I love Premiere Pro's slipping tool. But when slipping a clip that contains effect keyframes, both the clip's content and keyframes 'slip'. This is a problem because effect keyframes are almost always set relative to a clip's in/out points and/or to the Timeline, and rarely set relative to the specific content of the clip itself. In other words, when I slip a clip, I want any effect keyframes to remain put, and NOT slip with the clip! There are different ways that Adobe could solve this annoyance: keyboard modifier (e.g. SHIFT-slipping a clip would only slip the clip, not keyframes), etc. However here is my proposed solution and the Feature Request I sent to Adobe:
Anchor keyframes toggle in Effect Controls window
Much more often than not, editors need keyframes to retain their position relative to a clip's in/out point when trimming, slipping or adding a transition to the clip. This could be done with an 'Anchor' toggle for each Effect in the Effect Controls window. By toggling on the 'Anchor' icon for an effect, all keyframes on the first half of the clip would automatically retain their position relative to that clip's in point when trimming, slipping, or extending the clip with a transition. In other words, keyframes positioned 1 and 30 frames from the clip's in point would remain exactly 1 and 30 frames from that clip's in point, regardless of future trims/slips/transitions applied. The same would be true for keyframes positioned on the second half of a clip: they would maintain their position relative to the clip's out point.
Why is this feature important to you?
Consider these common editing problems:
1) An editor adds Motion and Video Effect keyframes to a clip, but later needs to slip the clip. The content slips, but so do the keyframes, often throwing them outside the visible range of the clip! This is a pain to fix.
2) An editor adds keyframes to the in/out points of several stills in the Timeline to create a Ken Burns effect, and then adds Cross Dissolves between each picture. Suddenly, the keyframes are no longer positioned at the in/out points of each still, but rather halfway through each transition. This causes the motion effects to abruptly stop halfway through each Cross Dissolve. To fix this, the editor needs to manually realign the keyframes with the each clip's new in and out points at the beginning and end of each transition. No big deal for 1-3 stills, but consider having to do this for 50+ stills. An editing nightmare!
Allowing keyframes to automatically 'anchor' relative to a clip's in or out point would instantly solve these and other all too common keyframe headaches, and therefore be a true God-send in terms of editing efficiency!
Do you think this is the best way to solve this problem?
Ideas? Comments? Better suggestions? Please share!