Adobe Premiere Pro: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features

By Ben Goldsmith

Adobe Premiere Pro: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features is your guide to creating, editing, and enhancing videos in Adobe Premiere Pro. Whether you’re organizing hours of interviews, rapidly splicing news clips before a deadline, or creating your magnum opus, Premiere Pro is the tool for you—and this book will teach you what you need to know.

First, with a complete Course that includes a set of projects and lessons derived from video editor and motion graphic designer Ben Goldsmith, you will learn the procedures needed to use Premiere Pro effectively and professionally. Dozens of exercises are included that can be applied to any videos you have in mind. Through step-by-step lessons, you’ll be exposed to all of Premiere Pro’s features in practical contexts and its best practices for optimal workflows. To complete the Course, we’ll supply lesson documents and their assets to download, so you can work alongside the text.

Then, for greater depth of knowledge and subsequent reference, you’ll use the Compendium to uncover more of the “how” and “why” of Premiere Pro. With each topic easy to access, you can find and explore all of Premiere Pro’s key features and concepts in depth. With cross references between the Course and Compendium, the two parts of the book complement each other perfectly. Best of all, when the lessons in the Course are done, the Compendium will continue to serve for months and years to come.

Learn step by step how to:

• Set up and organize a project

• Create a timeline and edit your video and audio

• Sweeten and master audio

• Use Premiere’s powerful multicamera features

• Control graphics and titles

• Unlock Lumetri’s professional color grading tools

• And much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rocky Nook
• Release date: Mar 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781681986890

Ben Goldsmith

Ben Goldsmith has been a pioneer in the field of green investment, as well as a leading light in the rewilding movement in Britain and Europe. Ben and his wife, Jemima, are in the process of rewilding their own farm in South Somerset, and Ben has been involved in the establishment of numerous environmental initiatives, including the Environmental Funders' Network, the Conservative Environment Network, Rewilding Britain, the Beaver Trust and the Conservation Collective, a growing network of locally-focused environmental foundations around the world. Ben was appointed a Director of the UK Government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for five years, until 2022. In that role, he successfully advocated for a number of ground-breaking environmental restoration policies, including the new Environmental Land Management scheme, which links all agriculture subsidies with stewardship and restoration of nature, the Nature for Climate Fund and the Species Reintroductions taskforce.

Book preview

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Cover

Adobe Premiere Pro: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features

Ben Goldsmith

Editor: Jocelyn Howell

Project manager: Lisa Brazieal

Marketing coordinator: Mercedes Murray

Interior and cover design, layout, and type: Steve Laskevitch

ISBN: 978-1-68198-687-6

1st Edition (1st printing, June 2021)

© 2021 Ben Goldsmith

Rocky Nook Inc.

1010 B Street, Suite 350

San Rafael, CA 94901

USA

www.rockynook.com

Distributed in the UK and Europe by Publishers Group UK

Distributed in the U.S. and all other territories by Ingram Publisher Services

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937930

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

Many of the designations in this book used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks of their respective companies. Where those designations appear in this book, and Rocky Nook was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. All product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. They are not intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

While reasonable care has been exercised in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein or from the use of the discs or programs that may accompany it.

About the Author

Ben Goldsmith tells stories and shares ideas through editing videos and designing motion graphics. After receiving his BA at Hampshire College in digital media production, Ben developed and created immersive media experiences for historic and scientific museums nationwide, including the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and the Boston Museum of Science. He then schlepped over to Seattle, where he lives today with his wife. Ben now produces videos for Sparkworks Media—where he creates content for Amazon, Alaska Airlines, and other local businesses—and is an Adobe Certified Instructor, teaching video editing at Luminous Works and the School of Visual Concepts. When he’s not churning out the good stuff, you might find him bouldering, brewing ales, or teaching himself a new musical instrument.

Acknowledgments

It all started at Luminous Works, where Steve Laskevitch and Carla Fraga invited me to teach. I think we were about fifteen minutes into introductions before Steve asked me if I had any interest in writing a book on Premiere. Overwhelmed, my yes had a question mark at the end, which slowly morphed into an exclamation point the more I thought about it.

Years later, the book you hold in your hands couldn’t have possibly been made without the mentorship and tutelage from Steve. From the conceptual to the technical to the emotional hurdles that needed to be overcome for this book to happen, Steve was there for it all.

Then there was Rocky Nook, in particular this book’s editor, Jocelyn Howell. Without her finely-honed attention to detail, htis book wuld look l8ke ths,

Another thanks goes to this book’s on-camera talent and behind-camera assistance, Taylor Hain, who is a true mensch.

The gear and location used for the lessons couldn’t have happened without the generosity of Michel Hansmire and the Sparkworks Media team.

Special shoutout to Washington Governor Jay Inslee for closing most recreational establishments during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a crucial factor in getting this book done on time.

Lastly, I’d like to thank my wonderful wife, Dylan. A writer herself, she was a reliable sounding board for the exclusion of this book’s worst ideas. It takes considerable patience to write a book, but arguably more so to be married to the person writing it.

Ben Goldsmith

Seattle, January 2021

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Software and Files

A Note Regarding Keyboard Shortcuts

The Course

1 Make a Rough Cut

Project Organization

Copy the Files from CameraCard to ProjectStructure

So Why Do All This?

Getting Started in the Project Panel

Creating a New Project

Switching Workspaces

The Project Panel

Importing Footage

Organizing the Project Panel

Viewing Metadata

The Source Monitor

Previewing Footage

Some Notable Features

In and Out points

Creating a Sequence

Creating a Sequence based off the Source Monitor

The Timeline

Navigating the Timeline

Changing Your Clip Size

The Program Monitor

Calibrating Playback

Adding More Clips to the Timeline

Drag and Drop

Preview the Timeline

Toggle Track Output

Disable Clip

Basic Trimming and Rearranging

Trimming a Clip

Moving a Clip

Extending a Clip

Selecting Multiple Clips

Move with Insert

Move with Overwrite

2 Edit a Scene

Other Ways of Adding Shots to a Timeline

Mentally Plan the Edit

Adding with the Source Monitor

Adding an Insert

The Tools

The Tools Panel

Track Select Forward Tool (A)

Deleting Gaps

Ripple Edit Tool (B)

Rolling Edit Tool (N)

Editing Just Video or Audio

Rate Stretch Tool (R)

Razor Tool (C)

Slip Tool (Y)

Slide Tool (U)

The Trim Tool

Let’s Clean It Up a Little

Pulling In Audio from Another Take

Final Audio Touch-Ups

Music

Add the Music Track to the Timeline

Adjusting Volume

Mute and Solo

Trim the Track

Locking Audio

Exporting

The Export Dialog

Ready to Export?

3 Create a Long-Form Interview

Logging Footage with Markers

Open the Project

Create a Marker

The Markers Panel

Timeline Markers

Subclips: An (Optional) Alternate Approach

Preparing the Edit

Denote Which Clips You Want to Use

Labels

Create a New Sequence from Scratch

Editing the Interview

Scaling Down the Footage

Scaling Up the Footage

Remove a Pause with a Morph Cut Transition

Lower-Third Titles

Using the Type Tool

Add a Transition to the Title

4 Edit a Presentation

Working with Graphic Layers

Make a Rectangle

Add a Cross Dissolve

Make Another Rectangle

Create a Mask

Create Your Third Shape

Stagger the Transitions

Keyframe Animation

Create Keyframes

Anchor Points

Add a Blur Effect

Duplicate What We’ve Just Done

Nested Sequences

Nest Those Clips

Add a Transition

5 Multi-Cam, Audio and Color

Configure Audio

Modify Audio Channels

Audio Gain

Syncing Multi-Cam

Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence

Preview Your Multi-Cam Clip

Editing Multi-Cam

Switching Cameras

Multi-Cam View

Advanced Audio Editing

Keyframing Audio

Essential Sound

Copying Effects

Color

Working Within the Multi-Cam Timeline

Lumetri Scopes

Comparison View

Lumetri for Color Correction

Lumetri for Color Grading

What’s Next?

The Compendium

1 The Interface & Importing

Before You Get Started

Organizing Your Files

Ingesting Footage

To Rename or Not to Rename?

The Interface

Workspaces

Resizing and Rearranging Panels

Creating Custom Workspaces

Panels

The Project Panel

Project Panel Options

Bins

Importing Files

Importing Photoshop and Illustrator Files

Importing RED footage

Clip Options

Metadata

View and Edit Metadata

Offline Media

Relinking Media

Proxies

Creating Proxies

Customizing Proxies

Manually Creating Proxies

Working with Proxies

Productions

Create a Production

Working with Productions

Team Projects

2 Sequences & Editing

The Source Monitor

Previewing

Source Monitor Interface

Player Options

Source and Program Monitor Buttons

In and Out Points

Subclips

Sequences

Creating a Sequence

Manually Adjusting Sequence Settings

Tracks

VR Video

Bringing Footage into the Timeline

Drag and Drop

Overwrite

Insert

Replace

Overlay

Insert Before and After

Three- and Four-Point Editing

Patching and Targeting Tracks

Automate to Sequence

The Timeline

Navigating the Timeline

Changing Your Clip Size

Timeline Tools

Track Visibility

Clip Enable

Mute and Solo

Toggle Sync Lock

Locking Tracks

Match Frame

Reveal in Project

Sequence Options

Close Other Panels in Group

Panel Group Settings

Work Area Bar

Show Audio Time Units

Audio Waveforms Use Label Color

Rectified Audio Waveforms

Logarithmic Waveform Scaling

Time Ruler Numbers

Start Time

Thumbnails

Create Preset from Sequence

Link Media

Make Offline

Multi-Camera Audio Follows Video

Multi-Camera Selection Top Down

Clip Options

Cut/Copy

Paste Attributes

Remove Attributes

Clear

Ripple Delete

Edit Original

Edit Clip in Adobe Audition

License

Replace With After Effects Composition

Replace With Clip

Render and Replace

Restore Unrendered

Enable

Unlink/Link

Group

Synchronize and Merge Clips

Nest

Make Subsequence

Multi-Camera

Label

Speed/Duration

Scene Edit Detection

Audio Gain

Audio Channels

Frame Hold

Field Options

Time Interpolation

Scale to Frame Size

Set to Frame Size

Adjustment Layer

Link Media

Make Offline

Rename

Make Subclip

Properties

Show Clip Keyframes

The Program Monitor

The Button Editor

Program Monitor Settings

The Tools Panel

Selection Tool (V)

Track Select Forward Tool (A)

Ripple Edit Tool (B)

Rolling Edit Tool (N)

Rate Stretch Tool (R)

Blade Tool (B)

Slip Tool (Y)

Slide Tool (U)

Pen Tool (P)

Rectangle and Ellipse Tools

Hand Tool (H)

Zoom Tool (Z)

Type Tool (T)

Other Editing Techniques

Removing Clips

Cut, Copy, and Paste Clips

Rearrange Clips

Editing with the Keyboard

The Trim Tool

3 Configuring & Syncing AV

Audio Channels

Modify Audio Channels Before You Edit

Modifying Audio Tracks Already in a Sequence

Defaulting a Stereo Track to Two Mono Tracks

Syncing External Audio Sources

In/Out Points

Timecode

Clip Marker

Audio

Merge Clips

Batching Sync

Multi-Cam

Syncing Multiple Cameras

Editing Multi-Cam Clips

Editing Multi-Cam Timelines

Multi-Cam Options

4 Graphics & Animation

Effect Controls Panel

The Interface

Motion

Opacity

Masks

Blend Modes

Audio

Scaling 4K (and Bigger) Footage

Set and Scale to Frame Size

Color Mattes

Creating Color Mattes

The Color Picker

Other Mattes

Creating Shapes

The Rectangle and Ellipse Tools

Creating Text and Titles

The Type Tool

Editing Graphic Layers

Vector Motion

Editing Shapes

Editing Text

Graphics Menu

Essential Graphics Panel

Adding Essential Graphics

Keyframe Animation

Keyframes: The Concept

Creating Keyframes

Ease In and Out

Advanced Keyframe Interpolation

Intro and Outro Duration

Editing Keyframes in the Timeline

Captions

Open Captions, Closed Captions, or Subtitles?

Creating Captions

Editing Captions

Import Settings

Exporting Captions

Previewing Captions

5 Effects, Color & Transitions

Effects Panel

Applying Video Effects

All the Video Effects

Adjust

Blur and Sharpen

Channel

Color Correction

Distort

Generate

Image Control

Immersive Video

Keying

Noise & Grain

Obsolete

Perspective

Stylize

Time

Transform

Transition

Utility

Video

Lumetri and Color

How Much Data Is in Your Pixels?

LOG Footage

RAW Footage

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Footage

The Lumetri Scopes Panel

Using Lumetri

Copy, Paste, and Remove Attributes

Cut/Copy

Paste Attributes

Remove Attributes

Adjustment Layers

Create an Adjustment Layer

Using Adjustment Layers

Master Properties

Adding Effects to the Master Properties

Camera Master Properties

Effect Masks

Rendering

Rendering Your Frames to the Disk

Video Transitions

Applying Video Transitions

Editing Video Transitions

All the Video Transitions

3D Motion

Dissolve

Immersive Video

Iris

Page Peel

Slide

Wipe

Zoom

Audio Transitions

The Three Audio Transitions

6 Audio Effects & Mastering

What Is Audio?

Audio Clipping

How Is Audio Processed?

Adjusting Audio Levels

The Audio Clip Mixer

Keyframing in the Audio Clip Mixer

Gain and Normalization

The Audio Gain Dialog

All Audio Effects

Amplitude and Compression

Delay and Echo

Filter and EQ

Modulation

Noise Reduction/Restoration

Reverb

Special

Stereo Imagery

Time and Pitch

The Audio Track Mixer

The Audio Track Mixer Interface

Track Effects

Track Sends

Keyframing in the Track Mixer

Recording

Track Mixer Options

Essential Sound Panel

Dialog

Music

SFX

Ambience

Browse

Mixing 5.1 Sound

Creating a 5.1 Sequence

Stereo Preview

Panning in the Track Mixer

7 Exporting & Other Apps

Formats and Codecs

What’s the Difference?

Lossy versus Non-Lossy Codecs

Exporting

Exporting from Premiere

Exporting Using Adobe Media Encoder

Alpha and Transparency

Exporting with a Higher Bit Depth

Quick Export

Project Manager

The Project Manager Dialog Box

While We’re at It...

Sending Clips to After Effects

The Old-Fashioned Way

Replace with After Effects Composition

Editing Clips in Adobe Audition

Exporting an OMF for a DAW

Sending Clips to Audition

Sending Sequences to Audition

Some Audition Basics

Editing Stills in Photoshop

8 Speed, Time & Preferences

Working with Multiple Frame Rates

24fps Footage in a 30fps Timeline

30fps Footage in a 24fps Timeline

Interpret Footage

The Interpret Footage Window

Interpreting 24fps to 30fps

Interpreting 30fps to 24fps

Interpreting Slow Motion

Variable Frame Rate Footage

Check to See If Your Footage Is VFR

Working with VFR Footage

Not Working with VFR Footage

Speed/Duration Effects

The Clip Speed/Duration Interface

Time Interpolation

Speed Ramping

Keyframing a Speed Ramp

In Conjunction with Other Keyframes

Preferences

General

Appearance

Audio

Audio Hardware

Auto Save

Capture

Collaboration

Control Surface

Device Control

Graphics

Labels

Media

Media Cache

Memory

Playback

Sync Settings

Timeline

Trim

Keyboard Shortcuts

What’s New in 2021?

Captions

Equitable Language

Introduction

Start Here

In this book, you will be working your way through a full course curriculum that will expose you to all of the essential features and functions of Adobe Premiere. Along the way, you’ll learn the concepts and vocabulary of digital video. There are five Course chapters that teach you steps as you go. In those lessons, each action that I’d like you to try looks like this:

This is what an action looks like.

The paragraphs surrounding the action explain some of the why and how. For greater depth, the second section of this book is a Compendium of those features and functions, providing the deep dive needed for true mastery of this powerful application. Throughout the Course section, I will suggest readings in the Compendium section. Just remember that everything in the Course is explained in further detail later in the book, so if you’re curious for more, or want to discover other options that might better suit your workflow, check the corresponding section in the Compendium.

Software and Files

Have you installed Premiere yet? If you work for a company with an enterprise license, it’s likely your IT people have installed it for you. We will be using the Creative Cloud app as our hub for launching Adobe applications and accessing the services that come with a Creative Cloud (CC) license. This app also checks to make sure your software license is up to date, so it should remain running whenever you use your creative applications. I use the CC app’s Preferences to have it launch on startup.

I most often launch Premiere by clicking the Open button next to the Premiere icon. If there’s an update available, it’ll be available in the Updates section.

Please note that Premiere is regularly updated, and discrepancies between interface elements may exist between your screen and the images in this book.

To follow along with the projects and lessons in this book, you’ll need the Course Files. Launch your favorite web browser and go to rockynook.com/premiereCandC, answer a simple question, and download the files. This is a substantial download, so run it well before you intend to go through the Course. Save the files somewhere memorable. If you can’t store them on your internal hard drive, make sure you’re using a fast and reliable external drive. Solid state drives with a USB 3.0 connection or better are recommended.

Premiere is a hefty piece of software that consumes many of your computer’s resources. If you’re experiencing issues in your computer’s responsiveness while performing these exercises, make sure to close unnecessary apps and browser tabs running on your machine (looking at you, Facebook!).

A Note Regarding Keyboard Shortcuts

To be efficient in Premiere, or any application, we should take advantage of time-saving features like shortcuts. I will always share menu-driven ways to achieve our ends (when such exist), but I’ll encourage faster ways too. A comprehensive list of shortcuts is in the Appendix of this book. Wherever shortcuts appear, the Mac shortcut precedes the shortcut for Windows.

The Course

1 Make a Rough Cut

Before we get started on editing video clips, we have to understand how Premiere is laid out and how it keeps track of your footage, both within and outside of the software. Once we’re oriented, we’ll explore how to create a timeline, drag in only the parts of our footage that we like, and arrange clips to our liking.

Project Organization

For a real editing project, the first step is to bring footage off the camera into a folder. Most cameras shoot onto a card that mounts on your hard drive like any other folder. One then copies the files from the camera card to, say, a fast external hard drive. For our purposes, we’ll emulate this idea somewhat.

Copy the Files from CameraCard to ProjectStructure

First, make sure you’ve downloaded the Course Files (see Introduction), and place them somewhere dependable—either somewhere on your internal hard drive, or on a fast external hard drive (USB 3, USB C, or Thunderbolt connections are often indicators of good speed). Premiere will continuously be reading these files, so a slow hard drive will impede your flow.

Open up the folder for Lesson 1.

You’ll see two folders: one called CameraCard and another called ProjectStructure. The CameraCard folder is meant to emulate a card from a camera being plugged into your computer. Different camera cards are organized differently, but somewhere on that card lives your footage.

ProjectStructure contains a series of folders. It’s a good idea to start with a folder structure like this that is copied every time you start a new project. That way, every project you do will have a consistent layout on your operating system.

So, let’s pretend we’re doing this for real.

Change the name of ProjectStructure to Lesson1RoughCut.

Then, just as we’d drag footage from our camera card into our folder structure, let’s drag the contents of CameraCard into the 02_Video folder.

So before we launch Premiere, our folder structure should look like this:

What’s up with not having spaces in file names? Once in a blue moon, a problem can arise as a result of a file name having a space. It’s fairly uncommon, but many editors play it safe and use underscores or TitleCaseWithoutSpaces in naming their files and folders.

So Why Do All This?

In some video editing packages, an import is an import—you add a 5 gigabyte file to your project, and your project file increases by 5 gigabytes. This is not the case with Premiere. Instead of truly importing a file, Premiere makes a reference to where the file lives on your computer. This allows editors to keep their project files small, which is easier for sharing and backup. Because of this feature, it’s crucial that your video assets live in a dependable, consistent spot in your computer, and ideally stay there for the duration of your project. For our purposes, we will not move, rename, or reorganize anything within our project folder once it’s imported.

If a file is moved or renamed, you must then relink it within Premiere (see Compendium chapter 1, Offline Media).

Getting Started in the Project Panel

Open up Premiere by finding it in your Applications folder, or through the Creative Cloud app.

Creating a New Project

The first thing we’ll see when launching Premiere is the Home Screen.

Select New Project…

A project is where we’ll import and organize our assets and create our edits.

Let’s give our project a name: Lesson1RoughCut.

And, let’s save it in the 05_Project folder within the file tree we just created. Select that folder with the Browse… button.

Click OK to create the project file.

Switching Workspaces

Premiere’s interface is made up of a layout of panels. Because there are many panels to choose from, not all of which are helpful in every scenario, Premiere has a variety of panel layout presets, called Workspaces. The software defaults to the Learn Workspace, which displays the Learn panel. We don’t need that, so let’s switch to the Editing Workspace by clicking on Editing at the top of the screen, or selecting Window > Workspaces > Editing.

To learn how to customize a workspace to your liking and create your own presets, check out the Workspaces section in Compendium chapter 1.

The Project Panel

Our lesson starts in the Project panel, which is where we’ll import and organize our assets, store our sequences, and view lots and lots of data on our items. In the Editing Workspace, it sits in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

This is a little small. We can resize the panel by clicking and dragging on the panel’s edges, or hovering the cursor over the panel and pressing ` to make the panel full screen. Press ` again to return to normal. If you mess up your Workspace, you can reset it to the default in Window > Workspaces > Reset to Saved Layout.

Importing Footage

Let’s start by adding the four shots from the 02_Video folder into the Project panel. There are a number of ways to do this:

Drag and drop from Finder/Explorer into the Project panel.

Go to File > Import.

Double-click on an empty area inside the Project panel.

Use the Media Browser panel, which unlocks ingest options. See Media Browser.

Once we import the four videos, the Project panel will have four nice thumbnails of four nice video clips. Change the size of the thumbnails with the size slider . Hover the cursor over the video thumbnails to get a quick preview of the video content.

Organizing the Project Panel

While our footage is linked to its location in Finder/Explorer, we can do our own organization within Premiere and freely move things around. I find this much easier to do by leaving the Project panel’s Thumbnail view and switching to List view.

We can create folders within the Project panel that help us organize our stuff. Premiere calls these folders Bins.

Create a bin with File > New > Bin, or ⌘-B/Ctrl-B.

Let’s name the bin Video.

Then, hold down shift, and select the first and last video clip in the Project panel (to select all four of them), then drag them into the Video bin.

Viewing Metadata

Metadata is information about your video files. The Project panel displays a lot of it—just scroll to the right within the panel to see things like clip duration, resolution, and frame rate.

The Source Monitor

The Source Monitor is where we’ll preview our footage and trim the unwanted bits of our video to prepare it for adding it into the timeline.

To bring a clip into the Source Monitor, double-click on it in the Project panel. Let’s start with 01CameraPlace.

Previewing Footage

There are a number of functions that allow you to play footage from the Source Monitor, but under the assumption that the Source Monitor is active. Note the blue highlight around the Source Monitor—this means that it’s the active panel, and our hotkeys will control this panel only. To activate a panel, simply click on it.

Press the spacebar to play your video. Press it again to stop. That was easy.

If you’re going through hours and hours of footage, watching everything play in real time is inefficient. You can (and should) fast forward and rewind to greatly speed up your process.

I like to visualize a throttle on a ship.

Press L to shift your throttle forward slightly, and play your video at regular speed. Press it again to push your throttle further, playing at double speed. Pressing for a total of six times will play your video back at sextuple speed. Pressing J will pull back on your throttle, easing up on the speed. If you’re at resting position, pressing J pulls the lever backwards, putting your video in reverse. The idea above is the same here—pressing J multiple times will have you zipping backwards. You can press K to stop playback. Unlike the spacebar, K does not start playback. Shift-J and shift-L play your footage either in reverse or forward, but at half speed.

Getting comfortable with J, K, and L is a great way to speed up your process (no pun intended). Furthermore, they’re all next to each other on the keyboard, so you can relax your hand and tear through your footage.

Press the left and right arrows to step through your footage one frame at a time. Press shift-left and shift–right arrows to jump five frames at a time.

Press the home key to jump to the beginning of your footage, and the end key to go to the end. Laptop keyboards can’t access these keys as easily—one of the reasons having a numpad can be helpful.

You’ve probably noticed the blue playhead moving around in the clip’s timeline. This is a great way to see how far you are in your clip. You can click and drag the playhead through the timeline, or click directly on a spot in the timeline to jump to that time.

Some Notable Features

The Source Monitor has quite a few options, which are detailed in chapter 2 of the Compendium. Here are some things to pay special attention to:

Timecode

Timecode is measured in Hours : Minutes : Seconds : Frames. The timecode on the lower left of the Source Monitor displays the timecode of the current playhead, and the one on the right shows the duration of the clip. This clip is shot at 24 frames per second, so the frames of the timecode will go from 0 to 23, before jumping back to 0 at the next second.

Zoom Factor

Increase the size of your video within the panel. Fit will fit your screen into the size of your panel. The 100% view is a good way to see the clip at its native resolution; go above that if you wish to look at your image in more detail. Don’t forget that pressing the ` key while hovering your cursor over the Source Monitor will make it full screen.

Playback Resolution

In order to make Premiere run more smoothly and use less of your computer’s resources, you can (and should) lower the resolution of your video upon pressing Play. Full will play your video at highest quality, 1/2 will skip every other pixel, and so on. The lower the resolution, the less taxing it is on your machine. Different resolution options are available depending on the resolution of your media. Keep in mind that this is just for playback—exported files will be full quality.

Timeline Scrollbar

Drag the handles on either end of the scrollbar to zoom in on the timeline, or press = to zoom in, and - to zoom out. You can also scroll by holding shift while moving your scroll wheel.

In and Out points

Now that we know the features of the Source Monitor, let’s start editing. I don’t want to use this entire clip—there’s extra time on the beginning and end of it that I don’t want in my edit. We’re going to designate In and Out points, which will tell Premiere that we’re only interested in part of this clip.

Use the playback controls (spacebar, J, K,L, home, and end) to find the beginning of the clip you’d like to use.

There are a few frames from before the camera was set down that I’d like to chop out, so I’m going to set my playhead to 00:00:00:11.

Once you’re at the beginning of a section you’d like to use, press I or the button to mark yourIn point.

This is where you’d like your clip to start.

Play until the end of the clip you’d like to use, and press O or the button to mark your Out point. I’m setting mine to 00:00:02:21.

Note that I consider setting In and Out points in the Source Monitor to be painting in broad strokes—I expect these to be changed later, and I don’t spend significant time tweaking them to be on the perfect frame.

Previewing In and Out Points

Press shift-I and shift-O to jump your cursor to your In and Out points. On a Mac, press option-K to play from your In point to your Out point. On a PC, this hotkey is Ctrl-shift-spacebar.

Editing In and Out Points

While I’m happy with these In and Out points, there are some options for modifying them after they’ve been created. You can simply press I and O again to create new ones. You can also click and drag on the blue In and Out point handles to shift your points around. And you can slide both your In and Out points simultaneously by clicking and dragging on the center of the gray bar.

You can clear your In point by pressing option-I/Alt-I, and clear your Out point by pressing option-O/Alt-O. You can also right-click on the gray bar indicating your In and Out points and select Clear In and Out. Feel free to fiddle with your points, but let’s return to the In point at 00:00:00:11 and Out point at 00:00:02:21 before proceeding.

Creating a Sequence

All of our edits take place in a sequence, which is another way of saying timeline. The sequence to Premiere is the composition to After Effects, the canvas to Photoshop, and the artboard to Illustrator.

To get started, we need to reveal the New Item button , which may be hidden. In my case, I need to expand my Project panel to the right in order to reveal it.

Creating a Sequence based off the Source Monitor

Click and drag the image within the Source Monitor onto the New Item button.

What Just Happened?

First off, we’ve created a sequence. It lives in the Project panel.

Note a couple of things: The sequence has the same name as the