Adobe® Premiere Pro® CC Video Editing: The Complete Guide

Lesson Info

Tour The Interface: Choosing Your Shot

To kind of, get a sense of this whole interface, let me go ahead and open up one of my video images. And, I'm gonna just arbitrarily click on one, to bring it in. And, of course, there we have our lovely host, Kenna, there we go. And, she's talking to some folks who have come to the event. And, I actually really like this shot, because, as I'm going through my footage, I'm in my head going, "What's the best shot for me to use in my show?" "What are the best shots?" "What works for me?" "What story am I trying to tell?" And, as I look through this, it's like, this was all about people coming and building community at Creative Live. And, I wanna have people interacting, I wanna have people smiling and laughing. And I want those moments. I don't need 20 seconds of folks talking, I need four seconds of two people interacting; because, you immediately, when you see this shot, even as a still, you react. Okay, yes, they're interacting, but I have to find the right frame, so it's not like, yo...

u know, both people reacting. But, I have that shot, and as a matter of fact, let me go ahead and show you how I would look at this. There's lots of ways to look at a clip; keyboard shortcuts, space bar, I'm gonna just grab this little play head, move it back and forth, and I'm gonna say, "Ah, that's a nice shot, it's a little bit, um... I don't know if I want to start with that, let me take a look at what we have here." This is more fun. You know, I have a really good laugh going on here. And so, what I wanna do, is I wanna actually choose what part of the clip that I wanna put into my show. If we look here in the interface, and it's hard to see, I'm gonna zoom in in a moment, on the left side is actually the time of day, or how far into the clip we are from zero. So, in this case, this camera recorded time of day. I'm guessing, it says 18:20, it was about six o'clock at night, six-twenty at night, but what's more important is the right side, and that is the duration of this media, of this clip. It's 18 seconds long. Very rarely do you want to put a clip in that's 18 seconds, unless there's a reason for it; like an interview, or an event that's happening, or the need to see the entire, you know, play of the guy running 103 yards to the touchdown. And then realizing that he wasn't even playing football, and nobody was applauding. Okay, so it's a childhood problem I had, (audience giggles) I'm sorry but I had... No, but this clip is 18 seconds, I don't want all 18 seconds, I probably want just that moment. And that might be three or four, so I'm gonna mark where I want it to start, and where I want it to end. An in-point, and an out-point. And to do that, I could simply go over here, there's a lot of buttons that I can use to play, stop, rewind. Marking in-points and out-points is what you wanna do. There's buttons for that. You'll notice that a keyboard's shortcut pops up. In, if you can see, it says "I" for "In", next to the outpoint would be "O". So I'll clip that, and now we've ignored everything before this frame. And then I can go through and say, "Oh, camera's a little crazy there, I wanna get... I thought I saw a nice little smile. There we go, that's the action I want." So, I've already marked in-point, I've changed my mind. Guess what? If I mark another in-point, it replaces the old one. Non-destructive, and then I'll let it play a little bit, there's good, nice little action, got the hands going. "O", out-point, what I want you to see is, this clip is now two seconds long. I don't need the other 16 seconds. And now I'm ready to bring this into my show, I can simply grab it, and throw it in. I want to show you a couple of things. If I grab it and drag it, okay, one must be able to grab first. If it's the first clip, and this is a preference that you can change, we're not gonna go into this in the hour we have. It says, "Do you want me to convert the sequence, to match the exact perimeters of the clip?" There are times you wanna do that, but we wanna keep everything locked at this 1080p flavor, because, I might have footage that's diverse. I might have some Go-Pro footage that's 4k. And I might have some footage that somebody shot on their phone that's 720p, all these different sizes. I don't want things, you know, I don't wanna bring my first clip in, and find out now that I now have a 720 timeline, and all my other footage is big, and I'm compromising the size. So, I'm gonna, at this point, say keep existing settings. I've created my sequence for a specific reason. And, it puts it in, it's very, very, very, very small, because it's only two seconds, and I'm probably seeing, if we look over here, I'm seeing ten minutes of video. Zoom-in, zoom-out, the plus and minus keys in the upper right-hand side of your keyboard, right above equals and below the dash, are the underscore. If I hit plus, it lets me zoom in, I can see more of my clip, that's the two seconds, so we're basically focusing in. If I hold down the shift key and hit plus, I can actually see a little icon. So, that's a little bit of a navigational, we go much deeper into it in the rest of the course. So, I have my first clip there, it's a video-only clip, So, we're good to go, there is no audio associated with this. And I get an idea, and if I wanna play it, I can sit and go, and play that clip. So, here's our interface again. Organized our source material, everything we want to play it with. I can continually bring media in to our show, and populate this. It's not like, "Oh, I can only do it once." I can go back and say, "Oh, I need to use the Media Manager, and find some new footage." Or, "I just downloaded some stock music, I wanna use that." So, that's where everything is organized. This is your preview monitor, it's called the source panel. As you saw, this is where I chose what part of the clip I wanted to use, by marking in-and-out points. I bring that into my sequence, which is now I'm building my story, this is a graphical representation of my story. This window here, the program monitor, is what your viewer sees. This is like your on-air monitor. So, this is like in the Control Room, and your decisions, and this is what your viewer sees. And, as you play this, this updates. So, this is a graphical representation of this. And, you'll see, multiple video tracks, and multiple audio tracks. If you have come from a Photoshop background, you are familiar with layers. It's the same thing. If I wanted to, put a cutaway, or B roll, is the term, in this, I might put it on the track above, and that will be seen instead of what's below it. If I put a title up there, it might have some transparency, you can still see what's below it through the transparent part, but then you can see the title. And that's where you start stacking stuff. Audio, well of course with audio, you might have voiceover, you might have natural sound, you might have music. So, you can see, you start building multiple layers of audio. As opposed to video, which you can only see from top-down, audio, you hear simultaneously. So, we'll be working a little bit with that, as we go through. But, it gives you an idea of how to cut a show.

This is the class I've been waiting for! Learning the software is one thing, but to watch an experienced editor at work is priceless. It also helps that Abba is an incredible teacher. He's able to hold my attention and explain things in a way that I actually retain the information." - April, Creative Live Student  

Abba will cover essential topics such as creating time lapse videos, building a rough cut, working with audio and incorporating motion and titles in your videos. Abba will show basic color correction techniques as well as incorporating filters to enhance the look of your final video.

Lesson Plan: 

• Understanding Editing 
• Tour the Interface 
• Building a Rough Cut 
• Refining Your Edit 
• Working with Audio 
• Transitions 
• Filters & Effects 
• Motion and Animation 
• Titling and Graphics 
• Speed Changes 
• Color Correction 
• Finishing: Prepping for Output 
• Sharing and Exporting 
• Ingesting Media  
• Media Management & Archiving 
• Multi-Camera Editing 
• Creating Timelapses 
• Advanced Editing Techniques 
• Thinking Like an Editor 
• Green Screen, Warp Stabilizer and other Special Tools 
  

By the end of this class, you will feel proficient in creating video with this complex program. If you've been paying for Adobe®'s Creative Cloud, this is your guide to understanding and using one of the best tools within your subscription. You’ll be able to bring your images to life, organize your media and begin to build stories to share with your family, friends and clients. If you’ve been thinking about expanding your business to include video, this class will give you the tools to successfully start creating quality products that will impress!  

For more interaction with Abba during the bootcamp, you can join his Facebook group: 

Abba Shapiro CreativeLive Facebook Group 

"Great class -- wasn't ready to take the leap into Premiere Pro until I had a framework. Not only did Abba give me that framework, but he gave me the tools to manage and balance the story, the editing process, and the start to-finish workflow to create a finished product. And it was fun!" - Creative Live Student 

Software Used: Adobe Premiere CC 2017

Lessons