We will be using Adobe’s non-linear editing software
Premiere Pro to edit our videos. This is a great piece of software, used by
professionals and amateurs alike. It is relatively user friendly, especially if you are familiar with other Adobe products like Photoshop.
When you open Premiere Pro, you will be presented with the
following window:
If you have already been working on a project, it should
show up under “Recent Projects”. If it doesn’t show up there, you can locate it
by clicking “Open Project”. If you would like to start a brand new project, go
ahead and click “New Project”.
When you start a new project, you will next see this window:
The only things you need to worry about on this screen (at
least for now) are the Location and the Name of your project. You can specify
where you want your project files to be saved by clicking “Browse…”. I like to
make a folder on my desktop that contains all of my video files and my Premiere
file, so I did that for this project.
Next, give your project a name. It can be whatever you like,
as long as you can find it. Then click
“OK”.
The next window you will see is the “New Sequence” window.
You will also want to give your sequence a name that is not
the default “Sequence 01”. This can be the title of your movie or it can be the
project name – whatever you prefer. When you’ve done this, click “OK”. Now you are ready to start your project!
This is the default layout of Premiere Pro:
The bottom left window is your project window. This is where
you will import clips and other media to use in your video. Above that, the top
left window is the “Source” window. This window is where you will see a preview
of your clips if you double click on them. The bottom left window is the
“Sequence” or “Timeline” window. This is where you will put the clips together.
And the top right window is the “Program” window. This is where you will see
the final product. Now that you know your way around, let’s get going!
How to Import Your
Video
First you need to find your files. If you just filmed, pull
the videos off of your camera memory card and into a folder on the desktop.
This is important – you do not want to edit your files straight from your
memory card. If you edit from the card, when you remove the card Premiere will
lose the files and you won’t be able to edit them any more. You need to put the
videos in a location where they can always be found that won’t be removed from
the computer.
Once you have found you files, there are two ways to import
your video into Premiere. The first is by selecting File>Import, and then
locating the video files. The second is to drag the video files from the Finder
window into the Project window in the lower left part of Premiere.
Start Editing
Once your files are loaded into Premiere, you can start
looking through them by double clicking on the clip’s icon. The clip will be
brought up in the Source window. This is where editing begins. As you go
through the clip and find the section you would like to use, you need to create
In and Out Points using the Mark In and Mark Out tools. They look
like this:
Mark In is on the left, Mark Out is on the right. Drag the
yellow playhead to where you want the video to start. Then click the “Mark In”
button. Then play the video until you want it to stop, and click “Mark Out”.
The section of the clip you want to use is now selected. This is the first step
of editing.
Next, click and drag the video (either from the Source
window or from the Project window) to the timeline. You can place the video
anywhere on the timeline, but remember that the video starts at the far left,
so that’s where you should place to clip you want to show first in your video.
When you drag your first clip to the timeline, this message may show up:
If all your video is from the same camera or shot in the
same format, you should click “Change Sequence Settings”. It will make editing
much easier. If you have different formats or videos from different
places/cameras, then you can click “Keep existing settings”.
Once your video is on the timeline it will look like this:
Notice how there are separate tracks for audio and video,
and multiple tracks of each. This allows you to do some layering, just like you
would in Photoshop.
Now you can start assembling your video! Woo!
When You’re Ready to
Turn It In
Once you have finished your video and done the best you can
do, you are ready to turn it in. This means you will need to export your video. You do this by
selecting File>Export>Media… Then you will see this window:
The settings you choose depend on where you’re going to show
the video. For our class, anything we do will either be shown in class or on
YouTube, so we will be choosing export settings for YouTube.
Under the Format dropdown you should choose “H.264” and
under the Preset dropdown you should select “YouTube HD 720p 29.97”. The only other setting you need to worry
about is the Output Name. If you click on the yellow output name, you can both
change the title of your video and the location of the video. This is where you
decide where it will end up and what it will be called.
Now that you’ve selected the Format, Preset, and Output
Name, you can click Export down at the bottom of the window. How long the
export will take depends on the length of your video – the longer the video the
longer the export.
Congratulations! You’ve just exported your first video from
Premiere! You can now post it to YouTube or bring it to class on a flash drive.
Woo!
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