Here's an excerpt from the official guide to Adobe Premiere Pro that I co-authored.
This excerpt covers ways of performing common tasks such as playing video clips, including a new browsing feature in Premiere Pro CS6 called hover scrub, and other key topics such as essential playback controls and customizing your monitors.
Note: This excerpt is from the forthcoming book Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 Classroom in a Book.
The greater part of video editing is invested in watching clips and making creative choices about them. It’s important to feel really comfortable browsing media.
Premiere Pro has multiple ways of performing common tasks such as playing video clips. You can use the keyboard, click buttons with your mouse, or use an external device like a jog/shuttle control.
Premiere Pro CS6 has a new browsing feature called hover scrub that allows you to view the contents of your clips quickly and easily right in the bin.
1 Double-click the Double Identity bin to open it.
2 Click the Icon View button at the bottom-left corner of the bin.
3 Drag your mouse, without clicking, across any of the images in the bin.Premiere Pro displays the contents of the clip as you drag. The left edge of the thumbnail represents the beginning of the clip, and the right edge represents the end. In this way, the width of the thumbnail represents the whole clip.
4 Select a clip by clicking it once. Hover scrubbing is now turned off, and a mini scrollbar appears at the bottom of the thumbnail. Try dragging through the clip using the scrollbar.
Premiere Pro uses the J, K, and L keys on your keyboard to perform playback too, just like the Media Browser:
• J: Play backward
• K: Pause
• L: Play forward
5 Select a clip, and use the JKL keys to play the thumbnail. Be sure to click the clip only once. If you double-click, it will open in the Source monitor.
Tip: If you press the J or L key multiple times, Premiere Pro will play the video clips at multiple speeds.
When you double-click a clip, not only is it displayed in the Source monitor, it’s also added to a list of recent clips.
6 Double-click to open four or five clips from the Double Identity bin.
7 Click the Recent Items menu to browse between your recent clips.
8 Click the Zoom menu at the bottom of the Source monitor. By default, this is set to Fit, which means Premiere Pro will display the whole frame, regardless of the original size. Change the setting to 100%. These Double Identity clips are high-resolution, and they are probably much bigger than your Source monitor. You are likely to have scrollbars at the bottom and on the right of your Source monitor now, so you can view different parts of the image. The benefit of viewing with Zoom set to 100% is that you see every pixel of the original video, which is useful for checking the quality.
9 Set the Zoom back to Fit.
Tip: Notice that you have the option to close a single clip or close all clips, clearing the menu and the monitor. Some editors like to clear the menu and then open several clips that are part of a scene by selecting them all in the bin and dragging them into the Source monitor together. They can then use the recent items menu to browse only the clips from this short list.