I know what you're thinking...is it pancake day? Is this a recipe for a delicious sugary morning treat? Well, the answer to that is a depressing shut your fat mouth NO... But if you did come here for a pancake recipe CLICK HERE.
I have just discovered something in Premiere that I had to share - pancaking timelines. 'What?!' I just heard you ask? Bear with me.
Pancaking timeline is simply the term used when you stack two or more timelines in your Adobe Premiere Pro timeline. You can also call it crumpeting, waffling, chicken stacking or flapjacking. Ok, that's not true but I do like the sound of crumpeting a timeline.
Just me? Moving on.
I don’t know if you know, but I’ve been editing in Avid Media Composer for my day job for two years. I'm used to its layout, it's ease of cutting footage straight from one timeline straight into another one, and I've never quite understood why Adobe doesn't automatically have this ability.
Now I know how it works, I'm going to help you properly pancake timelines in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Strap in.
STEP 1 - Get your timelines in order
I usually use this method of editing when I have a lot of b-roll footage that I have to scroll through. Instead of clicking on each clip in my rushes folder, I'll create a string. A string is basically a sequence with all of your footage in. In my case, I've put all of my b-roll into this sequence.
Next, I will create my master sequence.
This is the timeline that I will cut the b-roll into.
STEP 2 - Open in Source Monitor
Find your string sequence in the bin you saved it in. Then right-click and go to 'Open in Source Monitor'. This will open the sequence in the source monitor... I know I didn't need to explain that, but I did. You're welcome.
Step 3 - Find that Spanner
Now that you have the string open in the source monitor, find the spanner.
Right-click on the spanner and open the sequence in the timeline.
You should now witness the colour change of the time progress line (what's it called?) from blue to red. I'll just show you instead.
From this...
To this.
Much better.
STEP 4 - Start cutting!
All you have to do now is edit to your heart's content. Create an in and out point in your string sequence.
Press the overite (B) or insert (V) button and you should now be able to cut from timeline to timeline!
Congratulations! Your editing life might just be a little bit better.
Is B-roll the only reason to use this?
No, not at all! You can bring in any project timeline that you've been working on and pop them into one timeline. Swiftly flicking through it and simply picking out what you need. Creating a showreel? Compilation episode? Why not look through footage by the day instead of the card?
Go on, live a little.