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Margaret Artola/4 min read

Working with the Roll Tool in Premiere Pro

Roll vs Ripple

FeatureBehavior
Roll Tool (N)Adjusts where two adjacent clips meet without changing total duration.
Ripple Edit (B)Trims one clip; everything after shifts to fill the gap.
Master Premiere Pro at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Video Editing & Motion Graphics Certificate teaches Premiere Pro alongside After Effects.

In this video on the Roll Tool in Premiere Pro, we will examine its common use for covering one clip with another and a unique technique for creating instant J and L cuts.

Video Transcription

Hello, This is Margaret with Noble Desktop. Today, I Will Be Reviewing the Roll Tool in Premiere Pro.

What is the Roll Tool? the Roll Tool is a Tool That Covers Footage and Extends One Clip While Covering the Clip After It. You Might Notice I'm Linked Because I Want to Cover Both Audio and Video of One Clip to the Other One. the Abbreviation for the Roll Tool is the Letter 'N'.

So, If I Pull Over, You'll See That They're Both Changing. Both of These Views Are Changing—the Left Hand Image is the Last Frame of the First Clip and the Second Image is the First Frame of the Second Clip. Now, the Reason They're Both Changing is Because the View is Changing As It's Being Covered. I'm Covering—I Can Go Either Way with the Roll Tool Because I Can Just Go Either Way with the Roll Tool to See How They Cover Each Other. Just Play This for a Second. Pull This a Little Bit More.

Now, Let's Say That I'd Like to Have a Little Bit of the Great Sound Before We See This Shot. It's Very Common—it's Called a J Cut. Now, If I Hold Down the Option Key and I Pull Over, You Might Notice This Kind of Looks Like the Letter 'J'. This is Where the Term J Cut Comes From. So, Now I'm Going to Hear Some of This Audio Before I See the Image, and Once You Do That, You Become Aware of It and You See It Everywhere. It's Very Subtle, but It Actually Gives Your Video a Much More Professional Sheen. I'll Do It a Little Bit More, so That There's No Mistaking. Again, I'm Holding Down the Option Key and Then Just Pulling Out.

Now, If That's the J Cut, What's an L Cut? Hold Down the Option Key Again, and I'll Pull This Way. This is an L Cut Because This Looks Like the Letter 'L' Right Here. So, I'm Going to Hear a Little Bit of This Video Underneath the Other Image. It Gives It Some Subtlety—way More Common to Do It the Other Way Though.

So, That's the Roll Tool—extremely Handy and Good for Many Other Things. Let's Just Go over a Couple of Things That It Might Be Good For. I'm Going to Press 'C' for the Razor Tool. I'm Going to Make a Couple of Cuts Here, Go Back to 'V' for the Selection, and Let's Say That I Have a Close-up Here. Oops, If You Don't Have Your Effects Controls Up, You Have to Choose It Somehow. I'm Going to Go Ahead and Just Zoom In. I Just Increase the Scale Here Under My Effects Control. Let's Watch This Now. You Know What, I've Changed My Mind—I Don't Really Like It. That's Another Use for the Roll Tool. and for Roll, I'm Just Going to Cover It Over, It's Just Folding over Itself so It No Longer Exists.

The Roll Tool is Not As Common As the Ripple Tool, but It's Definitely a Common Tool, Particularly When Using the J Cut and the L Cut. Speaking of Which, by the Way, I'm Going to Press Option Again and Put This Back Flush. You Can Also Just Instead of Pressing Option, You Can Also Unlink, and Then If I Press 'N', I Would Have the Ability to Change the Video so I Just Created Them Independently of Each Other. That's All Option is Doing—it's Essentially Unlinking Your Video and Audio Temporarily.

That's All for This Tutorial. I Hope You Enjoyed Learning How to Use the Roll Tool in Premiere Pro. This Has Been Margaret for Noble Desktop.