How to Customize Your Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts save you time and a lot of clicking around. If you have ever come close to having carpal tunnel syndrome from too much mouse clicking, (or as I like to call it, "clicking disease"), you will appreciate the fact that Edius not only has a keyboard short-cut defined for almost every function of the program, they also make it very easy to customize your shortcuts, to put you in control. As you become more and more familiar with Edius, try and learn as many as you can. If you do word processing, you probably already know many of the Keyboard shortcuts in Edius. Ctrl+Z for Undo, Ctrl +A for Select All, Ctrl + C for Copy, Ctrl+V for Paste, Ctrl+S for Save..... If you are coming from another video editing program and have learned keyboard shortcuts for particular operations that are used a hundred times every session, you will find your transition to Edius a lot easier if you go in and "map" your favorite shortcuts, to the keys you have been using. You have spent time training your "muscle memory", don't confuse it now! Some people are purists, and want to keep all of their keyboard shortcuts the same as they were byt default, as the program ships. That way they say, they will be on the "same page" as all of the documentation out there for Edius. I say it is not worth the confusion! Go ahead and customize the shortcuts to what you are familiar. Edius will not only play nicer for you, it will also change the "cheat sheet" keyboard shortcut designations that show up in the drop down menus, to remind you what each operation is currently set to.

To make the changes you want, go to the top menu and select Settings/Application Settings and from the pop up window, click on the small plus sign beside "Applications Settings" in the left hand side bar, and then also the plus sign beside "Customize", to finally reveal "Keyboard Shortcuts."You should be presented with a box that looks like this:

Your window should now look like this..

You can sort the list alphabetically by "operation" or key "assignment" by clicking on the top bar.

If you are an experienced editor, coming from another program, here is your chance to make the keyboard do what you are used to in another program. Some of the operations may be worded differently in Edius than what you are use to so you may have to play around with this for a while to get it to do the things you want. I should also point out that the wording for the operation can change from release to release of Edius, so if you suddenly can't find that operation, keep looking, it has probably just been called something different in the latest release of the software. The most common keyboard shortcuts are addressed here as well as many you may have never heard of! You can shut any of them off by highlighting the operation and clicking on "No Assign" You can change the key to any other key by highlighting the operation and clicking on "Assign", and then pressing the key on your keyboard that you would like to change it to. An illustration of your keyboard highlights the keys as you select them, or you can click directly on the illustrated keyboard to make your changes.

If your selection is already assigned to another operation, Edius will let you know that and ask you to confirm your change.

As keyboard shortcuts are a personal preference that depends a lot on what you are use to from other programs, your background, your language, etc., there is no real value in me giving you a list of my keyboard shortcuts. However, there are a few that I might point out that that may be of some help to some as they start working in Edius.

The very first Edius keyboard shortcut that I feel I must point out and urge everyone to change is the key for "deleting all media on the timeline between the in and out". For some reason, Canopus set this to a single keystroke - "D", and many new editors have inadvertently lost hours of work by hitting this key by accident and not noticing it before closing the program. Sort the list by "Operation" (click on the operation bar) and look for "Delete between IN/OUT". Change this to something that is a little harder to hit by accident, like "Shift+Alt+D", or just click "no assignment" to get rid of this extremely nasty "shortcut"!

Here is a few more that I consider essential in my daily workflow. I am always wanting to expand and contract the timeline as I work on fine details and the pull back out to see the bigger picture. I recomend that you set these to what you are use to from another program, or use mine. Sort the "Operation" row alphabetically by clicking on it. Go down to "time scale -zoom in". Click on the "Assign" button and then press the plus key (or your favorite). Assign the minus key (or your favorite) to the "time scale zoom out" I like having a single keystroke for this operation rather then have a combination.

Place or apply a default transition, or "Set default transition" as Edius has called it, is another action that is performed hundreds of times a day and needs to be set to a key that you are accustomed to. Sort on "Operation" and look for "set default transition". Change this to a key that you are accustomed to, or something that is easy to apply. As my default transition is set to "dissolve", I have made my shortcut be Ctrl+D.

Any changes that you make to the keyboard shortcuts will be displayed throughout the program in the drop down menus. For example, I use the applications setting window so much that I have assigned that the keyboard shortcut of "S" (for "settings"). Now, whenever I forget that I have set that shortcut and go ahead and use the actual drop down menu, I am reminded that I do have a shortcut, and what that shortcut actually is.

When you have got the keyboard shortcuts working like you want, Edius will automatically remember them the next time you run the program. Or, if there are more then one editors working at your station, know that your shortcuts will be assigned to your user profile and if you start with that, you will be good. You can also export your settings to a USB key and take them to another Edius station.