Using the standard digital video workflow

As you gain editing experience, you’ll develop your own preferences for the order in which to work on the different aspects of your project. Each stage requires a particular kind of attention and different tools. Also, some projects call for more time spent on one stage than another.

Whether you skip through some stages with a quick mental check or spend hours (even days!) dedicated to perfecting an aspect of your project, you’ll almost certainly go through the following steps:

1. Acquire your media: This can mean recording original footage, creating new animated content, selecting stock media, or gathering a variety of assets for a project.

2. Ingest the video to your editing storage: With file-based media, Premiere Pro can read the media files directly, usually with no need for conversion. If you’re working with file-based media, be sure to back up your files to a second location because storage drives sometimes physically fail unexpectedly. With tape-based formats, Premiere Pro (with the appropriate hardware) can convert the video into digital files. For video editing, use fast storage for smooth playback.

3. Organize your clips: Your project may have a lot of video content to choose from. Invest the time to organize clips into special folders (called bins) in your project. You can add color labels and other metadata (metadata is additional information about the clips) to help keep things organized.

4. Create a sequence: Selectively combine the parts of the video and audio clips you want into one or more sequences.

5. Add transitions: Place special transition effects between clips, add video effects, and create composite visuals by placing clips on multiple layers (called tracks in the Timeline panel).

6. Create or import titles, graphics, and captions: Add them to your sequence along with your video clips.

7. Adjust the audio mix: Adjust the volume of your audio clips to get the mix just right, and use transitions and effects on your audio clips to improve the sound.

8. Output: Export your finished project to a file or videotape.

Premiere Pro supports each of these steps with industry-leading tools. A large community of creative and technical professionals is waiting to share their experience and support your development as an editor.

Enhancing the workflow with Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro has easy-to-use tools for video editing. It also has advanced tools for manipulating, adjusting, and fine-tuning your projects.

You may not make use of all of the following features in your first few video projects. However, as your experience and understanding of nonlinear editing grows, you’ll want to expand your capabilities.

It’s beyond the scope of one book to cover all of the expansive creative tools and capabilities of Premiere Pro. Still, this book will enable you to fully post-produce professional projects and get you ready to take your skills to the next level.

The following topics will be covered:

• Advanced audio editing: Premiere Pro provides audio effects and editing tools unequaled by any other nonlinear editor. As well as producing a soundtrack mix, you can clean up noisy audio, reduce reverb, make sample-level edits, apply multiple audio effects to audio clips or whole tracks, and use state-of-the-art Virtual Studio Technology (VST) plug-ins.

• Color correction and grading: Correct and enhance the look of your footage with advanced color-correction filters, including Lumetri, a dedicated color correction and grading panel. You can make secondary color-correction selections that allow you to adjust isolated colors, adjust selected areas of an image to improve the composition, and automatically match the colors in two images.

• Keyframe controls: Premiere Pro gives you precise control over the timing of visual and motion effects without using a dedicated compositing or motion graphics application. Keyframes use a standard interface design; if you learn to use them in Premiere Pro, you’ll know how to use them in all Adobe Creative Cloud products in which they’re available.

• Broad hardware support: Choose from a wide range of compatible input and output hardware. Premiere Pro system specifications range from low-cost desktop computers and laptops for video editing up to high-performance workstations that can easily edit 3D stereoscopic, high-definition (HD), 4K, 8K, and 360° video.

• GPU acceleration: The Mercury Playback Engine operates in two modes: one that uses only software running in the central processing unit (CPU) for playback and one that uses graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration for enhanced playback performance. GPU acceleration mode requires a graphics card that meets minimum specifications in your workstation. See helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html for a list of recommended graphics cards. Most modern cards with a minimum of 2 GB of dedicated video memory will work.

• Multicamera editing: You can quickly and easily edit productions shot with multiple cameras. Multiple camera sources are displayed in a split-view, and you can choose a camera view by clicking the appropriate screen or using shortcut keys. You can automatically sync multiple camera angles based on clip audio or timecode.

• Project management: Manage your media using a single dialog box. View, delete, move, search for, and reorganize clips and bins. Consolidate your projects by copying just the media used in sequences to a single location, and then reclaim storage space by deleting unused media files.

• Metadata: Premiere Pro supports Adobe XMP, which stores additional information about media as metadata that multiple applications can access. You can use this metadata to locate clips or communicate important information, such as preferred takes or copyright notices.

• Creative titles: Create titles and graphics with the Essential Graphics panel. You can also use graphics created in almost any suitable software. For instance, you can import Adobe Photoshop files as flattened images or as separate layers that you can combine or animate selectively. You also can import and adjust Adobe After Effects motion graphics templates.

• Advanced trimming: Use dedicated trimming tools to make precise adjustments to the start and end of clips in sequences. Premiere Pro provides quick, easy trimming keyboard shortcuts, as well as advanced on-screen trimming tools to make complex timing adjustments to multiple clips.

• Media encoding: Export your sequence to create a media file that is perfect for your needs. Use the advanced features of Adobe Media Encoder to create copies of your finished sequence in multiple formats, based on presets or your own detailed specifications. You can apply color adjustments, timing changes, and information overlays during export, as well as upload media to social media platforms in a single step.

• 360° video for VR headsets: Edit and post-produce 360° video footage using a special VR Video display mode that lets you see specific regions of the picture, or view both your video and your edited clips via a VR headset, allowing a more natural and intuitive editing experience. Dedicated visual effects that meet the unique demands of 360° video are included.

Including other applications in the editing workflow

Premiere Pro is a versatile video and audio post-production tool, but it’s just one component of Adobe Creative Cloud—Adobe’s complete print, web, and video environment that includes video-focused software for the following:

• High-end 3D motion effects creation

• Complex text animation generation

• Layered graphics production

• Vector artwork creation

• Audio production

• Media management

To incorporate one or more of these features into a production, you can use other components of Adobe Creative Cloud. The software set has everything you need to produce advanced, professionally finished videos.

Here’s a brief description of the other components:

• Premiere Rush: Intuitive mobile and desktop editing tool that can produce projects compatible with Premiere Pro for advanced finishing.

• Adobe After Effects: The popular tool of choice for motion graphics, animation, and visual effects artists.

• Adobe Character Animator: A tool for creating advanced animation with natural movement for 2D puppets using your webcam for face tracking.

• Adobe Photoshop: The industry-standard image-editing and graphics-creation product. You can work with photos, video, and 3D objects to prepare them for your project.

• Adobe Audition: The powerful system for audio editing, audio cleanup and sweetening, music creation and adjustment, and multitrack mix creation.

• Adobe Illustrator: Professional vector graphics-creation software for print, video, and the Web.

• Adobe Media Encoder: A tool that allows you to process files to produce content for any screen directly from Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition.

• Adobe Dynamic Link: A cross-product technology that enables you to work in real time with media, compositions, and sequences shared between After Effects, Audition, and Premiere Pro.

Exploring the Adobe Creative Cloud video workflow

Your Premiere Pro and Creative Cloud workflow will vary depending on your production needs. Here are a few scenarios:

• Use Photoshop to touch up and apply effects to still images and layered image compositions from a digital camera, a scanner, or a video clip. Then use them as source media in Premiere Pro. Changes made in Photoshop update in Premiere Pro.

• Send clips directly from the Premiere Pro timeline to Adobe Audition for professional audio cleanup and sweetening. Changes made in Audition update in Premiere Pro.

• Send an entire Premiere Pro sequence to Adobe Audition to complete a professional audio mix, including compatible effects and level adjustments; the session can contain video so you can compose and adjust levels in Audition based on the action.

• Using Dynamic Link, open video compositions from After Effects in Premiere Pro. Apply special effects, add animation, and add visual elements in After Effects. Adjustments made in After Effects appear in Premiere Pro immediately.

• Use After Effects to create motion graphics templates that are directly editable in Premiere Pro. Dedicated controls allow specific types of changes to be made while retaining the original look and feel of the template.

• Use Adobe Media Encoder to export video projects in multiple resolutions and codecs for display on websites, display via social media, or archiving. You can use the built-in presets, effects, and social media support to upload directly from Premiere Pro to social media platforms.

Naturally, most of this book focuses on workflows involving only Premiere Pro. However, sidebars will explain ways to include Adobe Creative Cloud components in your workflows for additional effects work and finishing.

Exploring workspaces

The Premiere Pro interface is divided into panels. Each panel has a particular purpose. For example, the Effects panel lists all the effects available for you to apply to clips, while the Effect Controls panel gives you access to the settings for those effects.

A workspace is a preset arrangement of panels, organized to make particular tasks easier. There’s one for editing, another for working on audio, and another for making color adjustments, for example.

Every panel is accessible from the Window menu, but workspaces are a quicker way to access several panels and have them laid out exactly as you need them, in a single step.

Before you begin, make sure you’re using the default Editing workspace by choosing the Editing workspace option in the Workspaces panel at the top of the screen.

Then, to reset the Editing workspace, click the small panel menu icon next to the Editing option on the Workspaces panel, and choose Reset To Saved Layout.

If the Workspaces panel is not visible, choose Window > Workspaces > Editing. Then reset the Editing workspace by choosing Window > Workspaces > Reset To Saved Layout.

Notice the various workspace names displayed in the Workspaces panel.

Think of these words as buttons you can click; it’s an elegant design feature you’ll discover in a number of areas in Premiere Pro.

If you’re new to nonlinear editing, the default Editing workspace might look like a lot of buttons and menus. Don’t panic. Things become simpler when you know what the buttons are for. The interface is designed to make video editing easy, so commonly used controls are immediately accessible.

Workspaces consist of panels, and you can save space by gathering several panels into a panel group. The names of all the panels in the group are displayed across the top. Click a panel name to bring that panel to the “front” of the group.

When many panels are combined, you may not be able to see all their names. If this is the case, a list of all the panels in the group becomes available. Click the chevron in the upper-right corner of the panel group to access a panel.

You can display any panel by choosing it from the Window menu, so if you can’t locate a panel, just look there.

The principal elements are shown here.

Some of the important interface elements include:

• Project panel: This is where you organize your clips (these are the links to your media files), sequences, and graphics in bins. Bins are similar to folders—you can place one bin inside another for more advanced organization of your project.

• Timeline panel: This is where you’ll do most of your creative work. You view and work on sequences (the term for video segments edited together) in the Timeline panel. One feature of sequences is that you can nest them (place one sequence inside another sequence). Combining sequences this way, you can break up a production into manageable chunks or create unique special effects.

• Tracks: You can layer—or composite—video clips, images, graphics, and titles on an unlimited number of tracks. Video and graphic clips on upper video tracks cover whatever is directly below them on the timeline. Therefore, you need to give clips on higher tracks some form of transparency or reduce their size if you want clips on lower tracks to show.

• Monitor panels: Use the Source Monitor (on the left) to view and select parts of clips (your original footage). To view a clip in the Source Monitor, double-click its icon in the Project panel. The Program Monitor (on the right) shows the contents of your current sequence, displayed in the Timeline panel.

• Media Browser: This important panel allows you to browse your storage to find media to import into your project. The Media Browser is especially useful for file-based camera media and RAW files.

• Libraries: This panel gives access to custom Lumetri color Looks, motion graphics templates, graphics, and shared libraries for collaboration. It also acts as a browser and store for the Adobe Stock service. For more information, go to helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/creative-cloud-libraries.html.

• Effects panel: This panel contains most of the effects you will use in your sequences, including video filters, audio effects, and transitions. Effects are grouped by type to make them easier to find, and there’s a search box at the top of the panel. Once applied, the controls for these effects are displayed in the Effect Controls panel.

• Effect Controls panel: This panel displays the controls for any effects applied to a clip you select in a sequence or open in the Source Monitor or Project panel. If you select a visual clip in the Timeline panel, Motion, Opacity, and Time Remapping controls are automatically available. Most effect settings are adjustable over time.

• Audio Clip Mixer: This panel is based on audio production studio hardware, with volume sliders and pan controls. There is one set of controls for each audio track on the timeline. The adjustments you make are applied to audio clips. There’s also an Audio Track Mixer for applying audio adjustments to tracks rather than clips.

• Tools panel: Each icon in this panel gives access to a tool that performs a specific function in the Timeline panel. The Selection tool is context-sensitive, which means it changes function depending on where you click. If your pointer doesn’t work as you expect, check to see you have the right tool selected.

  Several tools have a small triangle icon, indicating a menu of additional tools. Press and hold on one of these tools to see the menu of options.

• Info panel: The Info panel displays information about any item you select in the Project panel or any clip or transition you select in a sequence.

• History panel: This panel tracks the steps you take and lets you easily undo a series of changes. When you select a previous step, all steps that followed it are also undone.

Most panels display their name at the top. When a panel is displayed, the name is underlined, and the panel is outlined in blue. Most panels have a menu next to the name with options particular to that panel.

Using the Learning workspace

Although other workspaces are intended to facilitate a particular creative activity, the Learning workspace is an exception. This workspace includes the Learn panel, which offers tutorials to help you build familiarity with the Premiere Pro interface and learn important skills.

You will find the tutorials complement the exercises in this book well, and you may find it helpful to practice first with this book and then explore the relevant tutorials to reinforce the lessons you have learned.

Customizing a workspace

In addition to choosing between the default workspaces, you can adjust the position and location of panels to create a workspace that works best for you. You can create multiple workspaces for different tasks.

• As you change the size of a panel or panel group, other panels change size to compensate.

• Every panel within a panel group is accessible by clicking its name.

• All panels are movable—you can drag a panel from one group to another.

• You can drag a panel out of a group to become a separate floating panel.

• You can double-click the name of any panel to toggle it between full screen and its original size.

In this exercise, you’ll adjust some panels and save a customized workspace.

1. In the Project panel, double-click the icon for the clip 0022AO.mp4 to open it in the Source Monitor. Be careful to double-click the icon and not the name, as clicking the name selects the text, making it ready for renaming.

2. Position your pointer on the vertical divider between the Source Monitor and the Program Monitor. The pointer will change to a double-headed arrow when it’s in the right position. Drag left and right to change the sizes of those panels. You can choose to have different sizes for your video displays, which is useful at different stages of post-production.

   

3. Now place the pointer on the horizontal divider between the Program Monitor and the Timeline panel. The pointer will change when it’s in the right position. Drag up and down to change the sizes of these panels.

4. Click the name of the Media Browser panel (at its top), and drag it to the middle of the Source Monitor until a blue rectangle appears (the drop zone). Release the Media Browser panel to dock it in that panel group.

   

5. Drag the Effects panel (which is grouped with the Project panel by default) by its name to a point just inside the right edge of its current panel group until a blue trapezoid-shaped area (the drop zone) is highlighted. Release the Effects panel; it is now alone in its own panel group. Remember, if you can’t see the Effects panel, you can choose it from the Window menu.

   

   When you drag a panel by its name, a drop zone is displayed. If the highlighted drop zone is a rectangle, the panel will go into the selected panel group as an additional tab when it’s dropped. If the drop zone is a trapezoid, it will create a new panel group.

   You can also pull panels into their own floating windows.

6. Command-drag (macOS)/Ctrl-drag (Windows) the Source Monitor out of its panel group.

   Note

   You may need to resize a panel to see all of its controls.

7. Drop the Source Monitor anywhere, creating a floating panel. You can resize the panel by dragging a corner or a side.

   

   As you gain experience, you might want to create and save the layout of your panels as a customized workspace. To do so at any time, choose Window > Workspaces > Save As New Workspace. Type a name, and click OK.

   If you want to return a workspace to its default layout, choose Window > Workspaces > Reset To Saved Layout, or double-click the workspace name.

8. Now, to return to a recognizable starting point, choose the preset Editing workspace, and reset it.

Introducing preferences

The more you edit video, the more you’ll want to customize Premiere Pro to match your specific needs. Premiere Pro has several types of settings. For example, panel menus , which are accessible by clicking the menu button next to a panel name, have options that relate to each panel, while individual clips in a sequence have settings you can access by right-clicking them.

The panel name, displayed at the top of each panel, is often referred to as the panel tab. This is the area of a panel you use to move the panel, almost like a handle you can grab the panel by.

There are also application-wide user preferences, which are grouped into a single dialog box for easy access. Preferences will be covered in depth as they relate to the individual lessons in this book. Let’s look at an example.

1. Choose Premiere Pro > Preferences > Appearance (macOS) or Edit > Preferences > Appearance (Windows).

   

2. Drag the Brightness slider to the right to suit your preference.

   The default brightness is a dark gray to help you see colors correctly (human perception of color is influenced by surrounding colors). There are additional options for controlling the brightness of interface highlights.

3. Experiment with the Interactive Controls and Focus Indicators brightness sliders. The difference in the onscreen sample is subtle, but adjusting these sliders can make quite a big difference to your editing experience.

4. Set all three settings to Default by clicking the Default buttons when you have finished.

5. Switch to the Auto Save preferences by clicking Auto Save on the left.

   Imagine if you had worked for hours and then there was a power outage. If you hadn’t saved recently, you’d have lost a lot of work. With these options, you can decide how often you would like Premiere Pro to save an automated backup of your project file and how many versions you would like to keep in total. Auto Save backups have the date and time they were created added to the filename.

   

   Note

   Premiere Pro allows you to open multiple projects at the same time. For this reason, you’ll see options for “project(s)” rather than just “project.”

   Project files are small relative to media files, so it’s usually fine to increase the number of project versions without any impact on system performance.

   You’ll notice there’s an option to save a backup project to Creative Cloud.

   This option creates an additional backup of your project file in your Creative Cloud Files folder. If you suffer a total system failure while working, you can log in to any Premiere Pro editing system with your Adobe ID to access the backup project file and quickly carry on working.

   There’s also the option Auto Save Also Saves The Current Project(s). When this option is selected, saving or auto saving will also create an “emergency project backup”—a project file that is a copy of the current version, with the same name. If you have a sudden system failure (like a power outage), this is the file you will most likely want to open to continue working.

6. Click Cancel to close the Preferences dialog box without applying any changes.

Moving, backing up, and syncing user settings

User preferences include a number of important options. The defaults work well in most cases, but it’s likely you’ll want to make a few adjustments over time. For example, you might prefer the interface to be brighter than the default.

Premiere Pro includes the option to share your user preferences between multiple computers: When installing Premiere Pro, you will enter your Adobe ID to confirm your software license. You can use the same ID to store your user preferences in Creative Cloud, allowing you to synchronize and update them from any installation of Premiere Pro.

You can sync your preferences while on the Home screen by choosing Sync Settings. You can also sync your preferences while working with Premiere Pro by choosing Premiere Pro > Sync Settings > Sync Settings Now (macOS) or File > Sync Settings > Sync Settings Now (Windows).

Now close Premiere Pro by choosing Premiere Pro > Quit Premiere Pro (macOS) or File > Exit (Windows).

If a dialog box appears asking if you would like to save changes you have made, click Yes.