How to Quickly Cut Out Bad Footage in Premiere Pro CC (2018)

Speed matters when you are editing. The faster you can clean up your footage and remove the bad takes, the sooner you can get into the creative work. Most editors spend a lot of time at the beginning of a project just cutting out the unusable parts: the false starts, the long pauses, the flubbed lines. Doing this efficiently saves you a ton of time over the course of a project.

Today I am going to show you two quick methods to cut out bad footage in Premiere Pro using keyboard shortcuts. Once you memorize these, cleaning up a rough cut becomes almost automatic.

Method 1: Extract Using In and Out Points

This method lets you mark a section and remove it in one step.

1. Play through your footage on the timeline and find the beginning of the section you want to remove.
2. Press I on the keyboard. This sets an In point at the current playhead position.
3. Move forward to the end of the bad section.
4. Press O on the keyboard. This sets an Out point. You have now marked the range you want to cut.
5. Press the apostrophe key ( ’ ) to Extract the selected range. The marked section is removed and the remaining clips on the timeline slide together to fill the gap.

That is it. Three keystrokes and the bad footage is gone.

Method 2: Cut and Trim Back

This method is even faster for situations where you are scrubbing through and want to chop things on the fly.

1. Play through the footage and stop at the beginning of the bad section.
2. Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac) to make a cut at the playhead. This splits the clip into two pieces.
3. Move forward to the end of the bad section.
4. Press Q to Trim Back. This removes everything between the cut you made and the current playhead position, and closes the gap automatically.

When to Use Each Method

• Method 1 (Extract) is best when you can clearly see the start and end of the bad section before cutting. It is precise and works well for removing entire takes or long pauses.
• Method 2 (Cut and Trim) is best when you are scrubbing through footage quickly and cutting on the fly. It is faster for cleaning up long recordings with frequent bad sections.

Other Useful Shortcuts

• Q (Trim Back) removes everything from the left edge of the clip to the playhead.
• W (Trim Forward) removes everything from the playhead to the right edge of the clip.
• Shift+Delete removes a selected clip and closes the gap (ripple delete).

Tips

• Learn the keyboard shortcuts by heart. The whole point of these methods is speed. If you have to think about which key to press, the advantage is lost. Practice on a throwaway project until they become muscle memory.
• Work in a rough cut pass first. Go through the entire timeline once just to remove bad footage. Don’t worry about fine editing at this stage. Get the garbage out, then go back for the precision trim work.
• Use markers to flag sections while watching. Press M to drop a marker at a bad section. Then go back and cut them all out in one pass.

That is how you quickly cut out bad footage in Premiere Pro. Two simple keyboard-driven methods that will dramatically speed up your editing workflow.