Adobe Premiere Pro CC includes multiple ways to select and work with clip segments in the Timeline panel. And I'd like to take a moment to look at a few of the ways that we can work with clips in a more complex sequence.

First of all, let's look at selecting some of these clips. I've got multiple layers here, but along the top on my Video 8 track I've got my primary video content. And obviously I can single click to select each of these clips. I need to be careful not to double-click because if I do I'm going to open the clip that I've clicked on in the Source monitor. And there are some workflows that will call for that, but really most of the time you're going to be single clicking. I can also hold the Shift key and make individual clip selections.

Now this might seem a little bit strange to you if you're used to working in the operating system and selecting individual files because on Windows you'd use the Control key, on Mac OS you'd use the Command key. But here it's the Shift key.

The Control or Command key operate as a different kind of modifier. We can also lasso to select clips. You can see here as long as I start anywhere beyond the edges of a clip, anytime the marquee selection overlaps a clip it doesn't have to contain it. It just needs to overlap it, then that clip segment is selected.

If you have a few Clips here with Sync audio you can override linking between video and audio clips by holding down Alt on Windows or Option on Mac OS. I'm holding Alt here on Windows and now I'm just getting the video or for that matter any individual audio clip. Notice that clip linking is not specific to video and audio. It's any combination of clips. Again, without the Alt key I can click on any of these and they're all selected. You can turn off clip linking for the entire Timeline by clicking here on the Linked Selection button. Now nothing is linked. And I'll just turn that back on again.

Control or Command A selects all. You see there every clip in the current sequence. And if I just lasso to select a few of these, Shift Control A or Shift Command A deselects all. There is an option under the Sequence menu to enable Selection Follows Playhead. And now any clip on the top most selected track will be selected as the playhead moves over it. See here I've got Video 8 and Video 9 turned on. So, as I move through the sequence the clip is selected automatically. This option is enabled automatically coincidentally if you switch to the Color workspace and the Lumetri Color panel is active.

We also have a dedicated Selection tool. Here we've got the Track Select Forward Tool. If I click and hold we've got access to the Track Select Backward Tool. I'll start with the Track Select Forward Tool. You can see I've got two arrows. Anywhere I click every clip is selected from this point forward regardless of the tracks that are enabled. Shift really is your friend as a modifier key here as it is with so many tools.

If I hold down the Shift key, now only the track that I select, and any linked clips are highlighted. As you might have guessed, the Track Select Backward Toolworks in the opposite direction. And these are both very useful tools for creating a gap in a sequence or for that matter closing a gap if you're working with it in sections.

I'm going to lasso a few of the clips here because there's another useful keyboard shortcut. If I press the forward slash key Premiere Pro CC will add an In and Out mark at the beginning and the end of any selected clips. It's important to make a distinction here between the forward slash key and the backslash key.

The backslash key will toggle between zooming in and zooming out on your Timeline. It's a really useful way to just get an overview of the whole sequence so you can navigate to a different part of the content.

It's worth noting that clip selection overrides track selection in many cases. Here for example if I deselect and I'm going to turn on all of the tracks here on every single layer and I'm going to press Control K, this would be Command K on Mac OS. And you can see if I move my playhead out of the way I've added a cut to every one of these clips. Let me just zoom in a little so you can see that more clearly. I'm going to undo so you can see without the cut. And now I'll move the playhead over a little.

So now I've got just one clip selected and I'm going to press that same keyboard shortcut, that's Control K, Command K on Mac OS. And only that one clip gets a cut. Just move the playhead out of the way so you can see it. None of the other tracks are affected even though the other tracks are selected. Again, that's because clip selection overrides track selection. This applies when copying and pasting between In and Out marks as well. Just the clips that you have selected will be copied.

If I select this voice spot audio clip and hit Delete you can see well nothing much happens. The clip's been removed, and nothing happens to the other clips in this very simple sequence. I'm going to undo to restore that. If I select the clip again and press Shift Delete now I've performed a ripple delete closing the gap after the clip I've removed. All of the clips have moved because my Sync locks are on for every track. Of course, if I turn some of these off not all of the clips will be affected by that edit.

Sync locks and the Track locks work exactly the same way when you're adding content as when you're removing it. So, I'm going to just resize a little bit here. I'm going to collapse down these tracks, collapse down these audio tracks as well. So, you can see a little bit more about what's going on.

I've got this long dial of mix down at the bottom. And I'm going to select I think this combination of clips right here. I'm just lassoing across just to make sure I've got all of those clips selected. Again, if I hit the Delete key just a gap is left behind. And I'll just undo that. And if I Shift Delete to ripple delete those clips, let's select these again, I'm actually being blocked. Premiere Pro CC won't allow me to delete these clips. And that's because I've got these Sync locks on. The Sync locks are locking my content in position relative to the other clips. If I turn these all off which I'm going to do by holding down the Shift key here and now press Shift Delete Premiere Pro CC allows me to remove the clips and everything after them shuffles over to the left to fill the gap.

When moving items around inside the sequence, by default you're going to have Snapping turned on. Just to illustrate this let me resize a little bit and let's say I want to make a layered clip effect from this shot over this one. Well I can click and drag and as I do you can see I get this little triangle highlight that shows the clip is aligned to the beginning or the end of a clip. And that's incredibly useful. But what you might find on a more complex sequence is there are so many joins for a clip to connect to that it becomes difficult to line up in the way that you want to. And of course, the way to fix that is to turn off Snapping.

But you can turn off and on Snapping while you're in the middle of a mouse operation as I am now. So here I've got Snapping turned off. I'm pressing S for snap. You can see the icons on it up and now the clip is snapping to those cuts. You can also have the playhead snap while scrubbing by holding down the Shift key. And once again the Shift key is our friend on the Timeline.

And let's say I want to make a precise selection of a piece of these three clips so I can copy it and paste it somewhere else. Well I'm going to hold down the Shift key to turn all my Sync locks back on. It's probably worth having these on most of the time and still holding the Shift key I'm going to deselect all of these tracks.

And I'm just going to turn on the tracks that have this media. And now I'm going to use In and Out marks. So, I'm marking In and Out, I'm using I and O. And you'll notice, in fact it's probably a little more visible if I turn on Video 5 as well that when you use In and Out marks in this way to set a region in time and you use Track Selection buttons, you get a highlight on the tracks showing you the beginning and the end of the selected region. Notice that the tracks that are turned off remain dark.

Now that I've made this precise selection I can perform a lift edit by pressing the semi-colon key or by clicking the Lift button in the Program monitor. That removes just those clips between the In and Out marks. Now in this case I've made a careful selection not by clicking on clip segments and selecting them, but instead by highlighting them with In and Out marks. I'll just undo so you can see that region as well. Notice the top clip is selected, the other two are not.

So, in the Timeline panel you can make a selection by choosing clip segments or you can select a region of time with In and Out marks based on specific tracks. There's another really useful feature I'd like to show you on the Timeline for removing gaps that are unwanted. Now this feature is dependent very much on your selections. You can see here I've got a series of clips lined up. And these are later in my sequence where as you can see if I scroll I don't have any long clips underneath or above them. So, I don't have any issues with Sync locks. And it's a very common way to work on a sequence to get to the point where you have a number of clips lined up in this way.

Maybe you've gone through the edit and removed the pieces that you don't want. But then what do you do with these gaps. Well one way is to select the gap, I'm single clicking here and press Delete. And that will close one gap. I'll just undo that. But another way is to use the close gap command. In this case I'm going to just lasso to select these two clips and I'm going to go to the Sequence menu and I'm going to choose Close Gap. And that'll close the gap between those two clips.

Close Gap doesn't have a keyboard shortcut by default but it's very easy for you to assign one. What's great about the command is if I want to I can select a whole range of clips as I have now, go back to the Sequence menu, choose Close Gap and all of those gaps are removed in a single step. I'll just undo that because another way to do this is to use In and Out marks. So, I'm pressing I for In and O for Out. And now if I choose Close Gap, all of the gaps between those In and Out marks are selected.

This way you can select a whole region of your sequence to remove gaps from. So that's working with clip segments in the Timeline panel in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.