Control surface support

A control surface is a hardware device with controls like faders, knobs, and buttons to give you tactile control when working with audio.

Premiere Pro provides a hardware control interface that lets you connect your control surface device with the application.

Premiere Pro supports two kinds of control surfaces:

• Mackie Control protocol (Mackie)
• Avid and Euphonix control surfaces (EUCON)

Check the hardware documentation that comes with the device to set it up correctly. Once you've done that, go to Premiere Pro's Preferences dialog to set up the configuration.

After configuring your device with Premiere Pro, you can control the Audio Track Mixer and Audio Clip Mixer using the buttons, knobs, and faders on the device.

Use the Control Surface preferences dialog to configure your hardware control device.

To access the Control Surface preferences dialog, select Edit > Preferences > Control Surface.

The Edit, Add, and Remove buttons let you add, edit, or remove control surfaces in your configuration.

Under Device Class, click Add to select the device. You can add either EUCON or Mackie. Or you can add both.

Click Edit to specify configure settings like MIDI Input Device and MIDI Output Device for the selected control surface.

Work with Audio Track Mixer using control surface controls

After you select the connected control surface device in the Preferences dialog, the hardware transport controls are synchronized with the following Audio Track Mixer controls in real time.

Faders: Adjust faders in the Audio Track Mixer using the control surface faders.

For best results, ensure that the fader placement on the control surface accurately matches the placement of the fader in the Audio Track Mixer. Any movement of the fader control in the Audio Track Mixer affects the fader of the control surface.

Bank and Nudge buttons: Control surfaces usually have a limited number of faders. Sometimes, the number of tracks in your sequence exceed the number of corresponding control surface faders. In this case, use the bank and nudge buttons on the control surface to navigate additional tracks . The bank buttons navigate to the next set of tracks in the project.

Meters: Some control surfaces display track meters. EUCON from Avid's Artist Series displays track meters for mono, stereo, 5.1 tracks.

Track Name: Control surfaces also display track names. However, depending on the device, there can be a limit to the number of characters in the track name that the control surface can display.

Automation Mode: Mackie devices let you toggle between Off, Read, Latch, Touch, and Write states for each track in your sequence.

Pan/Balance control: Use the Pan and Balance knob to control pan and balance for each track in your sequence.

Mute: The Mute button on the control surface (On button on Avid devices) mutes the corresponding track in your sequence. 

Record: The Rec/Ready button on Mackie devices or the Auto Rec button on EUCON enables recording for the corresponding track in your sequence.

Work with Audio Clip Mixer using control surface controls

After selecting the control device in the Preferences dialog, select Toggle Control Surface Clip Mixer Mode from the pop-up menu in the Audio Clip Mixer. You can also assign a keyboard shortcut to use the Toggle Control Surface Clip Mixer Mode command.

The control surface supports faders, pan/balance, mute, and solo controls.