How to Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are the way a trailer editor can edit at the speed of thought because pressing a single button can execute what might otherwise involve using the mouse to navigate to a specific menu, scrolling down and selecting an option.
I love keyboard shortcuts so much I cut together a video for my blog post about my favorite shortcuts for Premiere (which to this day is still my most popular post). If a single button can take the place of three mouse clicks or even two, I'll map it to my shortcuts.
Most blog posts about keyboard shortcuts simply list them out, but I want to help you develop your keyboard editing KUNG FU. Colloquially kung fu is used to mean Chinese martial arts, but its real definition is more like "a skill developed through hard work, time and repetition."
To start training your keyboard shortcut kung fu is a simple three step process:
Identify a task or series of tasks you frequently perform
Find the shortcuts which help you do that task faster
Use the shortcuts, and repeat until it becomes part of your muscle memory and you perform it using as few button presses as possible
The most important part of the learning process is to start using shortcuts based on necessity. Looking at shortcut lists will only help so much if you don't immediately apply them in your day to day editing.
Here's one example of mine about learning shortcuts through necessity.
In 2006, I was one of several editors "restoring" episodes of the original 80s show Voltron by removing as much dust and jarring film splices as possible. The video had a workflow which involved one tool: Final Cut Pro 5.
"But wait," you say, "FCP 5 isn't film restoration software; it has no cloning tools or anything like that."
Yup, I'm glad you noticed!
Long story short, every individual piece of dust was removed by:
Adding edits to isolate a frame of dust in the clip
Adjusting the picture crop settings to isolate that frame of dust
Copying and pasting an adjacent frame which didn't have that piece of dust on top of that clip
Copying the crop settings to the clean frame
Removing the crop settings of the dirty frame (now covered up)
Previewing the shot
Yup.
This is one of those moments you realize the word "professional" doesn't at all mean tasks get done smartly or efficiently.
Needless to say, I performed this series of tasks HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of times, to the point each timeline was a mountain of fixes (btw I now know what would've been a MUCH BETTER workflow even if we were still restricted to using FCP 5, but that's beside the point).
Naturally, I wanted to get as fast at doing this one task as I could.
The most important shortcuts for this task were:
Zoom in/out from timeline (to navigate to the clip)
Add edit (to isolate where the dust was)
Select Crop Tool
Set in/out (to select adjacent frame)
Copy
Select video track # (to target where to paste)
Paste (to paste the clean clip on top)
Paste Attributes (to copy crop settings)
Delete through-edit (to restore original clip)
Play Around Current Frame (to preview the fix)
At the time, I didn't formally map out the task like this, but I did gradually incorporate more shortcuts into this one task to the point that each piece of dust took only 30-45 seconds to fix. When you're talking about dozens or hundreds of pieces of dust, the time saved added up VERY QUICKLY. Sufficient to say, these shortcuts were quickly internalized.
As of the writing of this post, I've practiced martial arts for over 13 years, and the methodology of learning my keyboard shortcuts is exactly the same. The best thing about my kung fu Sifu is he never gave us more information than we knew we could handle. He'd rather teach us fewer moves knowing we'd retain the information, rather than give us several moves which we might forget.
Don't try to take on too many shortcuts at once. Start with one per task. When your muscle memory internalizes the shortcut, you're ready to add another, and another, and so on. This is how your keyboard editing kung fu builds up, just like drilling stances, punches and kicks. Right now you probably already have muscle memory for pressing Command-S and Command-Z. That's what you want for all the other shortcuts, and when you get there is when the magic happens.
If you're having trouble thinking of what shortcuts to start with, consider that editing shortcuts mostly boil down to variations of:
Navigating the user interface
Perusing and organizing footage
Selecting footage, and putting it in the timeline
Navigating the timeline
Cutting and trimming clips
Moving clips
Obviously they go much deeper, but these are the most frequently performed tasks. So if you feel like you're sluggish in any of these, look at shortcut lists with these categories in mind, and target the ones that will help your speed in them.
Something to be mindful of when choosing what keys perform each shortcut, is to map them in a way to minimize hand movement across the keyboard. It might sound trivial to have to move your hand between the sections the keyboard, but we're talking about shaving seconds off of frequent tasks. So do your best to map your shortcuts to minimize hand movement, and incorporate modifier keys only for less frequently performed shortcuts.
Some editors even use these gaming keyboards to edit with!
Also, just do what works for you! Like I said, my shortcuts are a weird hybrid created from 15+ years of editing, so it's difficult to change the ones I’ve commit to muscle memory. But if you don't already have that muscle memory, you can start fresh with an optimal layout.
Overall what's most important is you learn through necessity, and repetition. It's going to take a while, but the best time to start is today. So start drilling to develop your keyboard editing kung fu!
