Premiere CC default transition behaviour

[Nigel Davey]

For several years I was using PPro CS6 until swapping to CC a few months ago.

In CS6 I enjoyed the logic/behaviour of the default video transition shortcut (a 20 frame dissolve in my case) applied via the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D. Of course you had to sit the playhead/CTI over the transitional point (i.e. where two clips butted together) in the sequence, but that was all. It didn't matter if you had a different clip selected/highlighted anywhere else in your sequence, only where the playhead was positioned. Thus I could apply default transitions quickly from the keyboard by shifting the playhead to the next transitional point in my sequence (via the keyboard up and down arrows) and applying the shortcut. No mouse involvement whatsoever.

Moving forward to PPro CC and I just can't get this behaviour to work anymore. Instead if I have a clip selected somewhere else in my sequence and I hit Ctrl+D my default transition now gets applied to that clip regardless of where my playhead/CTI is positioned. So to get around this I need to click on any blank part of the sequence (to deselect the last clip) and only then can I apply my default transition to where my playhead is currently positioned between clips. The big issue here is it requires me grabbing the mouse to click on a blank part of the sequence, thus slowing down my workflow. Whilst it sounds petty, it makes a big difference in reality.

I've lived with this behaviour for a few months, assuming there must be a buried setting to give me back the CS6 behaviour. I can't believe Adobe would force this on us knowing it can actually slow things down. Possibly it suits some styles of editing with an upside I haven't figured out yet, but it certainly doesn't suit mine and I'm hoping there is an 'off' somewhere.

Is there?

[Gary Huff]

You select the split. When you click on a split, it will highlight in a bracket, red for select and yellow for ripple edit. Then Ctrl+D adds a transition to that clip, and yes, it does not matter where your playhead is positioned.

[John Wiley]

I also find this new behaviour really frustrating.

Another way of selecting the edit points is by using trim mode. I have custom shortcuts setup to enter trim mode, which highlights the nearest edit point, and scroll to the next/previous edit point. Then you can apply the default transition in the same was you described.

If it's not broken, why try to fix it!?

[Nigel Davey]

Thanks John. I can see that pressing the T key, even with another clip selected, turns the current edit point (your playhead is over) red, thus allowing a Ctrl + D transition.

But it's one more thing to do. If Adobe make these sort of changes I wish they would have a menu on/off option for those of us how like the older workflow.

[Ann Bens]

There is not much you can do about but get used to it.
btw I like the new way better, more flexible.

[Roger Averdahl]

I really dislike this as well and have filed numerous Feature Requests over the years for this very issue but as we see we still have no option in the Preferences. Pleasing FCP users that have switched over to Pr is more important if you ask Adobe, hence this new behaviour.

Another related issue is:
1. Adjust the length of any transition.
2. Try to add any transition anywhere. (Ctrl+D or Ctrl+Shift+D)

Result:
Nothing happens.

Why not:
When you adjusted the transition it became selected and since a selected clip/transition for some reason has the highest priority one can´t add a transition unless the selected transition is de-selected.

Those issues hits me everyday and Ctrl+Shift+A is used every day for deselecting. I really want the old behaviour back via an option in the Preferences so we can choose what fits us. For me this "selected-clip-priority" slow me down and casue the frustration to rise and do really disturb the flow.