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With so much of your movie in place, you're in a position to start finetuning: introduce the music a bit earlier, run an image a bit longer. Right now, you've only learned to move one clip at a time. If you have to add something now to the very beginning of your movie, you'll be forever moving things and losing the precision of your original placements in the process. You're also making longer previews, and running the yellow Work Area bar from beginning to end of your movie might be taking a lot of time. We'll show you here how to move quickly around in your now longer Construction Window and how to select and move large blocks of text at once.

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The Time Unit slider controls what each image block represents as a unit of time. When the slider is set to 1 second (Premiere's default setting), each image block shows a second of time passing. Move the slider around and see how you can make a very long Construction Window, showing every frame, to a very compact one that shows two minutes at a time. (For our very short 30-second movie, that time unit squashes the whole movie into the very left edge of the window!)

In the Construction Window tool bar at the bottom left, the Zoom tool performs the same function as the time unit slider. To Zoom In, just click. Zoom Out is Option-click.

For most purposes, the 1-second time unit is fine. When you're about to preview your entire movie, however, you might want increase your time scale so that is quick work to move your Work Area bar over the entire project.


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The Snap To Edges tool gives you flexibility in how you can move clips around. With Snap To Edges off, you are free to move your clip wherever you wish. With this tool turned on, as you drag a clip, it will automatically align itself to the edges of clips or transitions on other tracks. You have less freedom, but more precision.
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If we promised to give you tools for moving things around more easily, why are we calling this section "Selection Tools"? If you think just a little about your experience with Premiere, you know that you cannot move anything in the Construction Window that is not already selected. These are just tools that give you more sophisticated selection choices. Moving things around is up to you and your mouse.

Construction Window Tools that can be used for selection are marked here:

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Selects only one clip at a time.

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Select any group of clips you desire. If you hold down the shift key and click, you can choose just which clips you want. If you know the clips are all in the same area, there's no need to hold down the shift key to select them. Just click and drag the mouse over the area you want. If you find you've selected a larger area than you wanted, holding down the shift key now and clicking on unwanted clips will deselect them. When you pass your cursor over selected areas, a pointer and move symbol appear. Just click and drag to move your selected clips.

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Select an area of equal width across all tracks. Select the tool and drag it across the area you want. Let go of the mouse button. Place the cursor within the selected area. The cursor turns into some fat blue arrows. To move the block, hold down the Control key, click and drag. To copy the block, hold down the Option key, then click and drag. The block won't copy until it finds a completely empty area. When that happens, the block turns black. Let go of the mouse button, and the copying is complete.

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Select and move one track at a time. The whole track needn't move. Wherever you click your mouse in the track, you select everything in the track to the right of your mouse click. To select additional tracks, hold down the Shift key as you click and select.

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Select all tracks to the right of your mouse click. Great if you want to make room to insert a clip in the middle of your movie without disturbing the alignment of what follows. To deselect some tracks, hold down the Shift key and click on those tracks you don't want to move.

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We mentioned the Link Override tool in our lesson about using or discarding the audio tracks of video clips. You find both tools by holding down on the button for the Range Select tool.

With the Link Override tool selected, click on either the audio or video track of a video clip. A red triangle appears on the left edge of both clips. You can now move the clips independently of one another. If you change your mind later and want them to synchronize again, line them up precisely, then choose the Soft Link Tool. Clicking on that tool will allow you to move the clips again as a pair.
Clicking on that tool will allow you to move the clips again as a pair.

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Most of the rest of the tools on the toolbar are for tasks you already know how to do in other ways:

Razor Tool

In and Out Points These tools save time because you don't have to open up a clip window to reset the points.

Fade Adjustment Tool

Fade Scissors. Another time saver. Automatically puts two handles or dots next to each other. You decide where to move them to get the fade you desire.

The rest of the tools are for tasks that are a bit more advanced. There's plenty of time to learn these tools later as you become a more experienced moviemaker. For now let's move along and learn how to add transitions to your movie.