Blog . Things to Know About Adobe Premiere
Things to Know About Adobe Premiere
03/24/14 | Posted by Leah Yochman | Posted in Digital Creativity
Editing video can be harder than you think. Here are some things you should know to make your life easier in the video-editing category!
Before you open one of the programs listed above, make a folder on your desktop and name it. Put all of your video and/or audio you plan on using for your video in that folder. When you save, make sure that your file is saved in the folder along with your video and/or audio. This is important because if all files are not together and you try to open the project file, a red gradient will appear saying “Media Offline.” Don’t be alarmed if there is a yellow gradient saying “Media Pending” when you open up your saved file on a different computer. All that means is the program is loading all of the video files and effects you have on them.
This is where all of your video stuff is stored while you are using the program, and should be thought of as storage. If you want to preview any of your edits, timelines, effects, or transitions you have to render them (this means your edits are being applied to the clip). All of the rendered clips are then stored on the scratch disk as a preview file. When you first open up Premier and it asks you to “Make A New Project” a small window will pop up. There are two tabs, “General” and “Scratch Disks”. The “General” settings should be fine at what they are set at and the “Scratch Disks” settings will automatically be set to “Same as Project”. What this means is that the scratch files will be stored in the same folder as your project. You have two other options as well, “My Documents” (this means that the scratch files will be stored in your “My documents” folder) and “Custom” (this means that you want it saved/stored in a place of your choosing. You will need to select “Browse” to specify your available disk location). Just remember that no matter which of the options you choose, all of your files and saved files are together.
There is a difference between the two of these and you should be using both. By creating a “Project” you are making a place to import all your assets and a place to edit your sequences. A “Sequence” is where you will be editing your clips. You can have more than one sequence in a single project. Creating multiple sequences can break down a more complex project into smaller steps. If you want to make a short film, you can have a sequence for the intro, one for the film itself, and one for the ending credits. You can create a “New Sequence” in the top menu or you can right click on one of your video files and select “New Sequence From Clip”. This will set the dimensions the same as the original video file.
The keyboard shortcuts can save a few seconds of your time. Instead of searching all over the Internet for Adobe Premiere keyboard shortcuts, click on the bold “Premiere Pro” option next to “File” and select Keyboard Shortcuts. This will open up a small window that has all of the keyboard shortcuts which you can view at any time.
If you select “Title” from the toolbar at the top of the screen, a small window with more options will appear. There are three types of titles you can make: default, still, roll, and crawl. You can see your video underneath while the title is being created, and use fonts downloaded from the internet.
If you use the razor tool to cut your video, it will also cut your audio. This means where you cut the video the audio will be cut in the same spots. If you want to cut the video and have the audio play straight through, right-click the clip in the timeline and select the “Unlink” option. Now you can freely edit the audio and video separately.
If you have a lot of video to edit, changing the color of the clip in the timeline can help organize the project. Just right-click on the clip, select “Label,” and pick your color. I normally have a lot of video that I am editing and I recently started doing this to keep focused.
To change the timing of video footage, right-click on the clip in the timeline and select “Speed/Duration.” This will change the length of your clip. You have the option to keep the original pitch and reverse the clip speed.