Okay, basically, I like to make small, simple movies for my DVD menus. I make these with premiere CS5.5. They are just a series of stills as a slide show, with appropriate music. What makes these so time consuming is this: I have maybe twenty pics, which I take from MovieMaker as this is quick, simple, and they are not too large (and I dont know how to take pics in premiere, but you can tell me if you like!). However, they are placed by default in the centre, and I need them a bit to one side to make space for the DVD buttons. Also, still a bit big so maybe reduce to 90 percent. I presume they are basically JPEGS even though moviemaker calls them something else. So, I have to highlight each pic individually, open the motion thingy, rescale, and enter new figures in the position fields. Not a big issue as such, but I have to do it for each one and put my self at risk of repetitive strain injury! Can I do them all at once? Is there a way? Bearing in mind I want them all same size and position, so exactly the same parameters. First time, I thought EASY!! I will just group them all together and do it in one! Guess what? Grouping disables the scale/reposition facility. Grouping seems to be merely an aid for dragging things together on the timeline. Just a simple linking process. Photoshop lets me link layers in this kind of way, but also has the group facility that is more serious, and lets you do transforming and all sorts, treating it as one object. Is there a premiere equivalent of 'group into smart object'? I suppose what I am asking is relevent to clips as well as pics, and other facilities apart from scaling and moving. So, if you want to do the SAME process with the SAME parameters to SEVERAL parts of the project, is there a way? Or does it have to be one by one? I cant find a way apart from rendering and reimporting which wouldn't save a lot of time anyway. Thanks. HOWARD
PS if there is a 'snapshot' facility in premiere, please tell me how, and is it necessary to copy the footage and take the pics from the copy? I have always done this with moviemaker as I discovered that once snapshots were taken, it did (sometimes) damage the frame of the footage, Hence I make a copy to use for pic-picking!