This is THE guide that you need to get started editing your very own video projects today! In this basic tutorial we’ll cover everything from setting up a Project in Premiere Pro to importing media, working with clips, lots of valuable hotkeys, trimming and cutting clips, the power of the ripple delete, syncing video to a soundtrack or audio, as well as a full vlog style video edit to showcase the power and speed of Premiere Pro to the new and even average user to help you get the very most out of this application ASAP!
How to Setup a Premiere Project File
Go File>New>Project to create your first project and choose where you’d like to save this on your hard drive and choose a name for your project. Don’t worry about messing with any of the other settings in here. Go File>Import and choose your audio and video files that you’d like to import into your Premiere file so you can start editing.
Create Your First Sequence
In order to begin editing, we need something called a “Sequence” and you can create this by right-clicking on any video clip and choosing “New Sequence From Clip.” This will deploy our clip onto a timeline and create a Sequence that has all the right settings, frame rate, frame size, etc… We can drag anything we like into this timeline.
Adding Clips to the Timeline
Speaking of dragging in new clips, you can take any clip from your Project panel and place it wherever you like on your timeline. If you hit the letter “S” you can toggle on or off snapping and with snapping turned on you can drag and “snap” the new clip to the end of the other clip you already have on your timeline.
Moving and Trimming Clips (Cut, Slice, Trim Hotkey)
When you have the Black Arrow tool selected, you can select any video or audio clip and simply drag them to move them around. If you hover over the beginning or end of a clip, a red arrow will pop up and you can use it to drag the ends of the clip inward to trim a clip this way. You can also grab the Slice Tool (C) and directly cut clips as you need.
Speeding Up the Previewing Process
As you’re editing simply hit the spacebar to start playing your creation and if you need to speed up the viewing process hit the letter “L” to speed up the preview. Hit the letter “J” to slow down the viewing process and hit either button multiple times to speed up moving forward or backward.
The Powerful Ripple Delete
If you use the Slice Tool (C) and create a couple splits in the video on your timeline and select the bit of video that you cut and go Edit>Ripple Delete instead of simply hitting the “Delete” key on your keyboard because the Ripple Delete will delete the clip and also snap your video clips back together so there is no gap to manually adjust. TIP: You can also right-click in the opening between two clips and choose “Ripple Delete” to achieve the same thing.
Sync Video with Music Soundtrack
Once I’ve created my basic layout of video clips, I’ll drag an audio soundtrack in and listen for changes in the music where to may be conducive to have a visual change happen. Simply listen for these and use the Rolling Edit Tool (N) and drag the edge of any two clips so it is aligned with the change in music and tweak it gently until it looks/feels good.
Set In/Out Points (and what they are)
In/Out points in Premiere Pro is setting a selected area of the timeline which we can export as a video clip. This is nice because sometimes there will be additional stuff on your timeline that you may not want to export with your finished video. Set the “In” point where you’d like your video to begin by hitting the letter “I” and set the “Out” point where you’d like your video to finish by hitting the “O” button. When you go File>Export>Media look to the lower left and choose In/Out Sequence from the drop down menu to ensure that you get exactly what you want when you export your freshly edited video!
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