4. Organizing Your Content

Geotagging content in the Organizer

Before you start working with the footage, let’s review a final version of the movie you’ll be creating. Make sure that you have correctly copied the Lesson04 folder from your Account page onto your computer’s hard drive. See “Copying the Classroom in a Book files” in the Getting Started section at the beginning of this book.

1. Launch Adobe Premiere Elements. If it is already open, choose Help > Welcome Screen in the Adobe Premiere Elements main menu to return to the Welcome screen.

2. In the Welcome screen, click Video Editor, select Existing Project, and click the Open icon.

3. In the Open Project dialog box, navigate to the Lesson04 folder you copied to your hard drive. Within that folder, select Lesson04_Start_Win.prel (Windows) or Lesson04_Start_Mac.prel (Mac OS), and then click Open. If a dialog box appears asking for the location of rendered files, click the Skip Previews button.

Your project file opens.

4. Choose Window > Restore Workspace to ensure that you start the lesson with the default panel layout.

1. At the upper left side of the Adobe Premiere Elements window, click the Project Assets button () to open that panel. Locate Lesson04_Movie.mov (which should be the only file), and then double-click it to open the video into the preview window.

2. Click the Play button to watch the video about a boat ride in the bayou, which you’ll build in this lesson.

3. When you’re finished, close the preview window.

The Project Assets panel’s role is to help you organize and find files using different search methods. Let’s load some files into the project so you can work with them in the Project Assets panel.

1. Click Add Media () to open the Add Media panel.

2. Click Files And Folders () to open the Add Media dialog box.

3. Navigate to the Lesson04 folder. While pressing the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac OS), select the movie clips Gator01.mp4 to Gator16.mp4, all digital pictures from Picture 1.jpg to Picture 8.jpg, and the single audio clip, narration.wav. Then click Open (Windows) or Import (Mac).

You can do either of the following in the Project Assets panel to view your files:

• Grab the handle on the extreme lower right of the panel to expand it vertically and horizontally.

• Browse through the entire catalog by using the scroll bar at the right side of Project Assets panel.

A. Show/Hide Video
B. Show/Hide Still Image
C. Show/Hide Audio
D. Search
E. Go up one folder level
F. Clear
G. Pin view
H. Project Assets menu

Let’s work through some of the most common functions of the Project Assets panel.

1. At the upper left of the Project Assets panel, experiment by clicking the Show/Hide Video (), Show/Hide Still Image (), and Show/Hide Audio () buttons. For example, click the Hide Still Image and Hide Audio buttons so only video files appear in the Project Assets panel. This is a very simple technique for quickly finding the video content that you’re looking for.

2. From the Project Assets panel menu, choose View > List View to display the content in this view. Once in List view, click and drag the bottom right corner to expand the window so all the columns are visible. You can sort your content by clicking the column head of any column. The arrow in the column you choose shows whether the data is sorted in ascending or descending order. For example, click the Name column head to see how it sorts the content, and then click the Media Duration column head. The column with the arrow showing is the column currently being used to sort the content.

3. In the Project Assets panel menu, choose New Folder to create a folder to organize your videos. Adobe Premiere Elements creates a folder named Folder 01, with the text highlighted so it’s easy to change the name. Type in the word Video and press Enter or Return, replacing the default name Folder 01.

4. Select all video files, and drag them into the new folder. Click the triangle next to the Video folder to close it. Now your Project Assets panel is a whole lot tidier. When you’re working with large projects with multiple video, still image, and audio files, creating folders is the best strategy for organizing your content and making it easy to find.

5. From the Project Assets panel menu, choose New Item to view the new items that you can create from this menu. We’ll cover adjustment layers in Lesson 6 and titles in Lesson 8. Bars And Tone is a vestigial concept that is useful for analog projects but has little application for most digital video-based projects. Creating black video and color mattes is useful when you need colored or black backgrounds for titles or other movie elements. When you choose any of these items, Adobe Premiere Elements will open a format-specific dialog box for creating the content and inserting it into the Project Assets panel.

6. Double-click Gator01.mp4 in the Videos folder of the Project Assets panel to open it in the preview window. (If necessary, click and drag the bottom-right corner of the Project Assets panel to make the preview window visible.) The preview window lets you play your content using VCR-like controls before you add it to your project. You can also trim frames from the start and end of a video before adding it to your project. Although you can also trim frames in the timeline, you may prefer to do this in the preview window.

7. Trim a few frames from the clip: In the Preview window, drag the current-time indicator (CTI) to the right until the timecode beneath the video reads 00;00;00;22, which is 22 frames in from the start of the clip and the point at which the zoom-in starts. Note that you can also use the Left and Right Arrow keys on your keyboard for precise positioning of the current-time indicator.

8. Click the Set In icon () to set the In point, or press the letter I on your keyboard. In essence, you’ve told Adobe Premiere Elements to ignore the first 22 frames when you add the clip to the project, and to start at frame 23. Of course, the edit is nondestructive, so you haven’t actually deleted any frames from the video file on your disk. You can always undo this later and show the frames that you just trimmed.

A. Current-time indicator
B. In point handle
C. Current time in movie
D. Rewind
E. Set In point (I)
F. Step Back (Left Arrow key)
G. Play/Pause toggle (spacebar)
H. Step Forward (Right Arrow key)
I. Set Out point (O)
J. Fast-Forward
K. Clip duration
L. Out point handle

9. In the Preview window, drag the current-time indicator to the right until the timecode beneath the video reads around 00;00;02;15, which is where the zoom-in ends. Click the Set Out icon () to set the Out point, or press the letter O on your keyboard. You’ve just set the Out point, essentially trimming out all video frames to the right of that point of the video.

10. Click and drag Gator01.mp4 in the preview window to the start of the Video 1 and Audio 1 tracks on the timeline as shown below, and release. You’ve just added the trimmed video to the timeline. Click No if Adobe Premiere Elements asks if you want to fix any quality issues in the clip or any other questions.

11. Close the preview window, and click the Project Assets button () to close the Project Assets panel. Make sure that the current-time indicator in the timeline is at the start of the clip, click anywhere in the timeline, and then press the spacebar to play the clip. Note that it starts and ends on the trimmed frames.

Note that the contents of the Organizer will depend upon many circumstances, including which lessons you’ve performed, whether you’ve imported content into the Organizer from Photoshop Elements, and other factors. To make your Organizer look like the next figure, take the following steps:

1. On the extreme lower left of the Organizer, click the Show icon (), which reveals the folders on the upper left. (If Show is already selected, you’ll see the Hide icon in this location.) Click Folder 4, which opens just the contents from that folder in the Organizer. Make sure that you have the Media tab selected on the top to see what’s showing in the figure below.

2. On the extreme lower right of the Organizer, click the Tags/Info icon (), which opens the Tags and Information panels on the right of the Organizer’s interface.

3. Choose View > Media Types, and make sure Photos, Video, and Audio are all selected.

4. Choose View > Details.

5. Choose View > File Names.

6. In the Sort By menu at the top of the Media browser, choose Name.

There are three ways that the Adobe Organizer helps you organize your clips: by categorizing them into People, Places, and Events; by giving them star ratings on a scale from 1 to 5; and by manually tagging them with keywords and via smart tags. We’ll give you a quick introduction to each technique, and then you’ll learn how to use them all.

In Adobe Premiere Elements 12, the Organizer’s interface has been optimized for three views, as shown on the top toolbar: People, Places, and Events. By associating your video clips with one or more of these categories, you can easily find all clips associated with a person, place, or event. We’ll demonstrate how to associate your clips with a place or an event, but not a person, primarily because face recognition—a great feature that the Organizer uses to automate the process of people tagging your still images—is not available for video.

The star ratings system allows you to review and rate all your clips on a scale from 1 to 5; you can later search for only those clips that you rated 4 or higher, for example—an easy way to find high-quality clips and/or eliminate poor-quality clips.

Keyword tagging allows you to tag a clip by person, location, event, or other classifications, and includes customizable categories.

When you run the Auto-Analyzer on a clip, Adobe Premiere Elements analyzes the video to detect scenes based on content, and rates the content qualitatively, a process known as Smart Tagging. This allows you to hunt for scenes that contain faces and identify scenes that are out of focus, shaky, underexposed, or overexposed. Using this qualitative data, Adobe Premiere Elements then categorizes all clips as high, medium, or low quality. This serves a valuable triage function that later helps you search for the best clips for your movie. This analysis is also used for features like Smart Trimming and Smart Fix, as discussed in Lesson 6.

For example, if you shot an hour of video on your last vacation, Smart Tagging allows you to identify medium-and-higher quality clips containing faces (presumably family members) and to produce a movie containing only these clips. What would literally take you hours to accomplish manually, Smart Tagging can produce in a few moments.

Using all these tags in any combination, you can hunt for clips to manually add to your projects, or you can create an InstantMovie, which is a professional-looking edited movie complete with titles, soundtrack, effects, and transitions. You’ll create an InstantMovie in the last exercise in this lesson.

The content we’re using in this book was shot in two different places: The still images are from New Orleans; the videos from Airboat Adventures in Lafitte, Louisiana.

You’ll use this content to create two Places in the Organizer—one for the videos, the other for the still images—and associate some content with each Place. Then, working from the Organizer’s Google Maps view, you can click a place and see all clips associated with that place.

1. On the Organizer’s top toolbar, click Places ().

2. On the Organizer’s bottom toolbar, click Add Places ().

3. In the Add Places Search field, type Lafitte Louisiana, and click Search. Note that if you were typing in a street address, you would type in the address as you would on an envelope. For example, if you shot video at the White House in Washington, DC, you could either type in The White House or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500.

4. In the Organizer, click Lafitte, LA, USA.

5. Hold down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac OS) and, in the media bar at the top of the Add Places dialog box, click all the videos associated with that location. This should total 17 videos: 16 Gator clips and Lesson4_Movie.mov.

6. Release the Ctrl or Command key, and click the green checkmark. Adobe Premiere Elements will associate the selected content with that place.

7. At the bottom right of the Add Places dialog box, click Done. The Organizer creates the place.

8. Repeat the process for the images. Click Add Places again, type New Orleans in the Search field, and click the location that the Organizer finds. Hold down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac OS), select all the images, and then click the green checkmark. Click Done when you’re finished.

You should now have at least two places identified and content associated with each. Let’s see how this will help you find your content for future projects.

In the Organizer’s top toolbar, click Media () to exit Places view, and then click Places () to return to that view. If the map isn’t displayed on the right, click the Map icon () in the lower right corner of the Organizer window.

You may have to adjust the navigational and sizing controls on the upper left of the map, but you should be able to approximate the view shown above. Double-click either icon, and the Organizer will display the content from that location in the Media browser. Single-click the icon, and the Organizer will display all content, with the content from that location highlighted. If you hover your pointer over the blue icon in each video or still image, you’ll notice that it’s been tagged to the respective places.

Sometimes, however, you’ll want to manually organize clips into Events—perhaps because, like our trip to New Orleans, the event took place over multiple days. Or maybe you shot video and pictures at more than one event on a particular day and need to break them into multiple events, like a wedding ceremony and wedding reception. Here, we’ll manually create Events with the Adobe Organizer.

1. Click Events () to enter Event view. Make sure Events is selected in the top toolbar, not Smart Events.

2. On the Organizer’s bottom toolbar, click Add Event (). The Add New Event dialog box appears on the right.

3. Complete the information in the Add New Event dialog box:

• In the Name field, type Trip to New Orleans.

• Use the calendar controls to input a Start Date of 12/30/2012 and an End Date of 1/12/2013. It’s easiest if you choose the year first and then the date.

• In the Description field, type New Year’s Celebration in New Orleans.

4. Assuming that you still have Lesson04 selected in the panel on the left, all content in the Media Browser should relate to this trip. Click anywhere in the media window to select that window, and then press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS) to select all the content in the Media browser, drag it into the window beneath the description, and release your pointer. The Organizer adds this content to the event.

5. At the bottom right of the Add New Event dialog box, click Done. The Organizer creates the event.

To find your content later on, in the Organizer’s top toolbar, click Media () to exit Events view, and then click Events () to return to that view. You should see the Trip to New Orleans event in the Media browser window. If you double-click it, the clips that you associated with the event will appear in the Media Browser. If you hover your pointer over the calendar icon for a particular clip in the Media browser, you’ll see the event with which it has been associated.

1. Click Media to return to Media view. If you don’t see the star ratings for your clips, choose View > Details from the Organizer main menu bar.

2. Hover your pointer over the star ratings beneath any clip, and click the star that corresponds to the desired rating for that clip. Go ahead and rate a few clips. These are all five-star clips as far as I’m concerned, but go ahead and rate some across the board.

3. To change a rating, use the same procedure, and choose a different rating.

4. To delete the star rating, click the last selected star on the right (e.g., the fourth star in a clip rated four stars).

5. To find clips based on their assigned ratings, click the number of target stars in the Ratings bar on the top right, and in the pull-down menu beneath the ratings, choose how to apply the rating. For example, in the figure below, we elected to show all clips with a four-star rating or higher.

6. To stop sorting by star rating and show all clips in the Organizer, delete the star rating on the upper right by clicking the last selected star.

In this exercise, you’ll create and apply a custom keyword in the Organizer, and then search for clips based on that keyword. To ensure that you’re looking at the same content as appears in this book, make sure you’ve selected the Lesson04 folder in the My Folders section of the Albums And Folders panel on the left of the Organizer. See the first few steps of the earlier section “Tagging in the Organizer” to accomplish this.

1. On the bottom right of the Organizer, click Tags/Info () to open the Tags/Information panel.

2. Below Keywords, click Other.

3. Next to Keywords, click the Create New button (), and choose New Sub-Category.

4. In the Create Sub-Category dialog box, type Boat Rides in the Sub-Category Name field. Then click OK.

Adobe Premiere Elements creates the new subcategory.

5. Click the blue tag next to Boat Rides, and drag it onto any of the videos in the Media browser. In this example, I’ve already applied the tag to Gator01.mp4 and Gator02.mp4 and am applying it to Gator03.mp4.

6. To view the clips that you’ve just tagged, click the greater than icon (>) to the right of Boat Rides, which opens the Tagging Search window that shows Keywords on the upper left and the clips that you just tagged in the Media browser (you may have to click the Tags/Info toggle to expose those fields). This window shows all tags created via keywords as well as the People, Places, and Events that you’ve set up. You can select any options in any of these categories or combination of categories to include content from these sources in the Media Browser. You can even apply star ratings to further refine your search.

7. In the upper left toolbar in the Tagging Search window, click the Back button () to close that search window.

To control the Auto-Analyzer behavior, in the Organizer, choose Edit > Preferences > Media-Analysis (Windows) or Elements Organizer > Preferences > Media Analysis (Mac OS).

In most instances on most computers, background operation should work just fine. On older, less powerful computers, and those configured with the minimum RAM, background operation may cause a noticeable drag on foreground operations, particularly when you’re working with H.264-based, high-definition formats like AVCHD and video shot by DSLRs. If you notice any sluggishness in your foreground operations after importing footage or experience any system instability, try disabling the Auto-Analyzer as a background operation by deselecting Analyze Media For Smart Tags Automatically.

1. If the Organizer isn’t open, click the Organizer icon () on the Action bar. If it’s already open, press Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command+Tab to switch to the Organizer.

2. Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS) to select all clips, and then right-click and choose Run Auto-Analyzer. This can take a while, so you might want to try one or two clips first.

3. The Organizer starts analyzing the clips and displays a progress bar. The duration of the process will vary by clip length, clip format, and the speed of your computer. After completion, Adobe Premiere Elements will display a status message letting you know that the analysis is complete.

4. In the Organizer, if necessary, press Ctrl+D (Windows) or Command+D (Mac OS) to display file details. A purple tag beneath the clip’s thumbnail indicates that Smart Tagging has been applied; hover your pointer over the tag to see which quality-related tags were applied.

5. To remove a tag, right-click the tag in the Organizer, and choose Remove. Repeat as necessary for other tags.

In the Organizer, you’ll know that the clip has been split into multiple scenes if there is a Step Forward icon () to the right of the clip. Click that icon, and Adobe Premiere Elements displays all scenes separately in the Organizer, surrounded by a border that’s a different shade of gray from the rest of the Organizer. This lets you know that all the scenes are part of a single clip.

You should see separate scenes in the Gator12.mp4 clip, where the Organizer separated sections where the alligator was on land and then in the water. In the Organizer, you can treat each scene as a separate clip—for example, double-clicking it to play it in the preview window. You can consolidate all scenes back into a single frame by clicking the Step Backward icon to the right of the final scene ().

• Send them all to Adobe Premiere Elements to start a new project or for insertion at the end of the timeline in an open project. Briefly, you select the desired clips, right-click, and choose Edit With Premiere Elements Editor. Note that you can select complete clips or segments of clips identified by the Auto-Analyzer. The full procedure is documented in “Working in the Organizer” in Lesson 1. This option works well for simple projects, because it adds all content to the timeline quickly.

• Drag the clips into the Project Assets panel. (Remember, you must be in Expert view to see the Project Assets panel.) This option gives you the most flexibility, because you can add the content to the timeline in any order and at any time.

• Create an InstantMovie from the content by selecting it in the Organizer and sending it to Adobe Premiere Elements. This is the option explored in the next exercise.

You’ll start in the Organizer, using the video clips from the Lesson04 folder. Make sure these clips are the only ones present in the Media browser. In addition, close Adobe Premiere Elements to start with a clean slate in that program. Do not overwrite the file Lesson04_Start_Win.prel (Windows) or Lesson04_Start_Mac.prel (Mac OS): If you want to save your work, save it under a different name.

1. Remove audio and photos from display in the browser: Choose View > Media Types > Photos, and then choose View > Media Types > Audio to remove these media types from the Media browser.

2. Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS) to select all clips in the Media browser, click the Create button () in the upper right corner of the Organizer, and choose InstantMovie ().

Adobe Premiere Elements launches. If the Format Mismatch dialog box opens, click Yes to change the project preset to match the clips.

3. If a Save Project dialog box opens, name the file Lesson04_InstantMovie.prel, and save it in the Lesson04 folder.

4. If a dialog box opens asking if you want to fix problems in the clips, click No.

5. In the Choose A Movie Theme dialog box, select Extreme Sports, and click Next. (If this theme is not available, choose another theme.)

6. Customize the theme as desired. Accept the options as is, or do any or all of the following:

• Customize the opening and closing titles.

• Select the Auto Edit option to have Adobe Premiere Elements analyze your clips and edit them to fit the selected theme. It’s recommended you do this; if you don’t select Auto Edit, Adobe Premiere Elements uses the clips as is. Also, choose whether or not to apply the Auto-Analyzer to clips that you haven’t previously analyzed.

• Click the triangle next to Music to show the Music options. There, select Theme Music to use the background music from the chosen theme, or select No Music. To use your own background music, click My Music, and then click the Browse button to choose the song you want. Then drag the Music/Sound FX slider to the desired setting—to the right to prioritize audio captured with the video clips and to the left to prioritize the selected background music. If you have dialogue in your project that you want to retain (which these clips don’t), select the SmartMix option; Adobe Premiere Elements will reduce the volume of the music track when it detects dialogue.

• Click the triangle next to Speed And Intensity to show the Speed And Intensity options. Adjust the Effects and Cuts sliders as desired.

• Click the triangle next to Duration and then choose the desired option. Match Music produces a movie that matches the duration of the selected music and is recommended. Or, you can specify a duration or choose Use All Clips, which uses all clips at their original duration with no background music.

• Click the triangle next to Sequence to show the Sequence options. Choose Theme Order (recommended), which allows Adobe Premiere Elements to use clips as they best match the theme, or Time/Date, which uses the clips in the order in which they were shot.

• Click the triangle next to Theme Content to show the Theme Content options. Choose the content to incorporate into the InstantMovie and whether to replace any existing content with theme-based content. If a content type is grayed out (like the Intro/Closing Movie for the Pan and Zoom theme), it is not included in that theme.

• Click the triangle next to Render Preview, and then click Yes to render a preview of the InstantMovie after completion or No to preview it in real time from the Timeline (recommended).

7. After selecting your options, click Apply to create the InstantMovie and then do the following:

• Click No if asked if you want to select more clips.

• Click Yes if asked whether you want to replace user-applied effects.

• Click No when Adobe Premiere Elements asks if you want to render the movie.

Adobe Premiere Elements creates the InstantMovie and inserts it into the timeline in consolidated form.

8. To separate the InstantMovie into its components to edit them, click to select the new InstantMovie in the timeline, right-click, and choose Break Apart InstantMovie.

9. Use the playback controls in the Monitor panel to preview the InstantMovie. If Adobe Premiere Elements asks if you’d like to render effects before playing the movie, click Yes if you’d like to see a perfect rendition, although this may take a good bit of time, depending on your system. Click No if you have a fast system and/or just want to get a quick idea of how the movie looks.

A. Preview area
B. Add Marker
C. Current time
D. Go to Previous Edit Point (Page Up)
E. Rewind
F. Step Back (left)
G. Play/Pause toggle (spacebar)
H. Step Forward (right)
I. Fast-Forward
J. Go to Next Edit Point (Page Down)
K. Render Timeline
L. Fit to Visible Timeline ()
M. Zoom Out (-)
N. Zoom control
O. Zoom In (=)

2. What’s the difference between the Organizer that ships with Adobe Premiere Elements and the Organizer that ships with Adobe Photoshop Elements?

3. What are the three main content categories in the Organizer?

4. What is Smart Tagging? Are there any situations in which you wouldn’t want to apply Smart Tagging?

5. After creating an InstantMovie, how do you break up the movie to edit it further?

2. This is a trick question; there is no difference. If you have Adobe Premiere Elements and Adobe Photoshop Elements installed, both programs can insert content into the same shared database and sort through and retrieve data from that database.

3. The main content categories in the Organizer are People, Places, and Events.

4. When you apply Smart Tagging to a clip, Adobe Premiere Elements analyzes the clip to detect scenes based on content; searches for specific content types, like faces; and ranks the quality of your clips. Other than processing time, there’s very little downside to applying Smart Tagging. Your video clips will be divided into useful scenes, and you can find high-quality clips much faster than you could manually.

5. Click the clip with your pointer to select it, and then right-click and choose Break Apart InstantMovie.