How to Match Frame and Replace Edit in Premiere Pro

The ability to match frame and replace edit in Premiere Pro is incredibly helpful and will enable you to simplify swapping one take for another. Here’s how it’s done.

When editing a project in Premiere Pro CC there are several tips and tricks that you can use to increase your editing speed and efficiency. One of these tips to aid you is using the match frame feature. We’ve covered this specific tip before here at PremiumBeat so be sure to check this quick tip out. If you’re more of the visual person then the video below from Video Revealed is a great resource for learning how and when to use the match frame technique.

Now that we’ve got a refresher on how and when to use match frame let’s look at how we can use the replace edit technique in Premiere Pro CC to increase our editing efficiency even more.

Replace Edit

When you’re working on a project and you know that you’ve run more than one take on a specific scene you can easily replace one take with another with replace edit. This technique is incredibly helpful and allows you to speed up your editing process. So, let’s run through this technique step by step and see exactly how we can increase our editing speed.

Step 1: Find the Clip You Want to Replace

Once we find the clip we want to replace on the timeline we’ll want to right click and select Reveal in Project. In the video tutorial below from PeachpitTV they’ll also show you an option on how to set a hotkey for this task.

Step 2: Find Your Desired Replacement Clip

Next up access the bin where your footage is located. If you follow proper logging techniques than all of the various takes for that scene will be located here. Find the clip that will replace the existing clip in your timeline. You can then select this clip and load it into the source monitor.

Step 3: Check Your Playheads

If the clip has dialogue (like in the PeachpitTV tutorial below), then you can use this dialogue to act as an anchor for the upcoming match frame when applying your replace edit. The important thing is that your playhead is in a common position on both the source and program monitor.

Step 4: Replace Your Clip

Making sure that our clip is still selected in the timeline, go to Clip > Replace with Clip > From Source Monitor, Match Frame. By using From Source Monitor, Match Frame we’re essentially using the Match Frame technique to aid us in replacing a clip.

If you had transitions and other effects added to the clip, these will be applied to the new replacement clip. This is an effective and useful technique to help editors streamline their process. Let’s watch this video tutorial from PeachpitTV to see this process play out in real time.

Have any other quick tips for Premiere Pro? Share them with us in the comments below.