For the purposes of this article I am using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 – some settings, tools & processes may vary in other versions of Premiere Pro.
Shoot your footage using either a dedicated camcorder, a video enabled digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera or a point-and-shoot camera – use a reasonable quality setting so as to retain clarity. Most cameras these days shoot high definition (HD) video. Another article on shooting tips is in the making – stay tuned!
Make note of the settings used so that you can set up your Premiere Pro project settings correctly:
- fps – frames per second – video can be shot in different fps, the most common being 24, 30 & 60 (for NTSC countries) or 25 & 50 (for PAL countries)
- interlaced or progressive – interlacing was designed for viewing on televisions, progressive for computers. In your camera’s settings it should say something like the frame speed followed by either i or p e.g.: I shoot at 25fps, progressive and the setting reads 25p
- pixel resolution – HD will be either 1920×1080 or 1280×720
Set up a folder structure on your computer to help keep all your files organised – you will have lots of files to look after so keeping them organised will save you lots of time in the long run. It is best to have a main folder named after your project eg, the beach, then in that folder set up the following sub-folders:
- Video – this where you will keep all your video footage. You may need to set up sub-folders here to keep your video clips organised – by date, content or whatever system you need.
- Audio – this is where your audio files will go; these may be audio clips you have made yourself, songs or sound effects needed.
- Stills – this is where you will keep any still images you may wish to use in the production of your video.
It is important that you don’t move or alter these folders or their contents after setting up your project in Premiere Pro other than adding new files as they come in. The reason for this is in most non-linear editors (NLE’s) when you Import a clip you are not actually bringing the file into the program but are establishing a link to the original file – if you move or rename a clip Premiere won’t know which clip to reference; you will have to re-associate it with the project.
Download the clips to the Video folder you set up in the steps above. You can use the sub-folder structure you set up to keep clips organised. To download you can either use the software that came with your camera or browse My Computer to find either a card, if working from cards & card reader or the drive of your camera – copy and paste to the folders set up. Copy and paste rather than cut and paste – the reason for this is if there is a problem during transfer you still have the clips on your camera or card. It is also better to delete clips from the camera rather than deleting them via the computer.
Set up a project:
Open Premiere Pro. On the dialogue box that comes up click New Project. The next two dialogue boxes have the settings for your project. In most cases you will be trying to match the project settings to your source video clips.
The first box should look something like this with two tabs:
Settings on the first tab can be mostly left as is except for the bottom two:
Location – where the project is to be saved – it will have the default folder that Premiere sets up on installation here – change it if you need it to be elsewhere.
Name – make sure you give it an explicit name that you will remember eg, the beach
The second tab has more complex choices:
Scratch Disks tells Premiere where to save various files generated by the editing process. How you set up your Scratch Disks will impact on the performance: how quickly you work, rendering times etc. It is of little to no concern if you only have one hard drive – the default settings will do. If you have multiple hard drives Premiere’s performance will be at its optimum if you have correctly set up this section. See the Optimizing Scratch Disk Performance section of the Help file for Premiere Pro for further information.
Once you have done this press OK.
The next dialogue box is where you will select the preset (or make a custom preset) to give the project the correct settings for your source material – it will suit the fps, resolution and field order (interlaced or progressive where field order is none).
As can be seen there are many presets available – Premiere Pro is just that, a professional editing software package and it caters for many of the ways in which video cameras output video files – and there are lots and lots of formats out there!
In the example above I have chosen the preset that best suits the setting I mostly use for my camera (Canon HF S21) – AVCHD refers to the codec and attributes, full HD(1920×1080) progressive at 25fps so the preset is AVCHD1080p25
You will have to decide which preset suits your footage best. The General tab allows you to set up a custom preset via drop down lists for each parameter. The Tracks tab allows you to set up how many video and audio tracks your project will open with – don’t worry too much as you can add or delete tracks once in the editing window.
Once you are happy with the project settings click OK
Working in the project workspace: this is what the workspace may look like once a project is underway. Workspaces may be altered: panels resized, moved about or deleted, different panels for different purposes brought into view etc. Go to Window>Workspace to see more.
Bins – the bins are folders where your media will be stored while working on the project – these are not the original files (see above). Bins help keep your workflow organised. To make bins click on the folder icon at the bottom of the Project panel and then name them by clicking in the name box. I usually set up the following bins:
- Clips – where I will store my video clips – you can set up sub-bins here if needed
- Audio – where I will store my audio files, music, voiceovers etc.
- Inserts and Titles – where I will store titles and any inserts I may wish to use (see below)
- Stills – where I will store any stills I may want to use
Import your media – click on the bin you wish the media to go into then go to File>Import, navigate to where you have stored your images (Video folder), select the clips you need (hold down Ctrl and click on clips to select a number of non-sequential items) and click open to import them – they will appear in the bins. If you need to import further media, repeat these steps. If you want to rearrange bin locations, drag and drop.
Making your movie from the clips – cutting: Select and drag your clip(s) to the Source panel to the right of the Project panel. Here you can play the clip and set in and out points – how much of the clip you want to use. You can work directly on the timeline if you wish – using the source panel just makes it easier to slot clips into the timeline using only the portion of clip you want. When you have the clips on the timeline in the order you want them you can add effects and/or re-order them or do further refinements in cutting. Clips can be dragged and dropped along the timeline as needed.
If the line above the timeline shows red then you will need to render the work – this applies the effects and allows the video to play freely in the monitor panel – press Enter to render the timeline, the line will become green – once it has finished doing this the timeline will start to play and you can see how it looks.
The Effects Control Panel
Some commonly used editing effects and techniques:
To change the speed – right click on the clip and select Speed/Duration from the context menu and set the time or percentage values you want – values below 100% slow it down, above 100% speed it up.
The Effects Control Panel – allows you to control the parameters of effects you apply to a clip.
- Motion – allows you to change position and scale of the clip
- Scale – you may want to do this if you wish to have the focus be on a particular part of a video frame (be aware that as you blow it up the image quality will decline) – you may scale the clip up then use the Position sliders to reposition the clip.
- These two come into play particularly if you want to do Picture in Picture (PiP), where you have more than one clip in the frame at the same time – clips are stacked one above the other on multiple tracks on the timeline, reduced in scale and repositioned.
- Opacity - allows you to change the opacity of the clip. This can be used where you want two clips playing simultaneously with one showing through to the other. Clips are placed one above the other on multiple tracks and the topmost ones have their opacity reduced until the bottom clip is showing as well.
- Rotation –handy for straightening horizons: rotate then scale up so clip fills frame again. This can also be used to emphasise a clip against a black background or give the effect of a tilted perspective.
Effects from the Effects panel (lower left panel) – to add effects from here: select the effect wanted and drag it onto the clip on the timeline – it will be applied to the clip and also show up in the Effect Controls panel where you may then edit the parameters of the effect. To play smoothly you may need to render the timeline (press enter) after applying effects.
There are too many effects and variations of them for the purposes of this article – have a play and see what effects suit your purposes. Remember – it is easy to be seduced by effects and too many can spoil a video – sometimes less is more!
Transitions – in the effects panel there is also a number of transitions that can be applied. They are applied in the same way as an effect – drag and drop onto the timeline where one clip meets another. Be aware that transitions use some of each clip (if centred) and some of one and none of the other if set to begin at end or begin at start – this means you will lose some of the clips – allow for that when cutting. Again using too many fancy transitions can ruin a good video – how many films have you seen with any transitions? Clean cuts often work better than fancy transitions.
Audio – when you place a clip on the timeline it will have its audio showing as a track below the first video track. If you don’t want to keep the clip’s original audio (you may be going to set the video to a piece of music or have a voiceover) then you can right click on the track (it will highlight both video and audio,) then select Unlink from the context menu – this makes the audio and video act independently of each other – then click in the timeline to deselect them, select just the audio clip and press delete; the audio of that clip is then gone.
If you wish to add audio files – they can be .wavs, .mp3s or most other audio file formats – select it from the audio bin and drag it to the timeline and position it where you want it. Audio clips can be edited in similar ways to video – they can be cut and/or have audio effects such as fades applied.
To add titles, place the scrubber bar where you wish to place the titles, usually at the start and/or end of video then go to Titles in the top menu bar, select the type of title you wish to use – rolling titles go from bottom to top or vice versa, crawling titles go from side to side and still titles stay where you put them. A title dialogue box will come up. Select text options from the text properties area – colour, size, font etc. Type your text in the box. If you want the text to roll (top to bottom) or crawl (side to side) make sure each separate piece of information is on a separate line. To set the roll/crawl options use the roll/crawl options button found at the top left – looks like a list with an arrow next to it. Once you have entered the information you need, click OK. You can then drag the title clip onto the timeline where you want it. Titles can be edited in the same way you do any other clip – slow it down or speed it up to suit the crawl/roll speeds and duration you want etc. Should you wish to edit the text, double click on the clip in the timeline and the title dialogue box will come up again; alter the text, click OK then close the dialogue box and the corrections will be updated in all instances of the title.
Exporting your video – once you have edited your video, adding effects, transitions and audio you will need to produce a finalised video file. To do this: go to File>Export>Media A dialogue box with various presets and settings will come up. The following screenshot shows a custom preset I have made for exporting1920×1080 source video as 1280×720 mp4 using the H264 codec, PAL (because I live in Australia – a PAL country), 25fps (same as source), progressive (again, same as source), audio is set to be encoded with the AAC codec with a bitrate of 320kb/s and sampled at 44.1kHz. This is the preset I use for uploading files to Vimeo or Youtube – it follows the recommended settings from Vimeo but works OK for Youtube too. Mp4 with H264 is a widely used format for keeping good quality while lowering file size.
You can select the destination for the finished video where it says Output Name.
Once happy with the export settings click OK.
This will then launch Adobe Media Encoder with this window appearing:
Here you can review or change settings, add or remove media to be encoded – this mainly affects professionals who may have a number of projects on the go at once or need different delivery formats of the same video and are rendering them out all at once.
Press Start Queue and go have a meal, do some gardening, go shopping, watch a DVD (on the TV NOT the computer) or something, anything to stop yourself either a) sitting watching an orange line progress for 20,30,40,50 minutes (depending on the length and complexity of your project) or b) playing with stuff on your computer and therefore take much needed resources away from the job at hand. Video rendering is very resource hungry, especially in these days of HD video. At minimum you will need a quad core processor & 4GB of RAM to efficiently render HD video – even then there will be occasional crashes.
Some points to bear in mind:
If you will be working from USB drives or external hard drives make sure you have one that is at least 4GB (video files can be huge) and is NOT used for any other purpose. It is ESSENTIAL that you connect your USB drive/external drive when working on the project – connect it to the same USB port to save any file path recognition problems. If you don’t have your drive, you don’t have a project to work on.
SAVE YOUR PROJECT AFTER EVERY EFFECT APPLIED, CLIP MOVED OR CUT MADE!!!!
An easy habit to get into is pressing Ctrl S after every major change you make.
It is more or less inevitable that you will have a crash at some stage – video editing is very labour and computer resource intensive – make life easy and have changes saved so that when the crash comes you won’t have lost hours of work.
This is a very brief look at what Premiere Pro is capable of. There are many more techniques and many more tools and ways of using them that couldn’t be covered here.
Good video editing takes time and patience – make sure you give yourself enough time to do the job properly – have fun!
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