The Source Monitor

In older versions of Premiere, the Source Monitor was called the Clip window and it was not attached to the Program Monitor. The windows were recombined in Premiere Pro 1.0, but Premiere Pro 2.0 finally breaks that attachment. You can still think of the Source Monitor as a clip window, because it is the only window where you can open and play individual clips. You use the Source Monitor to open and review media that you wish to edit and incorporate into your sequences (Figures 4.2).

Figure 4.2. The Source Monitor features a drop-down menu and wing menu (right corner), as well as timecode fields, a time navigation area, transport controls, and editing group boxes

What You Can Open

In the Source Monitor you will be able to open and view

Video clips
Audio clips
Audio and video clips
Stills
Sequences
Additionally, you can open synthetic media, such as
Color mattes
Black video
Offline files
Bars and tone
The Universal Counting Leader

When you drag media from the Project panel into the Source Monitor, you open the media for viewing and playback (even offline files). If you double-click on media in your Project panel, it will load it into the Source Monitor. However, not all media opens for viewing when double-clicked on. With sequences, a standard double-click opens the sequence in the Timeline panel, and a Ctrl+double-click opens the sequence in the Source Monitor. With offline files, a double-click opens an offline file's properties; dragging it into the Source Monitor opens it as a clip to scrub in.

Monitor Layout

As shown in Figure 4.2, the Source Monitor has a few distinct regions that display information and give you access to transport controls and features. Although the Source Monitor has a tab area, media does not open as separate tabs. Media opens and is listed within the Source Monitor tab.

To the right of the tab area is the wing menu (Figures 4.3), which has physical links to some of the button options at the bottom of the window. These physical links can be assigned to unique keyboard shortcuts using the Keyboard Customization function.

Figure 4.3. Like all panels, the Source Monitor has a wing menu that allows direct access to features that can be routed to customized keyboard shortcuts

The center of the Source Monitor is the viewing area, where media plays back. You can load multiple items into the Source Monitor by dragging multiple selections or folders into its viewing area. Dragging a folder full of items loads all of the items into the Source Monitor. To open an individual item once it is loaded, select it from the drop-drown menu. You can close the open media from the window by selecting Close from the drop-down menu. You can also close all the listed items by selecting Close All.

Below the viewing area, you have the timecode display, time ruler, viewing area bar, and the transport controls arranged in three separate groups, similar to the Capture window.

Timecode and the Time Navigation Controls

When you open media in the Source Monitor, the lower left text area reveals the timecode value of the current frame that is being played or scrubbed on in the monitor. The timecode value to the right is the total duration of the media in the window. Once you start modifying the In and Out points, the duration updates dynamically.

Notes

To watch a tutorial that discusses how Premiere Pro 2.0 handles clip timecodes, open the Timecode_Review.wmv file, located in the Video Tutorials folder on the book's DVD. When the file loads in Windows Media Player, press Alt+Enter to play it back at full-screen size.

If you find that the correct timecode does not display when you open a clip, there are two new preferences that you should check (Figures 4.4). To ensure you are viewing your source clip's captured timecode, confirm that both the Edit > Preferences > Media > Display Media Timecode in Source Frame Rate and In/Out Points Show Media Offset check boxes are selected.

Figure 4.4. Using 2.0's new preferences, you can specify what timecode displays when a clip opens. If you turn on the first check box, when you add a non-drop frame clip to a drop frame project, the clip's timecode displays as non-drop frame instead of the project's drop frame. Checking the second box means that when you open a clip it does not show its In/Out counter value from 00;00;00;00 to the end of the clip; instead it displays the physical timecode that was captured with the clip, such as 01:01:00:00

The time ruler is basically a visual counter for your open media that can be scrubbed in and zoomed into and out from (Figures 4.5). Time is delineated by tick marks that represent the Timebase specified in your Project Settings. Any markers, In points, and Out points assigned in your clip also are visually represented in the time ruler. Above the time ruler is the viewing area bar, which you stretch and drag to zoom into and navigate through portions of your open media. In the time ruler, the blue playback head that you click and drag around to scrub through your media is called the Current Time Indicator (CTI). The CTI also exists in the timeline where it is referred to as the CTI or Edit Line.

Figure 4.5. The blue timecode value reflects the current position of the CTI. The black timecode value reflects the duration of the In/Out instance visible in the time ruler. You can resize the gray viewing area bar to zoom in and out of the time ruler

Scrubbing through a one-hour clip frame by frame would be difficult, for example, if you did not have the capability to zoom into a specific area of the time ruler. By being able to zoom in (dragging inward from the edges of bar), you can get down to whatever magnification you want. Once you are zoomed in, you can click and drag from the center of the bar to reveal different areas of the open clip. The viewing area bar does have an intelligent zoom: If the CTI is within view, the viewing area bar will zoom in and out around the CTI position.

Buttons and Transport Controls

Below the time ruler are your transport controls and various buttons associated with marking and navigating to In and Out points in the source media. These buttons and controls are broken up into three separate group boxes (Figures 4.6). The left group assigns and navigates to In and Out points for your open media. The center group holds the transport controls for playing back your media. The right group contains buttons specific to the editing tasks of the Source Monitor window.

Figure 4.6. The Transport area of the Source Monitor contains three group boxes of controls. The left group manages In and Out points, the center group handles playing back your media, and the right group houses editing-related buttons

Tip

If you hold down the Alt key, Play In to Out becomes the Play Edit button.

Although some buttons do not have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them, you can search the Edit > Keyboard Customization > Windows > Monitor and Trim Windows to see which keyboard shortcuts are available to be assigned.

Holding the Shift key when clicking Step Back steps back five frames at a time. Likewise, holding the Shift key when pressing Step Forward steps forward in five-frame increments.

In the left group are six buttons (and one hidden one):

In Point (shortcut key: I) Marks an In point at the current CTI position.
Out Point (shortcut key: O) Marks current CTI position.
Set Unnumbered Marker (shortcut key: * on the number pad) Assigns an unnumbered marker at the current CTI position.
Go to In (shortcut key: Q) Automatically moves the CTI from its current position to the assigned In point.
Go to Out (shortcut key: W) Automatically moves the CTI from its current position to the assigned Out point.
Play In to Out. Automatically plays back your media from your assigned In point to your assigned Out point.
Play Edit. When you press the Alt key, the Play In to Out button becomes the Play Edit button. Plays back from the current CTI position using General Preferences.

The center group houses your primary transport controls, which are (from the left):

Go to Previous Marker. Moves the CTI from its current position to the position of the nearest assigned marker prior to it.
Step Back (shortcut key: Left Arrow) Moves the CTI back one frame at a time. You must click every time you want to step; holding down this button will not continuously step.
Play/Stop Toggle (shortcut key: Spacebar) Plays or stops the media in the viewing area. This toggle has it to engage playback. When you are playing a clip, the Stop icon displays. When you press it, playback stops.
Step Forward (shortcut key: Right Arrow) Moves the CTI one frame forward with each click. You cannot hold down this button to have the CTI continuously step.
Go to Next Marker. Updates the CTI position to the next assigned marker nearest to the CTI's current position.
Shuttle slider. Allows you to dynamically throw the Monitor into variable playback speeds. The farther from the center, left, or right the slider is, the faster playback will be. The closer to the center you drag, the slower playback will be. The shuttle is great for watching in slow motion as it will play beautifully without stuttering.
Jog disk. Enables you to scrub through your media, either forward or backward, with greater detail. Jogging is like scrubbing through your clip in slow motion; you can control the scrubbing by dragging. While the shuttle controls variable playback speeds, the jog disk steps through your media at a constant frame-by-frame rate.

On the right, the third group has specific functions unique to the Source Monitor:

Loop. Activates a state of playback. If you have Loop pressed, whenever you engage playback you will be in Loop mode, meaning when the CTI hits the end of the media or an Out point, it continues playing from the beginning or In point of the clip.
Safe Margins. A display state for the Source Monitor. When you click Safe Margins, they will be visible in your Source Monitor (Figures 4.7), adhering to the value assigned for them in your General Project Settings. Safe Margins are best used when trying to make sure graphics, stills, and clips have action within the television safe area of the video frame.

Figure 4.7. With Safe Margins turned on, the gray overlaid boxes reflect the Title Safe (inner box) and Action Safe (outer box) areas
Output. Refers to what is being output or displayed in your Source Monitor panel. The first group of choices in the drop-down menu includes all your vectorscope and waveform monitors, and the second group includes the output display quality (Figures 4.8). Briefly, if you were to select YC Waveform for your output display, your same media would play back in the Source Monitor, only it would be displayed as if it was being output to a waveform monitor. Using difference scope views allows you to gauge color and brightness values of your media. It is very helpful to use these scopes when performing such tasks as color correction.

Figure 4.8. From the Output button's drop-down menu you can specify the Source Monitor's viewing mode. Additionally, you can toggle the display quality between Highest, Draft, and Automatic

The quality settings are Highest, Draft, and Automatic. Highest displays the media in the Source Monitor at its full resolution. Draft displays media at quarter resolution. Automatic plays your media at full resolution when it does not detect instances with filtering or effects (which require rendering). If Automatic mode detects an instance that needs to be rendered, it switches to quarter resolution for that instance, then back to full resolution when finished with the instance. The changes in sizes will affect playback performance. If you have a sequence with a lot of effects open in your Source Monitor, you may not experience excellent real-time playback if you are set to Highest quality, because it will try to render the sequence in real-time at high quality, which requires a lot processing. Leave your Source Monitor in Automatic mode, instead.

Insert (shortcut key: ,) Inserts selected media from the Source Monitor into the timeline at either an assigned In point or the CTI (if you don't have an assigned In point). An insert edit does not overwrite media in the timeline. An Insert edit splits and shifts whatever media is in the timeline so that your shot can be placed without replacing or overwriting any other media.
Overlay (shortcut key: .) Overlays the selected media from the Source Monitor into the timeline at an assigned In point or the CTI (if you don't have an assigned In point). An Overlay edit is the opposite of an Insert: It overwrites the material that it is being edited over. With an Insert edit, if you inserted a five-second clip in the middle of your timeline, the overall duration of the timeline would increase by five seconds. Using the same example with an Overlay edit, the duration would not change; you would have replaced five seconds of your edit with a different five seconds of material.
Toggle Take Audio and Video. Determines which elements of your media will be edited into your timeline. If you have a clip with both audio and video, you have the option of adding the video only, audio only, or audio and video together to your timeline. Clicking the toggle activates the different states of the button to give you the proper feedback for each state. If the toggle is in Audio mode, only the audio portion of your clip will be used for edits (Figures 4.9). Video mode means only video will be used, and Audio and Video mode means audio and video both will be used.

Figure 4.9. When the Toggle Take Audio and Video is Audio mode, the Source Monitor displays the audio waveform for the active clip and will edit only the audio attributes into the timeline

The Source Monitor group boxes contain all the tools necessary for navigating and defining which portions and attributes of the open media will be added to your sequence. Once media is added to your sequence, you can continue to use the Source Monitor to edit material from the active sequence.

Editing Functions

In the Source Monitor, you can perform edits using the Insert and Overlay buttons, or you can drag and drop from the Source Monitor into the Timeline window. The usual workflow is to open the media in the Source Monitor, to determine the In/Out instance of the media, then to add it into the Timeline window (Figures 4.10).

Figure 4.10. You can designate a subclip instance within the source material by assigning In and Out points (notice the dark gray region in the time ruler). You then can drag that subclip from the Source Monitor and drop it in the timeline

Additionally, a clip instance edited into the Timeline window can be opened in the Source Monitor by double-clicking on the clip in the timeline (Figures 4.11). The clip opens as a subclip in the Source Monitor window, and any adjustments to its In point or Out point automatically update the clip instance in the timeline.

Figure 4.11. Double-clicking on the subclip instance from the timeline does not open the master clip from which the In/Out was assigned. Instead, it opens the subclip as its own clip instance in the Source Monitor. Any modifications made to this subclip's In or Out points in the Source Monitor immediately affects the clip instance in the timeline. Notice that the clip name in the top of the Source Monitor reflects that of the timeline instance (Sequence Name: Clip Name and timecode) that was opened as opposed to the master clip from which it originated (Clip Name only as seen in Figure 4.10)

Although the technical name for a clip instance dropped down into the timeline is a subclip, there is also a powerful Subclip feature that is new for 2.0.

Creating a Subclip

New to Premiere Pro 2.0 is the ability to create individual subclips for your Project panel. Dragging and dropping clips into your sequences might be fine for most work, but if you work with long or diverse content-oriented clips then you might want to break the master clips up into smaller more defined subclips with individual names. If you want to create a unique subclip instance that references only a small portion of a master clip, you first open the master clip from the Project panel in the Source Monitor and define an In/Out instance. Now, instead of dragging the clip into the timeline, drag the clip directly into the Project panel (Figures 4.12). After you drop the clip into the Project panel, Premiere prompts you to rename it. Do so, and a new subclip instance appears (specific icon and all) in the Project panel, ready for use in any of your sequences.

Figure 4.12. With the same In/Out instance from the master clip in Figure 4.10, notice how the cursor updates when you drag the source clip into the Project panel. Once the subclip is named, when it is opened in the Source Monitor notice that the entire range of the clip is defined by the In and Out points previously assigned when creating the subclip. Note that the duration of the clip in both the Project panel and Source Monitor is 6;00

Notes

For a quick review of creating and working with subclips in Premiere Pro 2.0, open the Subclip_Review.wmv tutorial, located in the Video Tutorials folder on the book's DVD. When the file loads in Windows Media Player, press Alt+Enter to play it back at full-screen size.

With Project panel subclips, as long as the source media for the master clip is not deleted from your disk, you can view the media for subclip. This means you can remove the master clips from your project, to reduce clutter, and continue editing only with the custom-created subclips.

Wing Menu Options

The Source Monitor's wing menu is where you can choose features or viewing modes specific to the window. Most of the choices are self-explanatory, but two important functions aren't that obvious:

Gang Source and Program. Gang Source and Program means that you are locking certain transport controls together. If you gang the two monitors, all scrubbing in the Source Monitor will be mimicked in the Program Monitor. If you step one frame forward in the Program, you will step one frame forward in the Source. Although this does not seem like an obvious and useful function, it proves very powerful for certain workflows such as color correction and multicam editing.
Audio Units. Because you now have conformed audio files of greater bit depth and detail, you may want to zoom in, scrub, and assign In or Out points at the sub-frame level (Figures 4.13). To switch your counter display from Video Frames to Audio Units, simply select Audio Units from the wing menu. Remember, once you switch to Audio Units, the Step Forward button will step one sample at a time and that will barely register any sound. Although there is an increase in detail, you may have to do a bit more physical scrubbing and clicking within the scrub area to navigate to your desired locations.

Figure 4.13. With the Source Monitor set to display audio units, you zoom closer into audio files. In addition, the timecode reflects time in 1/100000ths units so that you can isolate, identify, and edit an exact sample of audio

Magnification

Finally, you can magnify the viewable area of your open media, by choosing the Source Monitor's drop-down Magnification menu, between the timecode displays. Clicking it reveals a list of zoom states. The default choice, Fit, considers the current size of the window and then resizes the media so that the entire frame fits inside the window. You will notice that if you set your magnification to Fit, any resizing of the window results in dynamic automatic resizing of the media. If you choose 25% from the Magnification menu, the media takes up a quarter of its normal full-sized space. If your Source Monitor window is larger than the 25% size, there will be gray space surrounding the edge of the media. If you select a size that is greater than the size of the Source Monitor window, the edges of the clip exceed the edges of the Source Monitor window (Figures 4.14a and b).

Figures 4.14a and b. Two zoom states for the Source Monitor: Fit (a) always fits the image as large as possible into the current window size. If you are zoomed in close (b), you can use the Hand tool to drag the frame inside the view area to look at a different region of the image