Hover Scrub is one of my favorite features that have ever been introduced into Adobe Premiere. It was introduced way back in 2012 as part of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. Despite this feature being almost fifteen years old, I still encounter editors, both in person and online, who are unaware that this feature exists.

Hover Scrub does just what the name says. When you have a bin open and you are in Icon view, Hover Scrub will allow you to drag your mouse over a clip to see the contents of the clip without ever loading it in the Source monitor or having to click and drag a mouse. Since your pointer is just hovering over a clip, with this feature is turned on, as you move the mouse back and forth, you will scrub the clip.

Hover Scrub should be on by default, but if it’s not, head to the bin “hamburger” menu in the upper left-hand corner.

Scroll down and check Hover Scrub.

You have to be in Icon view or Freeform view for Hover Scrub to work.

How do you make the most of Hover Scrub?

First, you can adjust the icon size of the thumbnails, and depending on the size of your bin window and your monitor, you can scale the thumbnails up to nearly the size of the Source monitor. That way you can get a nice, large view of the clip while you are hover-scrubbing.

Second, you can edit right from the bin to the timeline. As you Hover Scrub over a clip, you can mark an in-to-out point with I and O on the keyboard, but if you want to edit that into a timeline, just click the clip where you have marked an in-to-out point and then use the insert or overwrite keyboard shortcuts, and that will place that clip into the timeline.

Third, and this is one of my favorite things: as you are hover-scrubbing, if you decide you need a more detailed view of that clip, you can double-click the clip you were hover-scrubbing on to load it in the Source monitor, and it will load that clip into the Source monitor with the playhead at the frame where your cursor was last located while you were hover-scrubbing. This is a really great, really fast way to take a quick look at clips and then load them with some accuracy into the Source monitor.

Learning to use Hover Scrub effectively will give an editor a whole new way to audition and review their footage. It can be especially useful with large amounts of footage when you just need a quick glance at what a bin might contain without constantly double-clicking and loading clips into the Source monitor.

This series is courtesy of Adobe.