My first exposure to Adobe Premiere dates back to the introduction of QuickTime. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was so tied up in the video production equipment we were using then that I really questioned the significance of this little novelty portion of the Apple Macintosh OS to professionals, as I watched some small, low-resolution, low–frame rate video that my partner had captured off the television to demonstrate the wonders of his brand-new Macintosh Quadra 840.
In those early days, Adobe Premiere was one of very few players in nonlinear video editing. My next recollection of Adobe Premiere was of versions 3.0 and 4.0, when a gentleman named Flavio Kampah was exploring what could be done with motion graphics, just before we went to nonlinear editing in our own facility in the mid-’90s.
But that was then.
These days, I do my video editing, compositing, audio posting, graphics, encoding, and authoring (media and print) on desktop computers—much of it on the laptop I’m typing on right at this moment. Adobe Premiere Pro is my pivotal tool in video post-production.
In many ways, Adobe Premiere Pro is a software program that has come of age. Users of past versions of Adobe Premiere, like me, will find the layout and some of the philosophy a bit different from the Premiere of the past. However, once you’ve learned about its features and toolset, I suspect you will never want to go back. New users will find a powerful video editor with completely new audio capabilities, in addition to more real-time functionality than many editing applications that cost considerably more.
Premiere Pro can truly take its place alongside Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects as a professional tool of the same pedigree. Professionals and enthusiasts alike will appreciate what the latest version of Adobe’s long-time video editor has to offer.
Before we go any further, I need to mention David Kuspa, technical editor of The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro. His contributions were invaluable and focused, and there is no doubt this is a superior publication because of him. I am grateful for his insight.
Our goal is that this book gets you up to speed with Premiere Pro in short order, giving you the tools you need to be successful with the software very quickly. I suppose a good place to start that philosophy would be to wrap up this introduction and get to it.
So be it.
Tim Kolb
Producer/Director