The keys to being a successful professional editor come down to two things: precision and speed. Precision is a skill honed over time, with hundreds of hours of practice and experience finding the perfect way to cut and combine clips to tell a story. Speed comes down to how well you know your tools. 

If you’re an editor who works on Avid Media Composer, shortcuts will become a key part of your workflow to work faster and more efficiently. We’ve compiled this cheat sheet of the top shortcuts for Avid so that you can speed up your editing sessions.

55+ Handy Avid shortcuts

There are lots of different shortcut combinations that work with Avid, and you can even create your own shortcuts to customize your editing workflow (more on that later). 

First, let’s start with the basics:

• Play: ( ` ) Key or (Tab) Key
• Go to In: [Q] Key
• Go to Out: [W] Key
• Mark In: [E] Key
• Mark Out: [R] Key
• Marker: [T] Key
• Undo: Ctrl/Cmd + Z
• Redo: Ctrl/Cmd + R

If you’re doing a lot of editing, these will be the keys with the most wear and tear. Now, let’s get into some more complex shortcut combinations for different uses.

Timeline:

• Enlarge track: [Ctrl/Cmd+L]
• Shrink track: [Ctrl /Cmd+K]
• Timeline Finder: [Ctrl/Cmd+F]
• New video track: [Ctrl/Cmd+Y]
• New audio track: [Ctrl/Cmd+U]
• Select all tracks: [Ctrl/Cmd+A]
• Deselect all tracks: [Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+A]
• Show the entire sequence in the Timeline window: [Ctrl+/] (PC) [Cmd + /] (Mac)
• Add keyframe: [“] Key
• Go to next edit: [S] Key
• Go to previous edit: [A] Key
• Open the “Find” dialog box: [Ctrl/Cmd+F]
• Magnify a specified area: [Ctrl/Cmd+M]
• Zoom out of magnification: [Ctrl/Cmd+J]
• Select or open the timeline window: [Ctrl/Cmd+0]
• Open the Audio Tool: [Ctrl/Cmd+1]
• Open the Capture Tool: [Ctrl/Cmd+7]
• Open the Effects Palette: [Ctrl/Cmd+8]

Bins:

• Create new bin: [Ctrl/Cmd+N]
• Select all objects in the active bin or project window: [Ctrl/Cmd+A ]
• Close all windows and bins: [Ctrl/Cmd+W]
• Duplicate selected clip, sequence or title: [Ctrl/Cmd+D]
• Create a group of clips: [Shift+Ctrl+G] (PC) or [Cmd+Shift+G] (Mac)
• Copy clip: Hold Alt or Option while you drag selected clip between bins.

Editing:

• Set in point: [F1]
• Set out point: [F2]
• Add red locator: [F3]
• Undo action: [Ctrl/Cmd+Z]
• Redo action: [Ctrl/Cmd+R]
• Copy footage between Mark In and Mark Out on a selected track: [Ctrl/Cmd+C]
• Paste selected material into the same track: [Ctrl/Cmd+V]
• Quick transition: [\] Key
• Enlarge window: [Ctrl/Cmd+L]
• Reduce window: [Ctrl/Cmd+K]

Effect Mode:

• Open/activate timeline window: ⌘0
• Open audio tool: ⌘1
• Open Avid Calculator: ⌘2
• Open Command palette: ⌘3
• Open Composer window: ⌘4
• Open Media Creation Settings dialog: ⌘5
• Open Console window: ⌘6
• Open Digitize tool: ⌘7
• Open Effect Palette: ⌘8
• Activate Project window: ⌘9
• Move between active sliders: Tab 
• Select all keyframes:  [Ctrl/Cmd+A]
• Display render percentage: Press “P” while rendering
• Display estimated render time: Press “T” while rendering

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How to add or change shortcuts in Avid

For most people the built-in keyboard shortcuts will be more than sufficient to streamline your editing workflow. However, if you are moving over from another editing program, such as Premiere Pro, you may want to keep the same hotkeys and shortcuts. Or, you may just want to change the shortcuts to work better with your workflow. 

Whatever the reason, Avid makes it easy to swap and customize your keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys. Just follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Open the “Command Palette” by going to “Tools” then “Command Palette.” You can also open the Command Palette by hitting Ctrl/Cmd+3. 

Step 2: Select either “Button to Button Reassignment” or “Menu to Button Reassignment” to begin editing your shortcuts.

• You’ll want to use “Button to Button Reassignment” if you want to assign specific actions or tools to different hotkeys.
• You’ll want to use “Menu to Button Reassignment” if you want to attach a menu item to a certain key or shortcut, such as control panel windows. 

For Button to Button Reassignment:

Step 3: Select the “Button to Button Reassignment” option in the Command Palette.

Step 4: Find the action you want to assign to a key in the Command Palette menus.

Step 5: Drag and drop the selected action to whatever key you’d like to assign it to in the Command Palette keyboard. 

For Menu to Button Reassignment:

Step 3: Select the Menu to Button Reassignment option in the Command Palette.

Step 4: Click on the button you want to assign in the Command Palette keyboard. This will highlight the button. 

Step 5: Navigate to the menu option you want to assign to that button and click on it.

Step 6: You should now see that option assigned to your selected button on the keyboard. 

Now you can fully customize your keyboard to edit quickly and efficiently in whatever workflow works best for you. With both custom and pre-baked shortcuts, you can start churning out edits faster than ever before, landing you more editing work and better final projects. 

If you’re moving from one Avid user profile to another, you can copy your user settings and keyboard shortcuts to keep your workflows consistent. To do this, navigate to Settings > User Profile. You can then select Export User or User Profile from the User Profile dropdown menu. 

Once you’re ready to navigate your Avid hotkeys, simply select Import User Profile and select the exported files accordingly. 

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Seamlessly collaborate in Avid with Evercast 

If you’re looking for a better way to bring your remote editing team closer together and collaborate more efficiently from a distance, check out Evercast. Evercast allows you to stream your edit sessions in up to 4K while video chatting and exchanging notes with your team, all under one platform. 

With video conferencing, security approval from all major studios, 4K/60fps streaming, 10-bit 4:4:4 color precision, and multi-channel audio, Evercast is designed for top-level, creative professional collaboration. The software suite encompasses everything you need to collaborate remotely, providing low-latency streaming of your Avid (or any other software), HD video conferencing, with frame-accurate comments and drawing tools for real-time communication. 

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Evercast sessions can be recorded and played back for future use, making them a powerful reference tool while working through endless rounds of edits. Participants can join sessions with just a couple of clicks and with the suite’s robust security features and encrypted streaming, Evercast keeps highly sensitive assets confidential. 

Learn more about how you can collaborate with confidence by booking a live demo here.