Clip Time Measurements?

Question

Having recently come from a Sony Vegas NLE environment, I'm lovin' Premier Pro (ver 4.1) but I greatly miss one Vegas feature that I have not been able to find in Premier.
That is, to sweep out a portion of the timeline to determine its length.  For example, to find out the length of music fill needed between two marker points.
So far the only way I have be able to determine such durations is to position the cursor and the end and the beginning points and subtract the Timeliine Counter values, but that is a bit of a cumbersome and messy way to have to do it.
I have tried every Shift/Control/Alt key combination with cursor click and drag operastions, but nothing does what I want.
Is it possible to somehow measure the time span between two points on the timeline?
Much thanks for any answers!

Answer 1

Ken,
When I first got into video (though I had extensive experience in cine), I did pretty much the same. The manual (they were actually printed on paper back then) was the first thing that I went through, even prior to installation. A lot of it made sense, but NLE work was different, than what I had done with film. The terms had changed in many instances, and there were so many new ones, that were alien to me. Installed and poked around. Back to the manual with the program open. Hey, now some things were perfectly clear.
I did a few simple Projects and struggled though them, with the manual close at hand. After a half-dozen of these, I reread the manual from front to back again. A lot more was sinking in. That program did not have a CiaB, and Lynda.com did not have any lessons on it at the time. Back to the personal Projects, and I kept adding things, until I finally felt comfortable. That program did have a pretty good forum, though like this one, most of the posts were on installation and launch issues. Still, there were some good posts on actually doing something in the program.
Out of the blue, a still, advertising client approached me with a video Project. Luckily, it was simple and not unlike your starter Project. I took a big breath and accepted the assignment. Luckily, the timeframe was very lenient and the client was willing to view a lot of "rushes." Wow, I was having fun. It was like the old days in the edit suite, but on my laptop. Things were so easy, compared to the "good old days." The rest, as they say, is history.
With PrPro, I did have the CiaB series, and they still did manuals back then. Pretty much the same drill - read, read, do, read. For each version of PrPro, that I have had, I always get CiaB, and will buy the manuals (now) from Adobe. Also, this forum has been wonderful. When I moved up to Encore, I sat down and read every post in the old forum, except for the Mac Error Messages sub-forum. Instantly bought Jeff Bellune's Encore book, and read, read, did, read, did...
Now, that is how I learn best: reading then doing. I am less of a tutorial person. My wife, who is far better a student, than I am, learns best by watching, then doing. Reading is #3 on her list. Still, she's the one with the all of those advanced degrees! Oh, she does her reading, but gets much more by seeing and experiencing, than I do. Just different learning styles. My experiences with her are the reason that I do not come down on people, who never crack a manual, regardless of how effective they are for me. Some learn better by doing, then watching, then reading. It's just their style.
I do not denegrate tutorials, as my wife would benefit far more from a few of those, than a stack of well-written books - different styles for different folk.
Good luck with your Projects,
Hunt