So after years of using Premiere CS3, I've finally downloaded the trail and started budgeting for an upgrade to CS5.5.

I spent about twenty minutes playing with it found I was struggling with a few essential features for my workflow and style of editing. Hours of reading Adobe's help guide and googling have left me even more confused. I wonder if anbody can help me with these points?

1. Is there a shortcut to select target tracks? My default in CS3 was (ctrl + - or =) to toggle the target video track up or down and (ctrl + shift + - or =) for the audio target track. After searching the keyboard shortcuts extensively I turned my search to the internet and everything says to select your target track by clicking on the track header... is there seriously no longer a keyboard executable shortcut for this?

2. Adobe Media Encoder used to have a "deinterlace" checkbox under the output preview tab. I found this was the only way to get decent downconversions from HDV 50i material for DVD output. It was a quick, easy, painless way of deinterlacing and always worked, even when any amount of adjusting the field order options failed. The checkbox is missing now, so is there any other way to do this deinterlacing as a part of the final export?

3. Is there still a way to assign a shortcut to toggle between video & audio/just video/just audio? I can see that the old icon that did this is gone and you can now drag just the audio, or just the video from the source monitor onto the timeline, but I'm a keyboard editor not a drag and drop type. Is there a way to select only the audio of video in the source monitor so that when I hit "," or "." to send the clip to the timeline, only the video or audio gets sent?

I really hope that I'm completely overlooking something here because so far these three things could totally ruin my workflow. I'd be happy to be called blind or stupid in this situation if it means finding a solution! And this is after just 20 minutes of fiddling, and hours of research, so no doubt I'm in for a few more speedbumps in the next few days!

Hi John,

I'm definitely no expert with shortcuts, so I'll leave that alone, but for deinterlacing, go to the Field Order options and choose "NONE - Progressive" as this replaces the old "Deinterlace" option.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

You do not need to de-interlace if going from hdv to sd.
CS5.5 encoder is far more superior then CS3.

I do not understand getting a better picture with deinterlacing with CS3. You are throwing half vertical resolution away. CS5.5 does not do that anymore, it interpolates.

I'm definitely no expert with shortcuts, so I'll leave that alone, but for deinterlacing, go to the Field Order options and choose "NONE - Progressive" as this replaces the old "Deinterlace" option.

Ok great, I'll give this a try. CS3 had this option but it didn't seem to do anything about the interlacing, just flagged the video as progressive rather than interlaced. I'll try it out and see how it goes.

You do not need to de-interlace if going from hdv to sd.
CS5.5 encoder is far more superior then CS3.

I do not understand getting a better picture with deinterlacing with CS3. You are throwing half vertical resolution away. CS5.5 does not do that anymore, it interpolates.

Well, you're throwing away 3/4 of the information when downconverting anyway! With CS3 it was the only way I could get decent results without going to another 3rd party software to deinterlace/downconvert, which was too much of a roadblock in my workflow. I'll try the "NONE - Progressive" field order as well as interlaced and see how they compare.

The shortcuts for activating/deactivating target video tracks is simply pressing the "1","2","3"... keys. For audio it's "Ctr+Shift+Alt+1","Ctr+Shift+Alt+2", etc. This can be changed in keyboard customization.

I'm not aware of any keyboard shortcuts for toggling audio only/video only in Source Monitor. I think this feature has been completely removed...I'm missing it as well

Thanks Jon, that's exactly what I needed to know. I can't remember what I had my 1-9 keys set up as previously (obviously something I didn't use too often!) so I think I'll be able to adjust to this quite well.

So far my research into toggling audio/video has come up with very little, except for details about changes to the "unlink" feature, which now automotically deselects the audio after unlinking it from the video, rather than having to unlink, deselect and then reselect just the video clips. Not much help to me though, as I'll still have to deselect and then select just the audio to delete it.

You can setup your shortcuts - a lot more than done in the standard settings. BUT not all can be done - try look into the setup of the keyboard edit/keyboard custom...

Hi Bo,

I've always used a custom keyboard setup (being a Premiere/FCP fence sitter means I like a hybrid layout) and am very familiar with custom shortcuts. It's not assigning the keystrokes that is a problem, it's finding the features that can be mapped to the keyboard!

Looks like the "toggle target track" function has been replaced by a more direct "select track" function, which I can live with. It's just a matter of finding out which features have been changed/removed/replaced so I can get my keyboard layout to work the same way - or at least as close as possible - as I've had it for the past 3-4 years.

There is a video on shortcuts at
Switching to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 - Shortcut Keys | Adobe TV (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/switching-to-adobe-premiere-pro-cs5/shortcut-keys/)

I will side with John on this matter. You're neither stupid nor blind. Adobe did change the way that we used to edit in CS3, adding one or more - in my opinion unnecessary - step/click/whatever.

Essentially where once you had to only select a target track, now you have to select target track, enable it and *disable all other tracks*, if you want to perform let's say overwrite, but without actually overwriting an audio on track 3 or 4 that you had selected so that you could easily use PgUp/PgDown for skipping to next or previous cuts.

It's a major slowdown for me, I began using mouse for video overlays, because I found it quicker than using keyboard! I know folks at Adobe are aware of that, I think the premise was to make Premiere work more like Avid and Final Cut Pro combined. The designers outdid themselves, however not in a good way. This simplicity was in my opinion one of the strengths of Premiere. Now it is an overkill.

I hope this get fixed in CS6, I know a few folks have also been complaining about it. So far, the only solution is to add the alt+` or command/control+` shortcuts to your repertoire or start using a mouse again.

Well, it's been a few days with the trial now and I'm still struggling a bit with some of the changes. I'm starting to think CS5.5 isn't for me, it's just too different for me to adjust smoothly (perhaps it's becuase I missed CS4 & CS5 so I've been left behind!). I can switch back and forth seamlessly between FCP7 and CS3, but for some reason CS5.5 just isn't agreeing with me!

To be honest, all I really want is to get 64 bit compatibility so I can make use of all my RAM. It's a little frustrating looking at my performance specs and seeing that 8GB of my 12GB RAM is always unused. It's like having a a Ferrari that can't go past first gear. That's really the only thing about CS3 that bothers me (Well, there's a few things that annoy me like the poor compatibility with newer codecs, or the horribly fiddly 3-way CC filter, but those I've fixed with plug-ins and by using Cineform).