I LOVE being able to zoom in/out of a Microsoft Word document (or resize icons in any Windows 7 folder) on the fly by holding the CTRL key while turning my mouse's scroll wheel up or down (CTRL-up zooms in, CTRL-down, zooms out). This is lightning fast, intuitive and fun!
QUESTION: Where's the clever zooming in Premiere Pro's Project window for increasing/decreasing thumbnails? Image may be NSFW.
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ANSWER: There isn't any! Image may be NSFW.
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The zoom toggle at the bottom of the Project window, although functional, isn't quick nor fun to use. It requires the user to carefully move the cursor to a tiny UI icon: an irritating, laborious and inefficient method, compared with the ease and speed of resizing using a keyboard-mouse combo shortcut as Word and Windows so intelligently allow. By allowing users to resize thumbnails in list view using my proposed method, users could even skip the tedious step of having to turn thumbnails on in the wing menu! To turn thumbnails on, CTRL-mouse wheel up to zoom in at which point the thumbnails would automatically appear. To turn the thumbnails off, simply do the opposite, CTRL-mouse wheel down. This would work the same way that Windows allows it's users to not only resize file thumbnails, but also easily scroll through different folder view option with CTRL-mouse wheel. Simple. Intuitive. Brilliant. and yes, even Fun! Another big benefit of my proposed method is that contrary to the current zoom bar, using a keyboard/mouse shortcut could allow users to zoom 'around' the current cursor position (just as what happens when ALT-mouse wheeling in the Timeline). In other words, if the cursor is over a clip near the bottom of the Project window, increasing the size of the thumbnails would always keeps the clips closest to cursor in view, instead of pushing the desired clip(s) down out of view as the zoom bar would do.
Adobe, please add CTRL-mouse wheel zooming to the Project window! And while you're at it, why not add this kind of zooming to the Effect Controls Window, Source and Program monitors as well? Keyboard/mouse shortcuts are always much more efficient than having to meticulously mouse over tiny UI elements, so please do us a favor and add this functionally asap! Image may be NSFW.
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I was thrilled when you finally added in CS6 the ability to control the Timeline Mouse Scrolling behavior, which I, and surely many others, requested in the CS5 beta program. Now lets take this one step further with intelligent, program-wide zooming! "That's one small step for Adobe, a giant leap for editors" Image may be NSFW.
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Okay, maybe not just one small step for Adobe, but the point is the return on investment in this feature would be great since it is something that could help every single PP editor out there.
If you have any thoughts on other parts of Premiere that could benefit from having better methods for zooming, please share!
QUESTION: Should the shortcut be CHRL + mouse wheel to keep the combo consistent to the behavior Windows and Word users are already used to, or should it be ALT + mouse wheel, to keep the zooming combo consistent with the one Premiere currently uses in the Timeline?
(By the way, I will be sending a formal Feature Request to Adobe.)
Kevin Monahan, if this isn't already on Adobe's radar, it would be great if you could advocate adding this feature for us! Hopefully I've expressed the benefits clearly enough that putting this on their To Do list is a no brainer.