Have you been looking for a way to combine clips in Adobe Premiere?  Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, there is no way to do it.  That is to say, there is no provided function for this.  Despite the fact that there is a very easy way to split one clip into two, doing the reverse is not easy.  It is important to be able to do this, because you cannot adjust the settings for a video effect across multiple clips at once.  It is often that you have many clips shot in the same light, location, and time of day that you may want to adjust the picture for using an effect such as Image Control.  In order to do this without the pain of doing each one individually, you must combine these clips into one.

There is a way to accomplish this goal that is not too much of a burden.  My instructions are specifically based on Adobe Premiere Elements 10, but the basic idea should carry over to other versions.  First, set your work area to begin at the beginning of the first clip that you want to combine, and set the end of your work area to the end of the last clip.  Then you can switch to your "Share" workspace and generate a new video file of just the part of your project that lies within your workspace.  Do this by selecting "Computer" in the "Start a new share" menu, then checking the box on the next screen that says "Share WorkArea Bar Only."  This will allow you to only export those clips that you wanted combined.  Of course, you will want to select all of the other settings on this screen according to your particular needs, then click "Save."  Now, you can import the resulting video into your project and use that to replace all of the clips you wanted combined.

If you found this helpful, let me know.  I would love to hear from you.

Really frustrated with Adobe Premiere Elements.  I recently replaced Pinnacle Studio with Premiere, thinking that it would be much better, since the Pro version of Premiere is industry standard and Adobe is a powerhouse of industry standard software.  I am disappointed to find, however, that it has some ridiculous limitations.  These limitations are not due to the fact that it is the "Elements" version, either.  The Pro version has the same limitations.  Its pretty ridiculous.  To be fair, though, it could be that I am missing something.  I am new to the software, afterall.

It has been a few weeks since I last updated my progress on my research into Carrara dynamic hair.  With the guidance of PhilW and some other indispensable artists in the DAZ 3D Carrara Discussion forum, I have finally worked out the problems with my long dynamic hair simulation.  The guidance I described in the last article concerning a proxy figure was exactly right.  In brief, dynamic hair in Carrara does not simulate well when colliding with high poly surfaces, such as can be found on most figures.  The result is that the hair bounces and jitters as if it was in a wind tunnel.  The solution is to build a low poly proxy figure that wraps around the figure such that the hair collides with that proxy instead of the figure itself.  PhilW has made such a proxy for V4 that wraps around the whole body, but there is no such proxy for Aiko 3 as of yet.  Thus I had to make one for myself.  In my case, I was more concerned with

I have been trying for weeks to get some extra long dynamic hair in Carrara to simulate appropriately during a short animation of Aiko 3 walking.  I quickly achieved some level of success, so I was very encouraged, but then I encountered the persistent problem with dynamic hair in Carrara: jittering.  In Carrara, dynamic hair has a tendency to jump and bounce far more than it should in a given situation.  To paraphrase my fellow Carrara dynamic hair enthusiast, PhilW, it looks like the character is standing in a wind tunnel.  I have tried and tried,