Customizing the Transitions Palette

Speed and efficiency are key with any video-editing project. When putting the finishing touches on your edited rough cut, you will probably spend a great deal of time adding effects and transitions. Premiere offers you a way to reduce your time and increase efficiency by allowing you to customize the Transitions Palette. One feature allows you to see a cycling animation of how the transition looks after you edit it into your timeline. Another feature allows you to hide transition icons that you are not using for this project so that you can quickly and easily work with the transitions you need for the current project. You can even create your own custom folders to sort and store favorite transitions any way you desire.

There are many different ways you can group and display the transition icons.

To animate the icons, do the following:

1. Select Window > Show Transitions (if the Transitions Palette is not already open).

2. Click the triangle in the upper-right corner of the Transitions Palette window to display the pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 5.4.

   Figure 5.4. The Transitions Palette window pop-up menu.

   

3. Select Animate. The icons begin to animate, showing a representative version of how each particular transition looks.

note

To stop the icons from animating, click the Animate menu choice to cease the cycling animation.

To display only selected icons, do the following:

1. Select Window > Show Transitions (if the Transitions Palette is not already open).

2. Select one or more transitions you would like to hide.

3. Click the triangle in the upper-right corner of the Transitions Palette window to display the pop-up menu.

4. Select Hide Selected. Only the icons that you did not select should remain.

To restore the hidden icons individually or to restore the entire hidden group, do the following:

1. Select Show Hidden from the pop-up menu. The icons reappear but are grayed out.

2. Click one or more icons that you would like to make active.

3. Select Show Select from the pop-up menu.

tip

Hold down the Shift key while clicking to select a contiguous group of icons. Hold down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Option key (Macintosh) to select multiple icons not in contiguous order. (See Figure 5.5.)

Figure 5.5. Use modifier keys to select different groupings.

Do the following to create new folders in the Transitions Palette:

1. Click the Folder icon in the lower-right corner of the Transitions Palette.

2. Type a name for the folder in the New Folder window.

3. Click OK.

4. Drag any transition icon from another folder into the new folder.

Even though you have neatly categorized all your effects, it might be difficult to locate one. A quick and easy way to find the desired transition, even inside folders, is to use the Find feature. Click the binoculars icon at the bottom of the Transitions Palette. Type the effect's name and click the Find button. If you don't remember the exact name, type the first few letters and click Find. Premiere locates any transitions that contain that spelling. If you have the Expand Folders check box marked, Premiere automatically searches and expands folders that contain effects similar to your search. Click the Find Next button to search for the next match. With all the folders collapsed, type "dis" for "dissolve" to see what I mean.