Easy way of editing keyframes in adobe Premiere

Question

I'm a first time adobe premiere user. I can get the results I want after a fashion, but I find the methods I use way to cumbersome. I was wondering if you guys could point me some shortcuts.

I have two video streams from two camera's (slides & stage). I fade over from one camera to the next depending on what happens. I have added both streams to the sequence and just turn the opacity of the top stream to 0 when I want to show the bottom stream.

I have a large bunch of timecodes for when I want to make a fade-over. However, the default fade is way to slow. So I have to now:

1. go to the time code
2. add a keyframe
3. drag the frame to 0 or 100
4. right click selecte bezier
5. drag the bezier handle upwards enough that the fade speed is acceptable

That's a lot of mouse work, fiddlings and clickings. I have found the effect controls which allow me to fine tune the controls, but still with a lot of imprecise mouse moving.

I would love to have a way to just specify all keyframes and bezier parameters in a text file or so, so I can quickly edit them change all bezier parameters for all keyframes at the same time and be able to twiddle the results. Another possibility would be to copy keyframe settings, apply settings to multiple keyframes at once or to define keyframe 'classes' or so.

Even more so, I'm just learning premiere so I sometimes make rooky mistakes. For example by picking the wrong sequence framerate (I think) i managed to create a result that flickered heavily. I can't edit sequence settings so I had to create a new sequence. But I can't find how to copy markers or keyframes from one sequence to another. So I have to set them all over again :(

Any ideas on how I can improve the efficiency of this process? Or maybe I shouldn't be using keyframes and opacity at all?

thanks!

Answer 1

Adjusting the default video transition duration

Go to Preferences -> General and change the Video Transition Default Duration to a frame amount of your choice.

Optimising current workflow

I can think of some optimalisations regarding your current workflow. It's not a drastic change, but might help you do the task faster.

1. I would suggest splitting the timecode list per videotrack (slide & stage) according to the following scheme:

   List 1: slide fade-outs
   List 2: slide fade-ins
   List 3: stage fade-outs
   List 4: stage fade-ins

   List 1 should match list 4 and list 2 should match list 3.

2. Go to the first fade-out on a list. Create a keyframe pattern you like for the fade-out, for example the one shown below:

In the effects panel it looks like this:

A linear keyframe followed by a bezier keyframe followd by a hold keyframe.

3. Now select those three keyframes in the effect panel by dragging a rectangle around them or clicking each keyframe while holding ctrl (Windows) cmd (Mac).

4. Right click and press Copy

5. Now go to each fade-out timecode on both video tracks (so list 1 and 3) and in the effects panel right click and press Paste. Of course you can also hit ctrl+V or cmd+V.

6. Repeat this process for list 2 and 4.

In this way you only have to set the bezier speed once and just copy paste the keyframe sequence at each timecode.

Exporting keyframe locations to textfile

I'm not aware of a way to do this directly, but if you export your project to a Final Cut Pro XML or to EDL (Select sequence, then: File -> Export) you have the ability to change the position of /add keyframes through a text editor by editing the .edl or .xml files . You can then import the .edl or .xml file into Premiere Pro as a new sequence. However, these formats do not support bezier keyframes.

Answer 2

I've marked Bart Arondson's answer as correct because it answers precisely the question I was asking. (and thanks for that and the quick response! Especially using Final Cut Pro XML to be able to automate this process)

But because I also added the reason why I was asking the question, and some people might end up here through google based on those keywords, I'd like to repeat the answer I got from the Walter Soyka at CreativeCow which gives a different method of achieving the goal (without keyframes)

I wouldn't do this by keyframing opacity.

I'd either use a multicamera sequence, or I'd make split top sequence with the razor tool, delete the material I didn't want, and apply transitions to the top layer to get the fades.

(from: http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/3/935382)

Multi camera sequence seems to be what I need.