Splice Now

Here are a couple of keyboard shortcuts that I’ve grown very fond of recently:

Return to Previous Trim

As my sequences get more complicated, I set up more complex roller combinations in order to trim them. I’ll trim something, drop out of trim mode to check a cut in context and often want to return to the previous trim and make an adjustment. We’ve been asking for “return to previous trim” for a decade or more, and Avid has finally added it in recent versions of Adrenaline. It’s invoked by holding down the option key and hitting the trim mode button. I like it so much that I’ve added it to my keyboard. Doing so is a two step process. First drag the Trim Mode button from the Other tab in the Command Palette to your keyboard settings. Then drag the “Add Option Key” button on top of the trim mode button. This creates a trim mode button with a little dot on it. When you hit it, you’re hitting option-trim.

Turn Waveforms On and Off

When making a first cut I now leave waveforms on all the time. It’s just too useful to have them visible and with a fast G5 or Intel Mac they display quickly. But with longer sequences it’s another story — it just takes too long for waveforms to update. So I’ve come to use a keyboard shortcut to turn them on and off. That makes it trivially simple to leave them on most of the time but quickly get them out of the way when they’re slowing things down. To do this, select “Menu to Button Reassignment” in the command palette, and click on the key you want to dedicate to this function. Then click on the timeline popup menu (the timeline “hamburger”) and select Audio Data > Sample Plot. The letters “SP” will appear on your chosen key. Just hit that key to turn waveforms on or off.

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This entry was posted on September 13, 2007 at 6:48 am and is filed under Avid Technical Tips. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.