Display waveforms for audio clips while dragging
Very simple idea, while dragging audio clips on the timeline, continually show the waveform rather than showing a blank box. This functionality is present in Audition, and is incredibly useful for manual synchronization. See attached gif for further explanation of what I mean by the "blank box".
I'm aware you can sort of already achieve this by "nudging" the audio clip, but it would be great if this were always available when dragging. Thanks!

18 comments
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Christian Sass commented
Soooo we pay monthly for this and this was suggested in 2018, Is there any hope?
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Stephan Casas commented
I'm here in September 2020 wondering why this still isn't a thing. As a software developer, I get that there's probably a good programatic reason for this, but the fact that I can move waveforms around in Audition without losing the visual gives some indication that Premiere should be able to do this, too. I think even iMovie can do this and that's... well, yeah.
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Sergiu Mihalache commented
With Adobe's resource usage (total lack of) efficiency, I'm afraid this feature would require a high-end graphics card with tons of VRAM and and the dragging would still be choppy and very difficult to position.
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Robert Keuler commented
Even grabbing the Scroll Bar at the bottom of the sequence loses the display.
CC 2020 is a little better at it, but not by much. Two audio tracks are pretty good, but the grabbing of the clips still does not work. The more tracks you add, the slower the refresh rate. I'm currently working with 25 Standard tracks where all the audio clips are single clip/stereo.
This seems like a job for proper coding for the Graphics Card?
Another thing I don't understand is why the refresh rate is so slow even though waveform files are being generated and stored on your drive? -
Wojtek Zielinski commented
A short update, I don't know why it's not there yet? Maybe Avid has it patented ? but Resolve has it too.
It's also about the function that will revealing the waveform during trimming.
Vote, everyone, maybe they'll finally implement it after many years to Premiere ....(!) -
Justin Case commented
Yes, this is kind of ridiculous.
This was something that Sony Vegas had like 10+ years ago.
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Wojtek Zielinski commented
In my opinion, this is one of the fundamental things to fix,
but what chance is there that it can be done? it's strange that upon request for this feature, no one from Adobe will answer, on the request from two years ago :(
I have a hope that these basic fixes will be done by Adobe programmers. -
Sean McNally commented
Nope, Premiere still doesn't have this function. Here's hoping Adobe catches wind of this thread!
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Jeff Schaap commented
So, I am assuming this didn't make it into 13.1? Disappointing.
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Sean McNally commented
Update...more than six months after Premiere Rush was launched with this functionality, Premiere Pro still doesn't have it. Really hoping this changes soon, please keep passing this around so it gets more exposure!
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Chris V. commented
How logic! This should be normal!
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Sean McNally commented
An update on this...just learned that Premiere Rush, a mobile-focused, slimmed down version of Premiere that Adobe launched last week actually has this functionality. So hopefully, the developers are working on bringing it to the main version of Premiere!
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David commented
This would be huge. Much of my work deals with some precise audio timing across many layers of audio (sfx and msx). Being able to drag a still see particular waveform moments would be great.
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Andrew Keil commented
As a previous poster said, the flickering/refreshing of audio waveforms during playback/scrolling the timeline is maddening.
I find it hard to believe that caching waveforms for an entire sequence is a big task. If it just happened now and again it would be a mere annoyance, but when you're working all day it really does become very frustrating.
Everything in the interface should be as smooth as butter. Blinking waveforms, waiting for thumbnails to reload when scrolling in the project window, it just feels like you're fighting with a very buggy application.
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Blake Alley commented
This would be so helpful for manual synchronization! I have to add markers to contrasting points and then line those up, but syncing would be so much faster if clips wouldn't have to be re-drawn.
I originally started editing in iMovie 8 years ago and even a low-end program like that has this feature, so not re-drawing audio (possibly video, but mainly audio) clips would be extremely helpful for synchronization.
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Bob K. commented
This occurs when not only dragging clips, but also when scrolling the timeline. I guess it was not expected of us to edit audio at the sample level. That's what Audition is for, right? But I do it all the time in Premiere and the refresh rate is horrible. The waveforms (,pkf) flicker on and off all the time.
Decreasing the .pkf creation time would also be a benefit. I'm tired of "Generating Peak Files" taking forever. But that could be a separate item. -
Q commented
Finally someone said that. Showing waveforms while dragging is a MUST.
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Scott Crozier commented
This is something that has driven me crazy for years. The whole interface has this 1995 feel because of how everything has to be drawn and re-drawn. It would be nice to see some actual interactive interface improvements outside of a new coat of blue paint. This would be #1 for me.