the more advanced editing tools, including tools for rolling, ripple, slip, slide, lift, and extract edits.
• For more information about trimming clips, see this excerpt from An Editor's Guide to Premiere Pro by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carman, and Jeff Greenberg.

You can zoom into an audio waveform in the Source Monitor to better identify locations for markers, In points, or Out points.

The Source Monitor panel holds versatile tools, and methods for working with clips. You can use tools and techniques to set, move, or remove In and Out points, cue the playhead to any of these points, or preview the frames at their locations.

For more information about working with clips in the Source Monitor, in this excerpt from An Editor's Guide to Premiere Pro by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carman, and Jeff Greenberg.

You can load more than one clip at a time in the Source Monitor. However, you can view only one clip at a time. Recently loaded clips are available from a menu at the top of the Source Monitor.

The In and Out points move together, keeping the duration between them constant.

Sometimes, adjusting In and Out points after a clip is in the Timeline is necessary. If you open a clip from the Timeline into the Source Monitor, you can drag the In/Out Grip in the Source Monitor to set new locations for the In and Out points. This technique is useful for using a different section of a clip in the Timeline. In fact, it is one way to perform a Slip edit.

You use the Source Monitor to cue a frame for a clip and the Program Monitor to cue the current frame for a sequence.

You can change a clip’s In point or Out point by dragging its edge in a Timeline panel. As you drag, the current In or Out point appears in the Program Monitor. A tool tip displays the number of frames that you are trimming: a negative value if you are dragging the edge toward the beginning of the sequence and a positive number if you are dragging toward the end of the sequence. You cannot trim past the original In and Out points of the source footage.

You can trim a clip in a sequence to the location of the playhead. However, set up these keyboard shortcuts to do so first:

• Trim In Point To Playhead
• Trim Out Point To Playhead

You can perform a ripple or rolling edit either directly on the tracks in the Timeline or using the Trim Monitor.

When you want to adjust the cut, or edit point, between two clips, use variations of simple trimming known as ripple edits and rolling edits. By using specialized tools, make adjustments in a single action that would otherwise require multiple steps to accomplish. When you perform ripple and rolling edits with trim tools, the affected frames appear in the Program Monitor side by side.

Rolling edit

A rolling edit trims an adjacent Out point and In point simultaneously and by the same number of frames. This action effectively moves the edit point between clips, preserving other clips’ positions in time and maintaining the total duration of the sequence. Pressing Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) when you begin to perform a rolling edit overrides video and audio linking, allowing you to create a split edit (L-cut or J-cut).

Ripple edit

A ripple edit trims a clip and shifts subsequent clips in the track by the amount you trim. Shortening a clip by ripple editing shifts all clips after the cut back in time; conversely, extending a clip shifts the clips that follow the cut forward in time. When you’re making a ripple edit, empty space on one side of the cut is treated as a clip and shifts in time just as a clip would be. Pressing Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) when you begin to perform a ripple edit ignores the link between video and audio.

For more information about ripple and rolling trims, see this excerpt from An Editor's Guide to Premiere Pro by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carman, and Jeff Greenberg.

See also Andrew Devis' tutorial on Creative COW entitled, “Learning the Tools 5: The Trim Monitor".

You can move the In point or Out point of a clip in a sequence to the playhead, without leaving gaps in the sequence. This type of editing is sometimes called extending an edit, or using extend edit commands.

In Premiere Pro CS5, you first assign keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard Customization dialog box. Then use the designated keyboard commands to extend edits as rolling edits. The commands in the Keyboard customization are as follows:

• Roll Previous Edit to CTI

• Roll Next Edit to CTI

These commands are available after you assign shortcuts to them from the Keyboard Customization dialog.

In Premiere Pro CS5.5, the names of the commands have been renamed to match the common industry nomenclature, from “Roll Previous/Next Edit to CTI” to “Extend Previous/Next Edit to the Playhead”. The extend edit commands are also in the Sequence menu by default.

1. Click a track header to target the track containing the clip you want to trim.

2. Drag the playhead to the location in the sequence to which you want to extend the clip In point or Out point.

3. In Premiere Pro CS5 or CS5.5, do one of the following:

   • To extend the clip’s In point to the playhead, press the keyboard command you assigned to Roll Previous Edit to CTI in Premiere Pro CS5. For Premiere Pro CS5.5, choose Sequence > Extend Previous Edit to Playhead or press E.

   • To extend the clip’s Out point at the playhead, press the keyboard command you assigned to Roll Next Edit to CTI for Premiere Pro CS5. For Premiere Pro CS5.5, choose Sequence > Extend Next Edit to Playhead or press Shift+E.

Just as ripple and rolling edits allow you to adjust a cut between two clips, slip and slide edits are useful when you want to adjust two cuts in a sequence of three clips. When you use the Slip or Slide tool, the Program Monitor displays the four frames involved in the edit side by side, except when editing audio only.

Though Slip and Slide tools are typically employed on the center of three adjacent clips, each tool functions normally even if the clip is adjacent to a clip on one side and blank space on the other.

A slip edit shifts a clip’s In and Out points forward or backward by the same number of frames in a single action. By dragging with the Slip tool, you can change a clip’s starting and ending frames without changing its duration or affecting adjacent clips.

A slide edit shifts a clip in time while trimming adjacent clips to compensate for the move. As you drag a clip left or right with the Slide tool, the Out point of the preceding clip and the In point of the following clip are trimmed by the number of frames you move the clip. The clip’s In and Out points (and hence, its duration) remain unchanged.

Franklin McMahon shows Ripple Edit, Rolling Edit, Slip, and Slide tools in this video on the Layers Magazine website.

Andrew Devis demonstrates the slip and slide tools and gives a simple way to remember which is which in this video on the Creative COW website.

For more information about slipping and sliding clips, see this excerpt from An Editor's Guide to Premiere Pro by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carman, and Jeff Greenberg.

You can create a split edit by unlinking the video from the audio in adjoining clips in a sequence, and then trimming audio separately from video so that the video of one overlaps the audio of the other. Typically, a rolling edit (or extend edit) is used for this task.

Pressing Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) when you begin to perform a rolling edit temporarily unlinks video and audio, allowing you to more easily create a split edit (L-cut or J-cut).

For more information about creating split edits, see this excerpt from An Editor's Guide to Premiere Pro by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carman, and Jeff Greenberg.

The Trim Monitor displays clip In and Out points at a cut so that you can see precisely which frames you are cutting. The left monitor shows the outgoing clip to the left of the edit point, and the right monitor shows the incoming clip to the right of it.

• To open the Trim Monitor, select Window > Trim Monitor.
• To open the Trim Monitor, press the T key.

  When you press the T key or use the menu command to open the Trim Monitor, the nearest edit is selected and the panel opens at the same time.

• To open the Trim Monitor in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and later, select Sequence > Trim Edit.
• To close the Trim Monitor, click the close box of the Trim Monitor.

• To preview the edit once, click the Play Edit button .
• To preview the edit repeatedly, click the Loop button and then click the Play Edit button.

You can set the number of frames that are trimmed when you use the Multiple-Frame Trim-in button or the Multiple-Frame Trim-out button .

Franklin McMahon shows Ripple Edit, Rolling Edit, Slip, and Slide tools in this video on the Layers Magazine website.

You can add In and Out points to speech analysis text to select a portion of a master clip. You can insert or overwrite the selected portion directly from the Speech Analysis section of the Metadata panel.

• Here's a link to the section with the shortcuts for the Trim Monitor panel.
• See Andrew Devis' tutorial “Learning the Tools 5: The Trim Monitor” on the Creative COW website.
• See Andrew Devis' tutorial “Learning the Tools 1: Trim & Ripple Edit” on the Creative COW website.
• Karl Soule shows how to use the Trim Monitor in Adobe Premiere Pro in this video tutorial.
• Kevin Monahan explains trimming with keyboard commands in Adobe Premiere Pro in this blog post.
• For more information about trimming clips in the Trim Monitor, see this excerpt from An Editor's Guide to Premiere Pro by Richard Harrington, Robbie Carman, and Jeff Greenberg.
• This video by Paul Joy shows some of the shortcuts for the Trim Monitor, as well as making it clear that it's what customers want to be taught about.