Acquire the video files onto your computer

Premiere 5.1 is compatible with all these formats and more:

The source files, which are also called 'clips', could be

For this lesson, we will choose the last option, using video files that are already installed on your computer.

Create a new project in Premiere and adjust settings

Start Premiere and, if necessary, choose File>New>Project and you will be confronted with this dialog box for New Project Settings (your default settings may be different):

It's very important to understand that the settings that you make here will affect only the appearance of the movie preview that you see in the monitor window while editing. They will not effect the final exported video. When you have finished editing and are ready to export the movie you will see a similar dialog box where you can choose different settings for the final movie. Although you may wish to use the same settings for both editing and exporting the movie, you may also wish to use smaller frame sizes and frame rates while editing so that Premiere can render the preview files more quickly.

Now switch to Video Settings:

The compressor setting specifies the codec (compressor/decompressor) for Premiere to apply when playing video back from the Timeline. Leave this set as above.

Frame size is expressed by the horizontal and vertical dimensions of a frame in pixels. The shape of the frame is defined by the ratio of width to height which is called the aspect ratio (normally 4:3). Premiere allows you to specify widths and heights that are different from those of the original clips but you should make sure that the aspect ratio is unchanged otherwise the video will appear distorted.

The frame size that you specify when creating a project applies to video played back from the Timeline - you can specify a different frame size when you are ready to export the final video. Indeed, you may prefer to work with a frame size smaller than the final size while working on your project, to speed up the processing (renditions). For example, you might specify a frame size of 360-by-288 while editing a PAL DV video and a frame size of 720-by-576 pixels when you are ready to export the same video. Or you might specify a frame size of 160-by-120 pixels (for both the editing and exporting) to help create a small file size that downloads efficiently over the World Wide Web.

For this lesson, set the frame size to 240 x 180 pixels since this corresponds to the frame size of the source clips.

The frame rate setting here determines the number of frames the Timeline will display each second when played back. When the movie is ready for export we will be able to select a different frame rate setting if we wish.

For traditional media, set the frame rate to match the timebase of the target media; specify 24 fps for editing motion-picture film, 25 fps for PAL and SECAM video, and 29.97 fps for NTSC video. For non-traditional media you should normally set the frame rate to match that of the source clips, though you can use a slower frame rate if you are creating video for the Web in order to reduce the information content and thus the download time.

For this lesson, set the frame rate to 15 frames per second to match that of the source clips.

We'll leave the other video settings as above, and we will assume that the audio, keyframe and capture settings do not need changing, so you can click OK. You should now see a window resembling this one, except that all content will be missing:

If you can't see the Monitor and Timeline windows then turn them on in the Window menu.

The Project window shows all the video clips, sounds and pictures that have been added to the project (see the next step).

The Monitor window usually contains two monitors - the left one, 'source view' is used for viewing clips and the right one, the 'target view', is used for viewing the assembled project, as defined by the timeline. It is possible to switch to a single-window mode by using the menu that pops up when you click the triangle in the top right corner of the Monitor Window.

The Timeline (montage) window shows all the clips in chronological order from left to right. The time display in the snapshot above shows that we are seeing the clips between about 4 and 17 seconds from the beginning of the movie. The timeline can be stretched or shrunk by choosing different settings at the bottom of the timeline window, where '1 second' appears in the snapshot above, or you can select the zoom tool: then click to zoom in or left-alt-click to zoom out. Try it!

Import the video files into the project window of the new project

To import the video clips that you have already stored on your computer, simply double-click large gray area of the Project window, select the files in question (you can choose multiple files if you hold down the Ctrl key) and click OK.

For this lesson, import the files Boys.avi,  Cyclers.avi and FastSlow.avi from the Tour folder in the Adobe Premiere folder on your hard disk (C:>Program Files>Adobe>Premiere>Tour).

Editing

Trim the clips if necessary

The simplest way to trim unwanted material from the ends of clips is to use the source (clip) monitor on the left side of the monitor window BEFORE you add the clip to the timeline. For this exercise, drag the Boys.avi clip icon from the project window to the clip window. Press the space bar to play the clip, and note that this clip is silent. Then find roughly the point where the movie image freezes by 'scrubbing' back and forth through the clip using the controller:  The controller consists of a 'jog tread' on top and a 'shuttle slider' underneath - try each one to get a feel for them.  Now use the frame forward and frame back icons or just the arrow keys on the keyboard to locate the exact frame where the image freezes. We will keep all the frames up to this point and discard all the following frames. Place an 'out point' marker in the current location and then move to the first frame and place an 'in point' marker using the 'mark in' and 'mark out' tools: . Your controller should NOT look like the above image, since you have selected the beginning of the clip and not the middle of it. Once the markers have been set, only the selected part of the clip will be added to the timeline in the next step, though the ends of the clip have not actually been deleted and can thus be added back later if necessary.

Drag the clips into track 1 of the timeline

Adjust the time-per-division setting in the bottom left of the timeline window to 1 second, an appropriate value for this project.

Drag the Boys.avi clip icon from the project window into track 1 or 1A and slide it all the way to the left. Normally each video clip would include sound information which would appear in audio track 1 (for video 1A) and audio 2 (for 1B), but the clips we are working with here are silent - they have no audio tracks. To play the trimmed clip either:

You should notice that the second part of the clip, showing the older boy, no longer plays.

Now drag the Cyclers.avi clip icon into track 1A and slide it against the existing clip. Use either of the above techniques to play the movie, and notice that there is a sudden transition between the two clips. Let's learn a new way to trim a clip, one that can be used for a clip that has already been added to the timeline. Make sure the target view of the monitor window is active, or make the timeline window active by clicking its title bar, then use the previous edit/next edit buttons to move to the frame where the Cyclers clip begins. Place an in-point marker here using the in-point marker icon of the target view. Now use the target view controller and the arrow keys on the keyboard to move to the 5:22 position, referring to the green clock under the controller (note that the second time, preceded by the delta or triangle symbol, gives the total length of the movie). Place an out-point marker at the 5:22 position and then click the extract icon . This is a very useful tool for not only does it remove the marked section but it also shifts the following clips to the left so that there is no gap in the movie where the section was removed (the lift icon would have left a gap). By the way, 5:22 should not be read as 5.22 seconds but instead as 5 and 22/30 seconds since the timebase was set to 30 frames per second for this project. The total length of your movie should now be close to 8 seconds.

Add transition effects

Track 1 actually consists of two video tracks, 1A and 1B and their corresponding audio tracks, Audio 1 and Audio 2. In order to add special effects such as 'fades' or 'wipes' to transitions, one clip must be in track 1A and the other in track 1B, and there must be some overlap (a second or two, usually) between the two clips. Make sure that you can see both the 1A track and the 1B track in the timeline window- if you can only see 'track 1' then expand it by clicking the small triangle just to the left of its label. Drag the Fastslow.avi clip from the project window into the Video 1B track and slide it until there is about a two second overlap between the right edge of the Cyclers clip and the left edge of the Fastslow clip (use the time scale as a guide).

Now make sure that the Transitions window is visible - choose Windows>Show Transitions if not. Click any transition and all the transitions should animate (click the right-pointing triangle and turn on 'animate' if not). Scroll through the transitions until you find one you want to use, then drag it into the overlap area between tracks 1A and 1B. The timeline window should now look something like this:

Preview the result

There are various ways to preview all or part of your movie. If you press the spacebar or click the play button under the target view of the monitor window then the movie will play either from the beginning (if the playhead is at the end) or from the position of the playhead (if it is NOT at the end of the movie). In the above picture, the playhead is at the 5 second position and thus the movie will play from there to the end. Pressing the space bar or the play button will NOT cause transition effects to be processed (rendered) and thus they will not appear unless they have been rendered already (by pressing the Enter key, see below).

If you drag the playhead in the timeline window back and forth then you can 'scrub' through the movie. This is called 'scrubbing' because the back and forth movement is similar to that of someone scrubbing the floor. Again, the transition effect will NOT be rendered.

However, if you first hold down the Alt key and then drag the playhead back and forth then you will be able to preview the transition effect.

Another way to play the movie with transition effects is to press the Enter key. In this case the part of the movie marked as the 'work space' will be 'rendered' and then played. The work space is defined by the violet colored bar near the top of the timeline window. To set the work space to cover the entire length of the movie, first make sure that you can see the entire movie in the timeline window, adjusting the time-per-division setting at the bottom left if necessary, then double-click the work space bar to see both ends of it (at either side of the timeline window) then drag the end of the work space  until they coincide with the ends of the movie. When you press the Enter key you will have to wait a few seconds while the preview is rendered and then you will see the whole movie play with transition effects. You will also notice that a thin purple line appears under the work space bar, indicating which section(s) had to be rendered. This thin line will stay until you make changes to that section, then it will disappear, indicating that the section will need to be rendered again next time you press the Enter key. 

When you are working on longer movies, you will often find it useful to set the work space to cover only a short section of the movie so that only the section you are interested in is rendered and played when you press the Enter key.

Output

Export the finished video

Once you have finished editing the video clips together you should save the project one last time and then export the final video. Choose File>Export>Movie and you will be asked for a file name and given the possibility of adjusting settings for the exported file, just as you set the parameters for the previews during editing at the beginning of this lesson. If you make no adjustments to the settings for export, Premiere will use the same settings that you used for the previews.

If you export your movie in a common format such as MPEG, AVI or MOV (Quicktime), then you should now be able to view the movie in any standard player such as the Windows Media player, the Real player or the Quicktime player. If your movie is short you can easily add it to a web page using MS FrontPage, for example.