So you want to get started editing video with Adobe Premiere, the best choice for video editors of all skill levels. You buy and download a program, open it, but then suddenly you realize that you don’t really know what to do or where to start.
However, you will soon find that there is no reason to be surprised. Whatever your reason for wanting to start, whether you’re creating a YouTube channel or editing your first short film, you’ll find that once you’re familiar with the program, editing time will fly by.
If you follow the directions in this Adobe Premiere tutorial, you should be ready to start editing your media with confidence. You can also expand your knowledge more easily if you learn the basics. Remember that things can be done in different ways with programs like Premiere, so don’t feel like you have to stick to these specific methods all the time.
Starting a new project
After you open Adobe Premiere, you will have several options on your home screen. You can start a new project, open a project you are working on, or see a list of your most recent projects to open.
Assuming you are starting from scratch, clicking on New Project will take you to a window where you can select the settings for that project. It may sound confusing, but here is a broken version of each part.
First is the name of your project and the location where you select your project to save. Then there is the Video Rendering and Playback feature, which is the way your computer processes the video you create and plays back the final result to you in real time.
– /
What you choose for this setting determines how quickly your video will display and play to you. The options available depend on your computer’s graphics card, but Mercury Playback Engine (Open CL) GPU acceleration is supported by most computers and is recommended.
Then you can choose which metric you want to display the video: timecode or frames (you don’t need to worry about feet + frames unless you recorded with a 16mm or 35mm camera). Timecode is how the video you capture is recorded and saved every frame of the video. This option is recommended as it will show you how long your video is and make it easier to find certain frames.
The Audio Display option really comes down to how accurately you want to edit the audio files, but the Audio Samples option is fine if you don’t need to edit audio with millisecond precision.
The Capture Format section is not important unless you are capturing video directly in Adobe Premiere. In this case, you must choose whether you are shooting in digital video or high definition video.
Input your own video and audio
After adjusting the project parameters, you will be taken to the main workspace. You can change the look of your workspace by moving each panel or by choosing Window> Workspaces from the top panel and choosing one of the pre-created ones. This article will use the editing workspace.
The first thing you need to do is upload all of the media that you will be using into your project. First, find your media browser in the lower left margin. From here, you can search for media directly from your computer.
Once you find the video or audio you want by clicking on it, you will display it in the Source window right above it. In this window, you can cut out the parts you want and paste them into your timeline (bottom right panel) using the Mark In and Mark Out tools (bracketed icons below the original video).
To insert a video, you can either drag the video from the Video Only icon below the video in the source window, or you can drag and drop the video directly from the Media Browser if you want the entire video to be complete and any audio it can contain.
Alternatively, you can use the Insert tool (third from the right below the original video) to insert a video anywhere in the timeline where the marker is.
Audio works the same way to find and insert into a sequence if you have separate audio files such as music or sound effects If you want to take audio only from the video, you can simply drag and drop the Audio Only icon into your project.
Basic Adobe Premiere Tools Explained
When editing video, the Adobe Premiere tools will be your best friend. There are many different tools in the program, but here is an explanation of the main ones that you are likely to use the most.
Selection Tool
It is an icon that looks like a pointer. This is the topmost tool in the box next to your strings. This tool allows you to select video or audio in the timeline, or select buttons and options in the interface. You can also left-click outside of the media in the timeline and drag to create a selection box for selecting multiple clips.
Track select forward + instrument backward
It’s the next icon below the selection tool, indicated by a box and arrow. You can see a small triangle in the lower right corner of the icon.
This means that by pressing and holding an icon, you can access other related tools. Having done this, you can use the Track Select Forward tool, which can move the entire track forward in your timeline, or the Track Select Backward tool, which does the opposite.
Ripple Editing Tool
You can use this to trim the in and out points of your clips, and you can use the Rolling Edit tool to simultaneously edit the out point of one clip and the in point of another to close the gaps.
There is also Rate Stretch underneath this tool if you need to speed up or slow down the entire clip. You can click and drag from In or Out points to use this tool. It doesn’t cut anything from the clip, it just speeds up or slows down the frame rate.
Razor Tool
It’s a razor-shaped icon. With this tool, you can easily trim clips anywhere.
Type Tool
This tool, which looks like a capital T, allows you to click directly on the video playback and create simple text. You can also click and hold to access the Vertical Type tool, which creates a vertical text box.
For all of these tools, by hovering over them, you can see the letter in parentheses next to the tool name. This is what key on your keyboard the tool is bound to, so you can use these keyboard shortcuts to quickly access them.
Basic Audio Editing Tools
In addition to video editing tools, Premiere also has tons of audio editing options in case you need to modify it in some way.
After inserting audio into your timeline, you can edit it the same way you edit a video using the same tools. Apart from this, there are also special sound effects to enhance the sound of your project.
To access them, click the Effects tab at the top of the workspace. This should open the effects panel to your right, and from here you can navigate to the sound effects. To use any of them, simply drag the selected effect into your audio clip.
An extremely useful effect is the DeHummer and DeNoise effects. If you notice a lot of background noise in your audio clip, these effects can help you get rid of it. You can find them in the Noise Reduction / Recovery section. Once you’ve applied them, you can play with them in the Effects Control Panel, but they should automatically remove most of the noise.
Another good thing to keep in mind is that you can adjust the audio volume right in the timeline. If you look at your audio clip, you will notice a white horizontal line. You can drag this line up or down to change the volume. If you want the volume to be loud in some places and quiet in others, you can use a feature called Keyframes.
Drag one of the circles on the scroll bar in the audio section of the timeline to expand it. You should see a diamond shaped icon to the left of the audio timeline. If you click this icon, you add a keyframe, and if you add at least two, you can drag them independently of the others. Using this, you can increase / decrease the sound easily.
Create title in first view
If you need to create more detailed titles than a simple text tool allows, the Legacy Title feature in Premiere offers many more title creation tools. Just click File> New> Legacy Title to open the creation window.
Use the Type tool in this window to enter text. In the Transform section on the right, you can change placement, size, opacity, and more. The Properties section has many options for creating unique titles, such as adding skew, kerning, or tracking. You can also change the font itself and its size.
In addition to creating text, you can also use the shape tools to add basic shapes to the title.
Change the look of your video with color scale
If you want to make your video look more consistent, you can easily adjust color, lighting, and other visual aspects with Lumetri Color in Premiere. You can find this in the Color panel.
Lumetri Color provides you with many different tools. In the Basic Adjustments section, you can make some quick adjustments to improve the appearance of your clip, such as white balance, contrast, highlights / shadows, and whites / blacks. If you want to make more complex and detailed changes, the rest of the options will give you more freedom.
However, if you are overwhelmed by the number of tools, there is also the option to load LUTs and color presets to automatically color correct your clips. There are many freebies that you can find online.
Once you’ve downloaded it, you can find them in the LUT section under Basic Adjustments or in the Creative drop-down under Lumetri Color.
Export and view your video
The editing is complete and you are happy with the result So how do you convert your edited video to a common format? Fortunately, Adobe Premiere makes it easy to render and export your video directly in the program.
To start this process, first activate the timeline bar by clicking inside it, then find the top-most toolbar and click File> Export> Media. A screen will appear where you can select export options. First, make sure you are exporting the sequence you want to export. You can see what you’re exporting by dragging the blue marker across the preview area.
Then you need to choose a format for saving the video. If you don’t need to save your video in a specific format, H.264 is usually recommended for the best quality.
Then there is the option to select a preset. It depends on how you are going to share your video. There are presets that will improve the support for your video on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms that are already available for selection. Or you can choose a custom option to choose your own settings. In general, however, the Match Source – High Bitrate preset is fine for most situations.
Be sure to name your project and choose where you want to save the exported video, and that the video export and audio export are checked according to what you want to export.
When you’re done, you can click Export at the bottom and the finished video will be sent to your chosen location.
–