Every Tool in the Premiere Toolbar Explained

Hey y'all -  below I’ll explain every tool in the tool bar in Premiere. As a beginner I know you can struggle to find the exact tool you want, and even if you know where they are, how would you just intuitively know what something like a ripple edit tool does? 

So let’s open up premiere and get started!

First there is the selection tool and this one is pretty self explanatory. You use this tool to select everything on your timeline and it’s one of the simplest but most common tools you’ll use while editing so definitely remember the shortcut V.

Next up is the track select forward tool. You will see 2 arrows on the timeline. If you click you will select everything from the location of your cursor forward to the end of your timeline.

Hidden under the track select forward button is the track select backwards tool and it does the same thing. It will select everything from the location of your cursor all the way to the beginning of your timeline. Now you may have noticed that this tool do something like select the music track beyond where your cursor was on the timeline. If you don’t want it to do that you can hold down the shift key while clicking and only select clips from that track. So something like the music track is unaffected. 

Next up is that ripple edit tool. You can use this tool to trim a clip and Premiere will automatically shorten or lengthen the clips around it to close the gap your edit created. 

Under the ripple edit tool is the rolling edit tool. This allows you to either lengthen or shorten a particular clip and then shift the timeline forward or backward to avoid any dead space on the timeline. 

The other tool is the rate stretch tool. This tool allows you to either speed up or slow down a clip on the timeline. 

Next in line is the razor tool. This one is straight forward but you will probably use it a lot as well. It allows you to simply make cuts on your timeline. Pretty simple. Now if you hold down shift while you cut, you will make a cut across every track at that point in time. Doing this might help you save time in your editing process. 

Next is the slip tool. This allows you to slip the in and out points of a clip without changing the length on the timeline. So you are finding a different in and out point in the source file, so you have a different beginning and end to the clip on the timeline.

Hiding underneath is the slide tool. This tool slides a clip around on the timeline. The in and out points of that clip do not change, but as you slide that clip around, the length of the clips around it change.

Now the pen tool has multiple functions. One is creating a custom graphic by clicking on the program monitor. You can also use it to make changes to existing graphics but moving around these points.

Underneath the pen tool is the rectangle and ellipse tool. They will also make graphics in the program monitor. 

Back to the pen tool because it does something else important. You can also use the pen tool to add keyframes for certain effects on a clip. If you make your track wider on something like a music track, you can see a line running across it. If you click on the line using the pen tool, you can change the decibel of the music right here on the timeline. If you click on the line on the video track, you’ll see all the different adjustments you can make using keyframes and the pen tool.

Another basic tool is the hand tool. It simply lets you navigate forwards and backwards along the timeline.

Next is the zoom tool and it’s pretty self explanatory - it lets you zoom in on the timeline. Holding down alt will allow you to zoom out.

Finally there is the text tool. This is also self explanatory - just click on the program monitor and type.

There is also a vertical text tool. It works the same way - you can put text on the screen, but make it vertical. 

Those are all the tools from the toolbar! I hope I pointed out some that will be a help to you, and hopefully demystified a few as well!