Premiere's most annoying 'feature' ever?
PierreLouisBeranek Jul 27, 2013 7:08 PMI spent the last 12 hours filming and editing a Same Day Edit for the first time using PP CC. For those that don't know what a Same Day Edit is, it's the production of a wedding video on the same day as the wedding, for screening before the bride and groom walk into the hall around 7pm (here's an example I produced last weekend: https://vimeo.com/70746619). In other words, it's some of the most demanding, high-stress editing there is. For this reason, there's zero time for BS.
I can't remember the last time I wanted to apply crossfades to a group of clips at the same time. In fact, very few professional editing situations actually require this (for home slideshows, sure it's common, but not for most professional work). However, I lost count how many times today I added transitions to the wrong clips by mistake because of PP CC's new method of applying transitions to selected clips instead of only to the in/out points on active tracks under the CTI, as years of professional work with Premiere have taught me it should work.
Had the Premiere team held any respect for our established work conventions (that Adobe itself set for us!), they would have created a different keyboard shortcut for adding transitions to selected clips, such as to not change/mess up the pre-CC 'Apply Video Transition' and 'Apply Audio Transition' shortcuts.
But wait, such a shortcut does exist!
There's only one problem: That new shortcut applies transitions to both selected Video and Audio clips, while the two prior shortcuts were changed to apply transitions to selected clips of their respective type: video or audio. In other words, the two prior shortcuts we knew and loved prior to CC were not spared the jarring breaking away from convention brought forth by CC.
Some users suggest that we assign a shortcut to the 'Deselect All' function and remember to use it before adding transitions to the CTI position with Ctrl-D or Ctrl-Shift-D... every... single... time...
ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!!! As an editor, I want fewer steps, not more steps! If a new feature forces me to take 2 steps to achieve what used to take me 1 step, then I say take that feature back to the drawing board or at least give me a way to turn it off!
2 steps = worse that 1 step.
1 step = better than 2 steps
It does't take a genius to figure that out!
For Adobe to come along and think it's okay to create a new 'feature' that messes up years of established workflow convention is nothing short of arrogant and insulting. For the love of God, at least give us a way to turn this new 'feature' off!
Here is a much more sensible approach, that would RESPECT pre-CC conventions:
'Apply Video/Audio Transition' = same shortcuts as in CS6 (i.e. transitions ONLY applied under CTI)
'Apply Default Transitions to Selection' = apply transitions ONLY to any selected clips.
and if necessary...
'Apply Default Transition to Selected Video Clips' = applies video transition ONLY to selected video clips
'Apply Default Transition to Selected Audio Clips' = applies audio transition ONLY to selected audio clips
There. How simple is that?!
This simple tweak would:
1. Avoid user confusion.
2. Respect pre-CC conventions.
3. Avoid pissing off loyal Premiere editors with muscle memory deveropped over years of use.
4. Avoid mistakes (such as when users have unseen selected clips they don't know about and forget to deselect them).
5. Show that the Premiere team understands and respects our needs.
This current problem is quite possibly the single most annoying thing I've even encountered not only in Premiere, but in any Adobe product! A new feature should make the program better for EVERYONE. Not just better for some people in some instances, and worse for many people in most instances!
Thankfully the solution is so simple! Will Adobe care to fix this?
Premiere Pro CC has some nice features, but for me, nothing that justified being subjected to the royal PITA caused by this problem. I have until mid-August to cancel my CC membership for a full refund. Hopefully Adobe sees the light and fixes this by then. Otherwise I'm going back to CS6, which has fewer 'features', but also fewer PITAs.
I'll post my official FR here after sending it for others to copy/paste or base their own FRs on. Hopefully there are many others on this forum that care enough about improving Premiere to take action by posting their own FR. New features should make our editing lives better, not worse!




