Adobe Premiere: Introduction to Video Editing

This is an introduction to Adobe Premiere, Adobe's non-linear video editing program. You will learn how to work with both audio and video content, as well as integrate Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create a final video product. The video you are going to make is a recreation of this video located on YouTube.

Open up Windows Explorer and select the Flash Drive. 

Right click on it and select Format. In the Volume Label box, type in your name and then select the START button.

The purpose of formatting this drive is to erase all data that is currently on it and to by naming it we establish ownership of the actual drive itself. 

Create a new folder on your Flash Drive (do not make a folder in your network folder)  and titled it “Non Linear Video Editing”

Create a new folder in your “Non Linear Video Editing” folder and titled it “My First Video”

Create a new folder in your “My First Video” folder and title it “Clips” (This is where all video content will be stored)

Create a new folder in your “My First Video” folder and title it “Graphics” (This is where all created graphics, logos, animations, etc will go)

Create a new folder in your “My First Video” folder and title it “Sounds” (This is where all narrations, songs, sound effects will go)

Create a new folder in your “My First Video” folder and title it “Designs” (All things created in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash will go)

Create a new folder in your “My First Video” folder and title it “Renders” (This is the location for videos that have been rendered and prepared for distribution to the casual viewer)

Your folders should look like this:

Download these videos in to your “Clips” folder (DOWNLOAD THESE FILES ONE AT A TIME)

• For Microsoft Edge Users: You're in luck. You can Right Click your mouse and do a Save As and put them in your folder.
• For Chrome Users: Chrome is really bad about this. Once you download them, you need to go into your Download's folder and copy/paste them from there into your Clips folder on your Flash/Thumb drive.

Download this sound file into your “Sounds” folder

Download these .PNG files into your “Graphics” folder

Open Adobe Premiere

Click on the New Project button

Now, do this part!

After your project is created, be sure to select Window at the top menu bar. Now, select Workspaces and then select Editing.

Import all of your video files into Adobe Premiere by selecting “File” and then “Import” (you will have to navigate to the folder that contains Clips 1-9.)

In the Project: My First Video panel, it should appear as this:

We want to change it to the “LIST” view, so we can see the actual name titles better.

Your panel should now appear like this:

 

These clips are all considered “raw” footage (meaning that it has not been edited or cleaned up in any way. They are direct downloads from the camera and need to be “trimmed” for time and to remove any content that is unwanted.

Double click on the “Clip 1” which will display it in the Preview box in the upper left. You can click on the “play button” to make the clip playback in real time. Or, you can select the blue box slider above the playback time and adjust it so that you can quickly search for what a specific moment that you are interested in.

This clip seems to have nothing to do with the Trigger Finger Pro Midi Controller. In fact, it is just some girl goofing off in class. So, we don’t need this clip and it should be removed from the Project imports. Right click on ‘Clip 1’ and then select “Clear” from the menu. This does not “delete” the clip as it is still in your folder. But, it does remove it from the collection of clips that we want to work with so as to not clutter up the workspace.

Grab “Clip 2” from the Project Import panel and drag it to the right, into the TimeLine. Your window should appear like so:

By selecting the little circles on the bars to the right, we can adjust the “Zoom” of the clip, so that it appears larger or smaller. Drag them up and down, (left and right) on the bottom, in order to adjust the view.

At the tail end of this video clip, you can see that there is very little sound going on because the speaker has come to the end of the clip. But, the clip just sort of comes to a dead stop. We can transition that out (fade to black) by selecting the video clip in the timeline and then “Sequence” from the top menu bar and then select “Apply Video Transition.”

Grab the video transition box until you see these settings. This will cause the video clip to play until it fades to black.

Do the same thing for the audio track (Audio 1) underneath the video track (Video 1). This will cause the audio to fade out at the same rate the video fades to black.

Save your file

Make sure your files and folders look like this on your Thumb/Flash drive (your file must be stored on "the root" of your overall project)

Open Adobe Photoshop and create a new document with these settings:

We need to change the guides beause they are difficult to see. Go to “Edit” and then “Preferences” on the menu bar and select “Guide, Grids and Slices” from the sidebar. Change the box in the top right from Cyan blue to a nice darker purple.

The guides indicate the different areas that are considered “safe” to work in while editing video.

The innermost area is known as the “Title Safe Area” and it is used for text, credits, titles, etc.

The middle contained area is known as the “Action Safe Area” and it is the area where videographers can (with good confidence) have their video edge up to and know that whatever is seen there will be visible on most formats (phone screen, big screen, computer monitor, etc).

The outermost area is known as the “Unsafe” (or, “Invisible”) area and basically it means that if something falls within this area, there is no guarantee that it will be viewable by the audience.

In your photoshop document, create this text making sure to keep all text within the Title Safe Area:

The black text is nice in that it allows us to see the placement of the text and lets us know that the font is what we wanted and the size is appropriate. However, Video projects in Premier (and most other video editors) default to a black background during editing and playback. So, our black text will blend in with the background. We do not want that. So, we must change the text to white and disable the background.

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PHOTOSHOPPING THE TITLE CARD

In Photshop, make sure you have the layer with the text on it selected and then apply the “FX” on the Layers panel:

Select “Color Overlay” from the menu and make sure the color is white. Now, we need to turn off the eyeball on the “Background” layer in photoshop.

Our text will be white and we’ll see that there is transparency.

Save your Photoshop document as “Control Text.psd” in your “Graphics” folder in the “My First Video” folder

Now, repeat this process for a new title card. It will say this (remember to turn the text white and to disable the background):

Save this as “Drum Pads.psd”

Now, create this one (remember to turn the text white and to disable the background):

Save this as “Step Sequencer.psd”

Now, make the title card for this:

Save it as “Making the Connection.psd”
And this:

Save this one as “Basic Operations.psd”

We need one more!

Save this one as “DAW Settings.psd”

Now, we make the title card for the introduction card

In Photoshop, go to File and then “Place” or “Place Embedded” and select the “maudiologo.png” file. You will need to fit in the document’s Text Safe Area. Color the logo black (using the FX Cover Overlay style) and add a Yellow stroke to it. Your text should look something like this:

Save this as “Intro Card.psd”

*ONE LAST REMINDER. ALL OF THESE TITLE CARDS SHOULD BE WHITE TEXT ON A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND AND SAVED AS A .PSD FILE

STACKING THE DECK

The PSD will show in your clip browser (you will need to switch your Clip Browser back to “Icon” instead of ‘List”.

Drag “Clip 3” into the timeline and leave a bit of a gap like so:

We need the “Drum Pads.psd” title card. The title card will show in your clip browser (you will need to switch your Clip Browser back to “Icon” instead of ‘List”. Find it and then drag it onto the Timeline like so (the track you are dragging it to is actually Video Track 2 (this video track is where all of our title cards will go):

Think of Video Tracks (and Audio Tracks) like layers that we use in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. All of these layers are stackable (from top to bottom) and we can drag them up and down to accommodate our work flow. We can not only stack video but we can stack logos and graphics, animations, sound effects and pretty much anything you can imagine. And, if need be, we can add video (and audio) tracks as we need them.

Select the Drum Pads title card on Video Track 2 and add a Video Transition to fade it in and out.

If at any point you want to see the playback of your project, you can grab the “Playback Head” and drag it from left to right. 

Or, you can simply hit the “Play” button. This will start playing back the project at whatever location the Playback Head is currently in. You can also Fast Advance or Rewind with the buttons to either side of the Play button.

Notice that the title card overlaps Clip 3 in the beginning but does not overlap Clip 2 at the end? This is beause we want the text to fade in and then fade out when the next section begins. The Video Transition should be the same duration for the video and the title card at the beginning of the Clip 3.

Repeat this process for

The Step Sequencer (Use Clip 4) and the Step Sequencer Title card

Now, do the same for Surface Controls (use Clip 5) and the Surface Controls title card

Now, do the same for Making the Connection (use Clip 6) and the “Making the Connection” title card

Now, do the same for Basic Operations (Use Clip 7) and the “Basic Operations” title card

Now, do the same for DAW Settings (use Clip 8 and 9) and the “DAW Settings” title card

Something is definitely wrong. Clip 8 must’ve been recorded improperly (holding the Phone/Camera/tablet) vertical instead of horizontal – tall vs wide). This creates a bit of a problem beause the whole video is using the standard cinema style viewing method and now we have this that totally ruins the project.

Not to worry. Adobe has helped us out by allowing us to rotate the clip and get things back on track (see what I did there?)

Select Clip 8 on the video timeline then, select “Effects on the top Menu bar. This will bring up the properties for the clip on the left hand side of the program. 

Set the number to 90

The image on the timeline will not display the change but the project Preview will show that it has taken effect.

 

Save Your File

In Adobe Premiere, our clips are nicely arranged. But, they are not exactly together. Just like in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, we can “group” things together, so that they don’t easily separate from each other.

On the Timeline, hold your “Shift” key and then select Clip 8, Clip 9 and the “Daw Settings” title bar. Then, select Clip from the top menu bar and then select “Group.” This will group all thee items together. Do the same with the remaining clips and their accompanying title bars.

Notice that everything looks pretty decent except that we do not have a video title card. We made one, with the M-Audio logo on it. But, we have yet to insert it in. Normally, it is a royal pain to move all sorts of stuff around as things get mislocated. However, because we took the time to group our clips and our title cards, it wont’ be so bad. In fact, it’s rather easy.

We are going to select all of our clips and title bars at one time.

Click in the empty space above the video clip and (while holding your mouse button) drag to the opposite diagonal corner until all clips are selected (they will turn a somewhat white color when you do)

An even easier way to this is to click on “Shift” and “A” at the same time which will select all clips/graphics on the timeline.

Now, drag the selected clips to the right

Zoom in and rest the beginning of Clip 2 at this time frame:

At the very begging of the video project, drag and drop the title card called “Intro Card.pdf”

Use these settings

 Save Your File!

We are going to use the Sounds folder inside of your “My First Video” folder 

In Adobe Premiere, import the three files. They will show up in your Clip Browser.

Select the song titled “Falling Down.wav” and drag it to the “Audio 2.”

I suppose this is a good time to do some house-keeping. The names of these tracks are not very good and they aren’t’ descriptive enough.

Right click on the Audio 2 track label and select “Rename.” Change the name of “Audio 2” to “Soundtrack”

Right Click on the Audio 1 track label and select “Rename” this time changing it to “Voice Over”

Right Click on the Video 1 tack label and rename it to “TF Pro Clips”

Right Click on the Video 2 track label and rename it to “Title Bars”

Back to the sound. If you play back the video, the must is way too loud. In fact, it overpowers the voice over really bad. We need to fix (or….”mix” maybe?) this so that it is more comparable with the voice.

Select “Audio” from the top menu bar

Notice the audio bars meters are named after our existing tracks of “Voice Over” and “Soundtrack”

Play the video. Notice that the soundtrack bar is obviously “…just too darn loud”

We need to adjust the audio so that it does not overpower the Voice Over audio

Drag the Soundtrack slider until it reaches the meter number of -8.2

On my project, I positioned the project timeline playback head until this number is displayed on the preview (you can also double click on the number and type the number in manually:

Then, I drug the file titled “Under the Influence.wav” to this location (00:05:26:21) on the timeline.

Your timecode may be different. This is simply where my timecode shows the insertion of the USB port into the Trigger Finger Pro.  What I wanted to do was have the song play at the exact moment that the plug snaps into place. You may need to play with this one a bit to make sure it’s properly lined up.

During playback, I noticed the Soundtrack bar is (again) louder than the Voice Over. It appears that Premiere remembers the volume setting for the first song but not the second one we placed into our project. At the beginning of “Under the Influence,” set the mixer at around -8.2 or lower so that it does not compete with the voice over track.

Finally, drag the song “Reflections.wav” into the timeline so that it ‘s ending corresponds with the ending of the actual video content like in the image below and adjust its sound accordingly:

Save Your File!