How to change the default duration timing for an image in Premiere Pro

Hi everyone, in this video I'm going to show you how to change the default image duration, when we're working with lots of images, we'll change the default. I'll show you what the quirks are, when you are adjusting the preferences or the default, and also how to change it on the Timeline, and if we end up with gaps, how to remove those. It is 50% super-duper easy, and super-duper strange. Let me show you both. 

All right, what have you've left over from the last video, you probably didn't do anything, you probably just watched me fluff about. I want you to have a nice clean sequence, and what we want to do is, I'm not particularly worried of how they're going to get applied, just grab them all. So I'm-- I don't mind which order they're in. So just select them all, drag them into your Timeline, and what you'll notice is they're on a default of 5 seconds. So I use my up arrow or down arrow, just to kind of jump, you'll see, a little Timeline--

I pointed with my actual hand, just then onto my screen, not my mouse. You can't see my hands, okay, right there, look. You can see though, over here, is the different 5 seconds. So that's the default. So how to change them? Once they're on the Timeline, it's really easy, just select them all. So zoom out so you can kind of drag a box. Remember, whenever I drag a selection around them, you just kind of start in the no man's land. Kind of just click, hold your mouse and drag them over. Right click any one of them, and just go to 'Speed/Duration', we've done that a bit lately. 

So Duration, we're going to say you are '3'. Actually how long, I was playing around with timing. I wanted them to be about 2 seconds and 10 frames, I'll show you why in a second. Let's hit 'Enter', you're like, "Great," that kind of worked. Now you can go through and click in there, and delete them, and you can get a bit of flow going, but you're like, "There's got to be an easy way," there is. So if I undo all of that, back to how it was, I've gone 'Edit', 'Undo' a few times. So I'm going to select them all again, the same thing, right click, let's go to my 'Speed/Duration', and back to-- you see it, don't you? You can see it there. So I'm going to 2 seconds 10 frames, and let's click 'Ripple Edit', which does this. Yay, so that's how to do it on the Timeline. 
Now if I drag them back out again, the default is still 5 seconds. So it kind of depends on what you're doing. If you know that for the next wee while you need it to be changed, we're going to change the preferences. To change preferences, actually before we get started with preferences, this is going to do some weird stuff, if you've tried to do it, and you're like, "Man, that didn't make sense," it doesn't, it's kind of strange. So, let's look at it. Remember, on a PC it's under 'Edit', and 'Preferences' is down about here. On a Mac, let's go to 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', and we're both looking for this one called 'Timeline'. 

So Timeline in here, I'm looking for 'Still Image Default Duration'. I don't want it to be, remember ours was like 210. I want it to be 210, 2 seconds 10 frames. This doesn't work here, watch this, If I click or hit 'Tab' on my keyboard to get out, it's actually just put in 210 seconds, because it's a little bit different from some of these other ones, I got caught out by this when I was practicing this exercise for you. So in here I need to do some Math, either like, something like that gives me close to what I want. You could probably work it out better than I could, or frames. So there is 25 frames in a second, I want 2 seconds, and I want 2 seconds 10 frames. I like to pretend like that just came to me right then, but no, I had to practice that. Up to you, but set your Still Default, but look what happens, let's click 'OK', you're like, "Great." Cool.

So I'm going to add these things, I'm going to grab you. I'm going to delete these ones, and I don't want those to be 5 seconds anymore, I want them to be-- selecting them all, adding them all, and if I have a look, they're all still 5 seconds, and you're like, "Well, I just, why isn't that happening?" It's frustrating. It's because, what ends up happening is, those preferences apply to everything in the future, because these were already imported, when I import them, they were kind of like labeled with the default. They can't be changed later on, well, they don't get changed along with the preferences, because you might be using them in other places, and they've got kind of default set to them now. 

So there are two ways to kind of circumvent this. You can either-- let's select them all, delete them, and let's delete all of these, and re-import them, then, it depends on what stage of the project you're at. If you can just re-import them, easy, because now they should all be 2 seconds and 10 frames. So there might be that chance though that you're not at that point, and they're all just in here, and you don't want to have to go and re-import them, because they're all over the place. 

So the way to get around that is, let's say that I want to change my default, 'Preferences'. I'm going to leave the actual preferences, no, we'll change it, you can just watch me. So let's say that I want to change it to 'Seconds', I'm going to put mine up something really high, so that it makes-- I'll put mine up to 10 seconds. Obviously these haven't changed, they're still my two point-- 2 seconds 10 frames. What I can do is I can select them in here, and instead of doing it down here, down here, and I right click them and go to 'Speed/Duration', won't change what's going on up here, they're kind of separated. 

Up here though if I change them, I'm changing the defaults for these ones up here. So I can say you are now, say 20 frames. Oh, what do we do? 10 seconds 0 frames. Click 'OK', so now I can add these down here and they are really long. These are 10 second blocks. It's up to you, either delete them and use the preferences to kind of change it, or you might just never touch your preferences, and just right click them all, because you might have different paces for different things, and you just do it always, right clicking them up here and doing 'Speed/Duration'. That makes sense? 

Kind of three ways, you do it once it's already on the Timeline, forgetting about what the defaults are, and just right clicking them and changing them. That just changes these unique kind of usages of them. If you know, and you hate the 5 seconds, it is quite long, just go and change your preferences for all future jobs, and then either right click them in here to update them, or just delete them and import them again. Overly complicated, I know, I understand the logic why Premiere Pro does it, but it's-- there's quirks, that's why we got a course, keeps me employed. 

To tidy everything up, everything's got a bit messy, so what I'm going to do is, I would like them all to be the, 2 seconds 2 fra-- sorry, 2 seconds 10 frames. I'm going to change my preferences just for the future, to go back to, for me, because I'm an instructor I need to always go back to 5 seconds, just, it's a pain, but I need to kind of keep it close to whatever the defaults are, but you can have yours on whatever they are, but down here on the Timeline, I'd like you to select them all, right click them, and just make sure we're at least doing something around here. 2 seconds 10 frames, 'Ripple Edit', perfect. 

Nothing changed because mine are perfect. Last thing to do before we go is just going to add a backing music. So I'm going to travel-- sorry, close the bin called Travel, back to 'Project'. Close all that up, under 'Audio', actually I'm going to import a bit of audio. It's one of the previous projects, so I'm going to open up the audio bin, double click in this area down here, go to 'File', 'Import', go to 'Exercise Files', we're going to the 'Project 3', and in 'Audio' here, there's a bunch of them, I want 'Back and Sides'. Back and Sides, kind of one of the twisty ones, that look quite cool for this one, and this is the reason I picked that strange 2 seconds and 10 frames, because I felt like it had a good pace with this music, let's have a listen. 

There's cross fading as well so it's not as a literal cut, but anyway that's-- that was my decision making. So we've got our audio, probably a little bit loud, actually, probably not, music can be just a little bit higher than vocals, because it's going to be in a similar sort of pitch, and because we're not trying to balance it with audio, I'm not going to lower it down much, I worry that it bangs against the 0, but, I'd probably still lower it just a teeny tiny amount. All right, that's us done, let's look at the next video.