Tutorials for Better Editing in Premiere Pro
If you’re looking to improve your editing in Adobe Premiere Pro then the following tutorials will serve you well. Not least, these 10 very useful shortcuts for Premiere Pro from ReTooled.net, whose tutorials are always worth a watch. Speaking of shortcuts Larry Jordan has a handy page detailing his 25 favourite editing shortcuts. For a round up of some even more obscure shortcuts, hit Strypes in Post’s shortcuts blog post here.
Lately (circa Feb 2014) I’ve been editing in a few different places on Premiere Pro and it’s been doing a few flakey things – crashing, asking for sign in to the Creative Cloud every single time the app opens and a few other quirks. Anyway, every where I go Adobe’s eco-system doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of love. But on my home system everything seems to work just fine. So I don’t know why that is, but anything Adobe can do to stabilise things would improve a lot of people’s perceptions of the product.
That said, one of the best thing’s I’ve learned about Premiere Pro lately is thanks to the good people at Mixing Light and it has truly transformed my day to day experience of the program. Until now my main beef with Premiere was how bad the three way colour corrector performed. Thanks to this trick from Mixing Light colorist Robbie Carman, those days are long gone. If you only look at one thing in this post, make sure it’s this! Colour Correction on the Premiere timeline is now perfect.
Updated Adobe Apps 8.2 – December 2014
In December 2014, Adobe updated it’s video production apps to 8.2. You can check out some of the major features and updates in 8.1 in this previous post which was a much bigger update but 8.2 includes a
“…number of feature enhancements for editors, including support for Arri Open Gate media, the ability to set transitions and still image default durations in either seconds or frames, and improved GoPro CineForm export. In addition, QuickTime and GoPro CineForm codecs can now be used as sequence preview file formats on Windows.”
Click here for a run down of the updates to Premiere Pro, After Effects and Media Encoder in these Adobe blog posts.
In this short webinar excerpt Larry Jordan takes you through some of the new search features in Premiere Pro CC 8.2 and in the tutorial below some of the new Adobe Media Encoder 8.2 features.
Last, but not least, Scott Simmons has a good overview of the 8.1 feature updates which is worth a read if you want a speedy overview.
Premiere Pro CC Editing Tutorials
If you’re entirely new to editing in Premiere, or any NLE for that matter, Terry White from Adobe has a very helpful 40 minute walk through of the 10 things beginners want to know how to do when editing in Premiere Pro. If you’re trying to find your way for the first time, this is a very helpful tutorial. Another post that’s perfect for editors who want to know how to get some simple stuff done in Premiere, is this round up of 15 tutorials over on PremiumBeat.com titled – 15 Premiere Pro Tutorials Every Editor Should Watch.
Continuing the theme of introductory tutorials, Curtis Judd has a handy guide to creating, syncing and editing multicam clips in Premiere Pro (above). For more multi-camera insights these articles from Larry Jordan are worth looking into as well, which feature video tutorials on syncing multicam, applying an effect across an entire multicam sequence, and the tutorial below which demonstrates how to sync in Keynote slides with your multicam sequence. Strypes in Post also has some handy tips on syncing in multicam here too.
Lastly in this fistful of tutorials on multicam work in Premiere, Scott Simmons shares how to create an audio only multicam clip. This post is part of a series of tips that Scott has been blogging lately titled 28 Days of Tips and days 9 through 14 focus on Premiere. Another great tip from the series is making the most of the Find in Timeline search box.
Want to export multi-channel audio files from Premiere Pro? Slightly confused by all the settings. This quick blog post from Adobe blogger Karl Soule will take you through the steps you need to perform to masterfully export up to 32 audio channels and get your head around a major difference between FCP7 and Premiere. This is a good time to point out that it’s always worth exporting a split-track master for archival purposes as the client will undoubtably want to re-edit the project in about a year or so when you’ve forgotten all about it. For a similar step by step guide to exporting multi-channel audio, with plenty of helpful images, check out Strypes in Post two part posts on the subject – Part 1 | Part 2. Even more useful is this post from Strypes on the basic differences between stereo and mono in Premiere.
Another audio related post you should study in detail is Oliver Peter’s summary of how he mixes in Premiere, repairs audio in Audition and generally sweetens everything up nicely. Be sure to click on the images to see much larger screen grabs of his presets and specific settings. If you need to create 5.1 Surround Sound mixes in Premiere, jump over to this Premium Beat post to find out how.
Premiere Pro has two systems in place to accommodate either workflow – it can store in the individual files (or an adjoining sidecar) or it can store metadata as a clip property in the project file itself. Plus, there’s a special way to “link” these two systems together, in cases where you want to auto-populate from project to asset, and visa-versa.
Karl also has a great explanation of the Metadata fields in Premiere and specifically how to ensure your metadata travels in the XMP sidecar, or not. Along the same lines you should check out this post and tutorial from Bart of Creative Impatience on an important new preference to select, to help ensure your metadata markers travel with your media.
Another post that is an essential read is Jon Chappell from Digital Rebellion’s explanation of the different render options that you can enable when exporting from Premiere, and why you might not want to – as some can degrade the image or unnecessarily add to your render times.
Maximum Render Quality
This is a high-quality resize operation that should be used when outputting to a different frame size from your sequence. It can reduce aliasing (jagged edges) when resizing images but is of no use when outputting to the same frame size. This operation significantly increases render times so only use it when resizing.
Making a DVD in Adobe Creative Cloud
If you need to create a DVD using the Creative Cloud suite of applications, you can in fact still download Adobe Encore CS6 as part of your paid for Creative Cloud subscription. But it’s not entirely straight forward. I’ve not tried this personally as I still have Final Cut Studio’s DVD Studio Pro installed and it covers all the bases for me, but this Adobe help page and the following tutorial will talk you through it. The video tutorial seems to suggest you can’t uninstall the CS6 version of Premiere, but the help page indicates that you can. Either way Larry Jordan’s tutorial above demonstrates what you need to do to work with both applications in a CC world. For more tutorials from Larry on getting stuff done in Adobe Encore, check out these tutorials from his excellent Youtube channel.
Free Downloads for Premiere Pro Editors
If you need to achieve an interesting look in a hurry then these free animated mattes from Rampant Design Tools, might come in handy. You can grab the 4K animated style mattes, and a whole lot more (like flares, flashes, grunge effects etc.), for free in return for a sign up to the Rampant Design newsletter. In these two tutorials you can get a quick overview (above) or a more detailed introduction on how to make the most of these mattes (below). Or you could easily create your own bespoke mattes, in After Effects, should you want to.
Working With LUTS in Premiere Pro CC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvjHqNlrCJw
Casey Ferris demonstrates how to work with Look Up Tables (LUTs) in Premiere Pro CC, which is essentially achieved in a couple of clicks, but helpfully Casey offers some extra helpful tips and some links to download some free LUTS from Division TV. As always with LUTs, it is really easy to slap one on, but not always worth it.
