Tip on Finding Necessary Duration for Music

[Bill Hunt]

In one of the Adobe forums, there was a recent discussion on how SmartSound's QuickTracks (QT) Plug-in for Premiere Pro doesn't work as nicely as the same plug-in for Pinnacle Studio. Along the way, the discussion got a bit tangiential, but that turned out to be a good thing, as I picked up a little tid-bit from Curt Wrigley. It applies to Premiere Pro, but may also be useful in PE. A lot depends on how the Info Panel and the Tooltips work in PE.

Say you have your completed Video and wish to add several pieces of SmartSound music to it (this tip would also work for any music, but especially well with SmartSound). You know where you'd like to have your music start and end. My method had been to grab my bit-rate calculator that had a Time Code setting, to do the math. I'd note my start Time Code, and ending Time Code, do the math and then set that manually into the SmartSound QT setup. Not bad, but a lot of manual entries into the calculator program. Also, it was prone to error with transposed numbers, or forgetting to hit ;, etc. I lamented that there was not an easier way to get the Duration, without the math. Curt came through with the "tip-o-the-day:"

Set your Work Area Bar (WAB) over the exact start and stop of your Video, where you wish to add the music. Hover your cursor over the center of the WAB and it will read out the Duration. Then just type that Duration into QT's Duration box. Done! I had checked my PP2 Info Panel up and down, but was not finding the exact data that I needed, so I'd just move the CTI and make notes, then calculate. I had never thought of the WAB.

This would work the same way for non-SmartSound music. Find the Duration and go search your music library for either music at very near that Duration, or find pieces that could be edited to that Duration.

Hope this helps someone find the right Duration of their music the easy way.

Hunt

[Chuck Engels]

Greg tip Hunt, thanks for sharing that with us

[Steve Grisetti]

I didn't even know that feature was there, Hunt. Thanks!

[momoffduty]

Thanks Bill, used this today.

[Bill Hunt]

As an update, Jim Simon added this tip:

"Set appropriate In and Out points in the sequence, and you can see the duration under the program monitor. Then just CTRL-Z twice to get rid of the markers." by Jim Simon/Adobe Premiere Forum

Might be easier/quicker than what Curt came up with.

Hunt