Every tool from the Toolbar (Premiere Pro Tutorial)

Published on September 1, 2021

Interface, Tools

edit tools, rate stretch tool, razor tool, ripple edit tool, roll edit tool, slide tool, slip tool, text tool, toolbar, track select tools, type tool

Let’s explain every tool from the toolbar in adobe Premiere Pro

As a beginner video editor you often struggle with finding the right tools to perform certain actions while editing. And once you’ve finally found some tools to edit, you don’t know what they do. We’ve all been there, so here’s a quick and easy explanation of every tool in the toolbar.

selection tool

The firs tool is the selection tool, which is basically used to (you’ll never guess) select clips in your timeline. This is a tool that you will be using a lot while editing so make sure to remember the short key for it, which is V on your keyboard.

Track select Tool

The second tool is the track select forward or track select backward tool. It’s a multi select tool. You notice it being active when your cursor turns into stacked arrows. When you then click in your timeline everything on the right of your cursor will be selected among all tracks. So both video and audio. You can also use the track select backward tool which selects everything on the left of your cursor. Holding the shift key while using this tool will make the selection on only one track.

Ripple Edit tool

With this tool you can trim your clips in the timeline. Trimming means you can shorten or lengthen them. But while doing this the other clips in your timeline will immediately ripple towards your edit. This means that the gaps between the clips will automatically be closed. So a very useful tool to speed up your editing workflow.

Rolling Edit Tool

The rolling edit tool is quite the same as the ripple edit tool but instead of trimming a clip and moving the rest of the timeline you now move the edit or cut either forwards or backwards in the sequence. You so make one clip shorter and the other one longer, or vice versa.

Rate Stretch Tool

The rate stretch tool is used to speed up or slow down a clip in the timeline. The in and out points will remain the same but the length of the clip will be adjusted.

Razor Tool

The razor tool is a fundamental tool for placing cuts in your edit, you just click and you create a cut. If you hold the shift key while clicking you’re cut will be a placed on all tracks.

Slip Tool

This tool let’s you slip the in and out point of a clip’s source without adjusting it in the timeline. So your clip actually stays the same length. But you are moving the in and out points in the source file, giving you a different start and ending.

Slide tool

This tool is similar to the slip tool but you are sliding your clip on the timeline. The in and out points of the selected clip remain the same but the surrounding clips are adjusted. They become longer or shorter. Just like with the slip tool you will get a live view in your program monitor where you can see the new in and out points.

Pen Tool

The pen tool has multiple purposes. The first one is to create custom graphics. You can do this by just clicking the shape you want in your program monitor. You can also change existing graphics this way.

The second purpose is for placing keyframes on clips in the timeline. This can be done for the opacity of your clip or for speed ramping. It’s basically creating an animation without using the effect controls panel.

Underneath the pen tool are also the rectangle and ellipse tool. With these you can easily create a rectangle or ellipse graphic.

Hand and zoom tool

The hand tool is a basic tool used for scrolling down your timeline. Which can also be done by scrolling with the mouse wheel but the hand tool is way more precise.

The zoom tool is used for zooming in or out of you timeline.

Type tool

The final tool in the toolbar is the type tool which is used to create text graphics. Simply click on the program monitor and start typing. From the dropdown you can also select the vertical type tool which let’s you type vertically.