4 Customizing Your Workspace

#4 Customizing Your Workspace

Figure 4a shows the Premiere Pro interface in all its glory. You may already know what many of the windows are and what they do, but I want to make sure you know their official names (for example, it's the Program Monitor, not the preview window) before I started tossing them around.

Figure 4a. Here's Premiere Pro; please note the official names for all the windows (er... panels and monitors), since I'll be using these names throughout the book.

Adobe gives you lots of flexibility in using the various Production Studio applications by allowing you to drag and resize most panels in each program's workspace to your heart's desire. You can also choose between several "workspaces" designed to facilitate a particular editing or production activity.

The most obvious way to alter your workspace is by increasing the size of the preview window. It's easy enough to do, but in most cases you'll want to resize the window briefly then return it to its normal size. There are three more options that will save you time by eliminating workspace clutter and highlighting frequently used features.

First is the ability to close panels that you don't typically use. For example, when editing, I want my Premiere Pro Timeline panel as wide as possible. In Premiere Pro's default workspace, however, a three-tabbed panel sits to the left of the Timeline, taking up space I'd rather allocate to the Timeline.

Restoring Your Workspace

If your custom workspace gets too funky, you can always restore equilibrium by choosing Premiere Pro's Editing workspace (or pressing Shift+F9), which returns your workspace to its original positioning.

Two items you will rarely use in editing are the Info and History tabs. To close them permanently, do the following:

1.	Select the appropriate tab.
2.	Click the small x shown on the panel when selected. The tab will disappear.

You'll spend much more time in the third panel, "Effects." To make it more prominent, do the following:

1.	Select the Effects tab.
2.	Click the small "gripper" area on the left edge of the tab.
3.	Drag it to the Project panel (Figure 4b). Figure 4b. Drag the Effects panel alongside the Project panel by releasing the gripper area onto the middle (highlighted) panel.

When you do this, Premiere Pro divides the Project panel into five drop zones (see Figure 4b). To reposition the panel, do one of the following:

• Release the mouse when the middle drop zone is highlighted, and Premiere Pro will "group" the panel next to the Project tab, which is where you want it (Figure 4c).
  
  

  Figure 4c. Now you've got the Effects Panel right where you want it.

  

  
  
• Choose any of the other drop zones, and Premiere will "dock" the Effects panel above, below, or alongside the Project panel, according to your preference.
  
  

Finding Lost Panels

Even with custom workspaces, you can lose a panel or two, or perhaps you may need to access a panel that's not available in that workspace. Note that you can open any panel by choosing Window > and then the target panel.

Restoring Your Workspace

If your custom workspace gets too funky you can always restore equilibrium by choosing Premiere Pro's Editing workspace (or pressing Shft+F9), which returns your workspace to its original positioning.

Now you've got the Effects panel right where you want it. Once you've achieved your desired workspace, save it by choosing Window > Workspace > Save Workspace (Figure 4d).

Figure 4d. Now that I've got my workspace all prettied up, here's how I save it.

As you can see in Figure 4d, I've already saved two workspaces, "Jan's edit" and "multicamera synch."