Premiere Pro - Replacing a bunch of clips with a nest
April 18, 2023 10:53 AM Subscribe
Hi, I seem to have backed myself into a corner when editing with Adobe Premiere Pro. Can you help me undo my mistake?
I placed a clip in a sequence and spent quite some time editing and cutting out parts. Only later I realized that I want to apply some video effects to the whole thing(*), but now it only exists as a bunch of separate clips in the sequence, and as far as I can tell you can't bulk apply an effect to multiple things. I wouldn't want to do that even if I could, as it would lead to a headache of having duplicated settings that are hard to maintain.
Apparently what I should have done is first create a nested sequence containing the clip and cut on that that instead of editing the clip directly. Then I can apply the effects on the nest timeline and have it affect everything on the other sequence at once.
Great, problem solved. Except I don't want to redo all the work. Premiere has a "Replace With Clip" and I was quite excited that I could select each segment and swap it out for the corresponding segment of the nested sequence. Premiere will happily let me do this, but it does not maintain the in/out points -- every clip starts at 0. From reading context clues, since one of the replace choices is "From Source Monitor, Match Frame", that seems to be the one that will set the in/out points. If I manually line up the nest at the in-point in the source monitor and choose that option, it works. But I can't see a way to automate that other than by manually copying and pasting the timecode for each segment.
That's still quicker than redoing my work, but is there a better way? This has to be a common newbie mistake. I know I could probably come up with a keyboard macro or something (although maybe not, there's a lot of right clicking here.)
(*) Yes, yes, I know what you're saying when you read that: just nest the series of cut up clips and apply the video effects 'downstream' of the cuts instead of 'upstream'. However, I don't think that will work in my case because the cuts line up with other elements in the timeline and if I replace them with a nested sequence the cut boundaries all go away, making it hard to adjust and tweak things. I could easily use the razor to re-add all the cuts so they line up with the other tracks, but then I'm right back to where I started in that if I want to edit effect settings, I have to do it to N things instead of one thing. I can't include the other tracks in the nest because I don't want the effects applied to them. I don't think 'downstream' is viable.
I placed a clip in a sequence and spent quite some time editing and cutting out parts. Only later I realized that I want to apply some video effects to the whole thing(*), but now it only exists as a bunch of separate clips in the sequence, and as far as I can tell you can't bulk apply an effect to multiple things. I wouldn't want to do that even if I could, as it would lead to a headache of having duplicated settings that are hard to maintain.
Apparently what I should have done is first create a nested sequence containing the clip and cut on that that instead of editing the clip directly. Then I can apply the effects on the nest timeline and have it affect everything on the other sequence at once.
Great, problem solved. Except I don't want to redo all the work. Premiere has a "Replace With Clip" and I was quite excited that I could select each segment and swap it out for the corresponding segment of the nested sequence. Premiere will happily let me do this, but it does not maintain the in/out points -- every clip starts at 0. From reading context clues, since one of the replace choices is "From Source Monitor, Match Frame", that seems to be the one that will set the in/out points. If I manually line up the nest at the in-point in the source monitor and choose that option, it works. But I can't see a way to automate that other than by manually copying and pasting the timecode for each segment.
That's still quicker than redoing my work, but is there a better way? This has to be a common newbie mistake. I know I could probably come up with a keyboard macro or something (although maybe not, there's a lot of right clicking here.)
(*) Yes, yes, I know what you're saying when you read that: just nest the series of cut up clips and apply the video effects 'downstream' of the cuts instead of 'upstream'. However, I don't think that will work in my case because the cuts line up with other elements in the timeline and if I replace them with a nested sequence the cut boundaries all go away, making it hard to adjust and tweak things. I could easily use the razor to re-add all the cuts so they line up with the other tracks, but then I'm right back to where I started in that if I want to edit effect settings, I have to do it to N things instead of one thing. I can't include the other tracks in the nest because I don't want the effects applied to them. I don't think 'downstream' is viable.
No need to nest or move to another sequence, you haven’t messed anything up and are using a valid/expected workflow as far as I can tell. You can apply effects directly to source clips by dragging the effect onto the clip in the project window or by opening the clip in the source monitor and dragging effect onto that (select clip in timeline and press ‘f’). That should accomplish what you want. It’s a little obscure but very useful for color correction etc. Edit the effect same as normal via effect control panel when you have the source monitor selected. You can also stack new effects onto individual parts of the clip you’ve cut up in the timeline.
Alternatively look into adjustment layers which has more flexibility but might not work with how you’ve set up tracks on timeline.
posted by soy bean at 1:44 PM on April 18, 2023
Alternatively look into adjustment layers which has more flexibility but might not work with how you’ve set up tracks on timeline.
posted by soy bean at 1:44 PM on April 18, 2023
unless I'm misunderstanding, Adjustment Layers are what you want -- you just need to arrange your video tracks so the adjustment layer only applies to the video track you want it to.
And, you can apply effects to the source video that all the cuts are taken from, in the effects panel there's a tab for source vs clips -- so if you want it to apply only to clips cut from the same source video, just apply your affects to the source and not the edited clips.
You can also cut and paste effects specifically to clips, including selecting clips by ctrl-clicking, using Edit > Paste Attributes and uncheck the boxes for the things you don't want to apply, it'll be a little more time but you can get just the effect on just the clips you want.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:21 AM on April 19, 2023
And, you can apply effects to the source video that all the cuts are taken from, in the effects panel there's a tab for source vs clips -- so if you want it to apply only to clips cut from the same source video, just apply your affects to the source and not the edited clips.
You can also cut and paste effects specifically to clips, including selecting clips by ctrl-clicking, using Edit > Paste Attributes and uncheck the boxes for the things you don't want to apply, it'll be a little more time but you can get just the effect on just the clips you want.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:21 AM on April 19, 2023
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Keep in mind that you can duplicate clips and sequences and make changes to one while not affecting the original. The stuff you're doing in Premiere is non-destructive.
"and as far as I can tell you can't bulk apply an effect to multiple thing"
Sure you can. Select multiple clips in the timeline and drag the effect onto them. If you have a setting you want, you can go into the effect controls on that particular clip, copy the effect, and then paste it onto multiple clips in the timeline. Yes, if you need to make an adjustment to one, you'll need to do it in each one, or copy and paste again, but that's why applying an effect to a sequence is the way to go.
posted by jonathanhughes at 12:13 PM on April 18, 2023