Adobe Premiere
About
Adobe Premiere is used to make movies. Here are some workflows I often use.
Setup New Video For YouTube
Don't know the best way, but I have gone New Project > ... then for "New Sequence" I choose:
- Editing mode: Custom
- Timebase: 30fps (15 for screencast videos is more common though)
- Frame size: 1920 x 1080
- Aspect ratio: square pixels (1.0) <-- always best I think.
... then "Save Preset" as "YouTube 1920x1080 30fps".
This is very high def, you might decide on something smaller. Hopefully your imported videos will play nicely. If they get choppy and display red above the videos, hit [Enter] and Premiere will re-render them for better playback as you continue editing your sequence.
Common Operations
Split a Video
- Click the razor like image next to the timeline.
Time Remapping
- Select video on timeline, change opacity dropdown to time-remapping > speed. In Effects Control panel, add key frames and drag up/down to get desired speed. In the "Effect Controls" box you can only go up to 1000% speed (10x), but in the Timeline, you can right click a clip to show "Time Remapping:Speed", then right click at a point in your clip > Speed/Duration and you can go above 10x speed.
Cropping
- Where the Media Browser is click the Effects tab, search for "crop", then drag it onto any video on the timeline. In the Effects Control panel you will see "crop" and can adjust the crop for the top, bottom, left and right side.
Freeze Frame
I always, always forget this.... is a tiny complex. See video demo
- Go to razer tool.
- Split video.
- Put your timeline where you want..... right click video in timeline > Frame hold.
Swap Element in Timeline
To swap/substitute a title/video-clip/audio-clip or any other timeline element with a different one:
- Drag it from the Project window, onto the timeline element (in the Timeline), holding [shift]+[alt].
Fixing Lip Sync (Video & Audio Sync) Issues
Adobe Premier do not play well with variable frame rate videos. Most apple products (iPhone, Macbook Pro camera) shoot variable frame rate videos, typically saved as .mov files - they may play fine in QuickTime, but not when imported in Premier. Fix as follows:
- Download and open Handbrake (free video converter).
- Open your .mov file in Handbrake, then chose to export it as constant frame rate, and it will probably give you an .mp4. Import the mp4 and your frame rate troubles should be over.
- If doing multiple videos, just click Open Source then Add to Queue repeatedly.
Horizontal Flip
For CC version:
- Open: Window > Effects.
- In the Effects panel, just search for "flip", and you should see a Horizontal Flip option which you can drag into your video on the timeline.
Nudge Video
For CC version, nudge a video forward or backward a frame by selecting it then simply [ctrl] + [left/right arrow].
Less Common Operations
Green Screen Removal
- Add green screen footage to your sequence.
- Drop the Ultra Key effect onto your clip. (first: go to Effects window and search for "ultra")
- Go to the effects control tab.
- Use the eyedropper to select the green color on your video frame (click somewhere near your subject). ...
- Use the Setting option to choose how aggressive the effect works.
Fix Playback Lag
There are many approaches to this, explained very well in this video: How To Fix Premiere Pro Playback Lag. Some quick options:
- Create proxy files: select videos in Project window > right click and select "Proxies" (will generate lower res videos for editing part).
- Change playback res: at the bottom right of the Program window is a dropdown with the options: "full, 1/2, 1/4, and so on". Set that lower and see if it helps.
- Watch the video for other options like reserving more memory, GPU acceleration and so on.
Export to Animated GIF
There are others ways to convert a video to an animated GIF, but within Premiere you can simply:
- Click File > Export > Media.
- Select Animated GIF from dropdown, and change the frame rate and size as needed.
Add Kinetic Typography
Kinetic tyopgraphy is a fancy way of saying "moving text" and is often used to describe effects where words or even letters fade, fly or pop in one by one. Sometimes words appear in sync with narration for dramatic effect, but this is a little different from "captions" which are usually just one line at a time to help us whats being said.
There are many approaches.... some might include:
- One text line per layer, but with "Crop" helping unveil each word seperately for each line.
- A whole text block, using a crop shape mask to gradually expose words.
- A whole text block, using animation on the source text to expose one word, then two, then three, and so on.
- Just one word at a time in a single layer.
- Video example: Text on Screen as you Talk - Premiere Pro Tutorial - in this on text is automatially pulled from the videos.
What's very interesting is that you can be totally manual, or you can go to the "Captions and Graphics" Workspace and there is an option to "Transcribe Sequence" which will pull in your captions.... and then you can modify the caption text and decide how it might appear.
