The Program Monitor

The Program Monitor is your television screen for the timeline's edited sequences. From the Program Monitor, you can make edits and adjustments to the open sequences, as well as preview or manipulate the creation of video effects. The Program Monitor has almost the same buttons and features as the Source Monitor; the difference is that the Program Monitor refers to sequences, not source material (Figures 4.15). For example, the In Point, Out Point, Markers, and Edits buttons are applied to whatever active sequence is open in the Program Monitor, not to individual clips. Because of the button similarities, this section will cover only those transport buttons unique to the Program Monitor.

Figure 4.15. The Program Monitor always displays an open sequence, enabling you to navigate through the sequence and to make adjustments to specific areas of your edit. Similar to the Source Monitor it contains a drop-down menu that allows you to open other sequences from your Timeline panel. Notice how the Timeline panel contains the same two sequences that the Program Monitor reveals from its drop-down menu

When you are making an edit from the Source Monitor to the timeline and you are using the editing buttons, the position of the CTI or the In point in the Program Monitor is where your edit will be performed. These windows work hand in hand, so it's important to pay attention to what you are doing in both windows.

What You Can Open

In the Program Monitor you can open any and all sequences in your projectwhether the sequence is open in the timeline or not. Double-clicking on a sequence from your Project panel activates it in the timeline, as well as activating it in the Program Monitor. Whatever sequence is active in the Timeline window will also be active in the Program Monitor and vice versa.

Monitor Layout

The panel for the Program Monitor has the same structure as the Source Monitor, but all the timecode data and information listed reflect the active sequence, as opposed to an active item of media. The CTI position reflects the location of the CTI within the boundaries of your sequence.

The tab area of the Program Monitor allows you to activate or close any open sequences. Because the Program Monitor is merely a monitor for sequences, activating a sequence opens it in the Timeline panel, thus allowing you to play back, edit, and manipulate it. To close a sequence from the Program Monitor, click the drop-down menu with the sequence active and choose Close. This does not delete the sequence; it just closes it from view. Closing a sequence in the Timeline panel also closes the associated listing in the Program Monitor.

Timecode and Time Navigation Controls

A sequence can have a total duration of 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds, and 29 frames, which is just enough time to use all the timecode values that exist. When you scrub within the Program Monitor's time ruler you will be scrubbing through whatever sequence is open in your Program Monitor. If you scrub in the timeline's time ruler, the CTI in your Program Monitor will update and scrub. The Program Monitor's timecode field always displays the current value that the CTI is on in the active sequence.

Zooming in and out with Program Monitor's viewing area bar enables you to zoom in the Program Monitor only and not in the sequence in the Timeline window. This is a nice feature as your view does not update in the timeline when you want to zoom in for greater detail in the Program Monitor. The same goes for moving the viewing area bar to work in a different area of the sequence. In each of these instances, when you scrub in the new view or different area, the CTI updates in both panels.

Buttons and Transport Controls

Although the Program Monitor has buttons that perform the same tasks as those in the Source Monitor, it also has a few different ones. For example, the first and last buttons of the center group's top row are unique to the Source Monitor:

• Go to Previous Edit Point(shortcut key: Page Up) Enables you to snap the CTI to the left to the nearest edit or cut point. An edit point is considered any clip end or cut from one clip to the next.

• Go to Next Edit Point (shortcut key: Page Down) Snaps the CTI position to the nearest edit point to the right of the current CTI position.

The right group has three buttons only available in the Program Monitor. You'll find them on the button row, starting from the left:

• Lift(shortcut key: ;) The opposite of Overlay. If you have determined an In and Out point instance in your sequence and you would like to remove the material from that position, click Lift. Lift removes the material from the In/Out instance and preserves the space it took up.

• Extract (shortcut key: ') The opposite of Insert. Determine an In/Out instance in your sequence and choose Extract to remove the material and the space that the material took up in your timeline. For example, if you choose a five-second section and click Extract, your overall sequence duration would be reduced by five seconds.

• Trim (shortcut keys: Ctrl+T) Opens the Trim panel, which is a Monitor panel used for viewing and adjusting edit points in the Timeline. You can also open the Trim panel from the Program Monitor's wing menu.

The Lift and Extract buttons are the basis for editing sequences in the Program Monitor.

Editing Functions

Used in conjunction with Insert and Overlay, Lift and Extract make up the powerful framework for performing complex edits with very simple keystrokes. As you work through the book, you will encounter these editing functions often. Be aware, however, that Program Monitor editing functions cannot be applied to every track of video at the same time. To lift or extract material you must first target the tracks that you wish to perform edits on, which is covered in depth Chapter 5, "The Timeline Panel." You can target only one video and audio track at time, or you can target just video or just audio.

When I am editing with the Program Monitor, I often use the Page Up and Page Down keys to navigate and snap to edit points in the timeline. From these edit points, I either move the clips physically or with keystrokes to modify and create my edit. If you have no In point or Out point selected in the Program Monitor, edits from the Source Monitor will be executed at the current position of the CTI.

Wing Menu Options

From the Program Monitor's wing menu (Figures 4.16), you can gang Source to Program, adjust your monitor output, set the display quality, toggle to audio units, and choose the view mode for your monitor. There are a few choices that deserve a closer look:

Figure 4.16. The Program Monitor's wing menu adds two new choices in 2.0Multi-Camera Monitor and Timecode Overlay During Editingto the familiar list

• Multi-Camera Monitor. The Multi-Camera Monitor can be opened and docked into any pane in 2.0 and it is accessed through the wing menu of the Program Monitor. The Monitor and its powerful new features will be explored in great detail in Chapter 27, "Advanced Editing: The New Multi-Cam Workflow."

• New Reference Monitor. To create a New Reference Monitor, simply select this option from the wing menu. When you open a new Reference Monitor you are creating a duplicate Monitor window from which you can view the active sequence (Figures 4.17). By default with 2.0 a new Reference Monitor is ganged to the Program Monitor. To turn this off, uncheck the listing in the Program Monitor or Reference Monitor wing menu or click off the Gang button.

  Figure 4.17. Opening a new Reference Monitor creates a new monitor that can reference whatever the active sequence was when the command was executed. Here you have Sequence 01 displayed in both the Program and Reference Monitor (which is docked into the same frame as the Source Monitor panel). This is useful for color correction: If you open the Reference Monitor and set the output mode to Waveform, you can simultaneously monitor the literal waveform value adjustments in the Reference Monitor and the image being adjusted in the Program Monitor

  

• Timecode Overlay During Edit. While you are editing clips in the Timeline panel, it is often useful to see the source timecode of the clip you are trimming while you are adjusting it. If this wing menu option is checked (Figures 4.18) then a semi-transparent overlay of the currently edited clip's timecode will appear while you work with it. If the check mark is turned off, no overlay will appear. The timecode that appears corresponds directly to the Source Timecode for the frame you are referencing in your edit.

  Figure 4.18. With Timecode Overlay During Edit checked, anytime you trim or physically edit a clip in the timeline, the source timecode of the affected clip(s) is displayed on top of the clip in the Program Monitor. In the figure, I have extended the Out point of the clip by 1;08. The current frame of the clip that I have revealed through this edit has a precise timecode value of 00;00;10;10

  

Notes

The Reference Monitor references only the active sequence when it is created. If you were to open another sequence or click on a different timeline, the Reference Monitor would not update to display the active sequence; it would continue to reference the sequence with which it was opened. (More on Reference Monitors in Chapter 22, "New Color Correction Tools: Fast Color Correction.")

• Playback Settings. The Playback Settings option is your wing menu shortcut to Project > Project Settings > General > Editing Mode > Playback Settings (Figures 4.19). The Playback Settings dialog is where you can toggle on or off the communication between Premiere Pro and your DV hardware for various playback circumstances. Additionally, you can define whether or not you want to accelerate desktop previewing and display by choosing to use your graphics card's GPU processor. If you have a robust graphics card, such as an NVidia GeForce card or an ATI X800, then you can set the Desktop Display setting to Accelerated GPU Effects. Otherwise, most users should leave the setting at Standard.

  Figure 4.19. The Playback Settings dialog, which is accessible from the Program and Source Monitor wing menus, can help scale back the pro­cessing power needed to playback your video either by toggling on or off desktop display of your projects video or disabling Premiere Pro's communication with an external device (your connected DV device or video card). The dialog also offers settings for dealing with 24P playback and new settings for defining your Desktop Display mode

  

Although the Reference Monitor is primarily used in very specific instances (color correction and track matting), having quick access to your Playback Settings can be very helpful when trying to focus your real-time playback performance to desktop only or an external device only.

Effect Editing and the Program Monitor

The Program Monitor is also used in conjunction with the Effect Controls panel. While you are assigning and adjusting effects, the Program Monitor displays a preview of the effect. The relationship between the Program Monitor and Effect Controls panel will be explored in Chapter 8, "Effect Controls Basics."