Insert or overlay clips from the Project window

Turn on Project window thumbnails. By default, the Project window thumbnails are turned off. However, turning them on gives you a quick look at your footage and helps you view an In point. After you have captured your clips, and they are all listed in the Project window, click the Project window menu and scroll to Thumbnails. Make sure that there is a checkmark next to Large. If not, choose Large to maximize the size of the footage thumbnail. Then, click the menu and choose Thumbnails again. If there is a check next to Off, choose it to deactiviate it. If you want to preview your video, click the play button next to the preview thumbnail or drag the slider below the thumbnail.



Set an In point.

You can now perform a basic trim in the Project window. First, click the Project window menu and choose Edit Columns. In the Edit Columns dialog box, make sure that Video In Point is selected. In the Project window, select your target clip. Locate the Preview thumbnail in the upper left corner of the Project window and make sure that the slider beneath the thumbnail is all the way to the left. Then, click the Poster Frame button. Drag the scroll bar at the bottom of the Project window until you see the Video In Point column appear. Then, when you release the underlined Video In Point value, the footage thumbnail updates to a new In point for your footage.

Note that the poster frame you set is considered the beginning of the footage. For example, if you set the poster point to be 10 seconds into the footage, then when you drag the Video In Point value, the displayed time for that value is measured from the location of the poster frame, not the actual beginning of the footage. Set the poster frame as the first frame of the footage in order for the In point value to be accurate in relation to the actual beginning of the footage.


Insert or overlay the clip in the Timeline window.

To insert the clip and subsequently ripple all the clips in the sequence, hold down Ctrl and drag the clip to the sequence.

To overlay the clip, drag it over a section in the sequence. While still holding the mouse button, note the Program view of the Monitor window. In it, you see two images. These images show the range of frames in the sequence that you will replace when you release the mouse button and overlay the clip. When you are satisfied with the placement, release the mouse button.

In the Program view, you see the two frames between which you will be inserting the dragged clip. Drag the clip until you find the exact point where you want to place it, and release the mouse button. Repeat either method for each clip you want to overlay or insert.

Correct color in video

Adobe® Premiere® Pro includes effects that allow you to adjust color in video, such as the Color Corrector effect. By using this effect, you can correct problems such as smeared colors, color casts from mixed lighting, or loss of detail in highlights and shadows. Each adjustment you make is accurately displayed in the industry standard waveform monitor and vectorscope.


Optimize your workspace.

Optimize Adobe Premiere Pro to work with color-correction tools by choosing Window > Workspace > Color Correction. This command docks the Effects and Effect Controls windows in the Project window and opens a Reference Monitor window next to the Program view.

Open an existing project that contains clips that need color correction.

Sync the Reference Monitor and Program view.

The Reference Monitor window allows you to view the waveform monitor or vectorscope and clips simultaneously. Choose Gang To Program Monitor from the Reference Monitor menu so that both windows show the same frame in the timeline. Then, choose Waveform from the same menu.

To navigate between frames, use the playback controls in the Reference Monitor window to keep this window in front of the Monitor window.
Apply the Color Corrector effect to a clip.

Click the Effects tab in the Project window and type color corrector in the Contains text box. When the Color Corrector effect appears, drag the effect icon to the clip in the Timeline window.

Move the current-time indicator to a frame in the clip and then select the clip in the Timeline window. Click the Effect Controls tab in the Project window to show all effects associated with the selected clip and then expand the Color Corrector effect to view the controls.

Create a looping soundtrack

Do you have some video footage with an audio track that you want to quickly overlay with some original music? If you want the music to sound contemporary but can’t use copyrighted material (or hire your own musicians), you can create an original soundtrack for your video by using the loops and tools provided with Adobe® Audition™. Then you can import your soundtrack into Adobe Premiere® Pro.

Import video into Adobe Audition. Launch Adobe Audition and choose View > Multitrack View. (If this is the first time you are launching Adobe Audition, Multitrack mode opens first, with initial loop files. If this happens, choose File > New Session and do not save the initial session.) In Multitrack mode, you can mix up to 128 different audio tracks, including tracks from video files you have. Select Track 1 by clicking in any empty space on that track, and choose Insert > Video From File. Choose the video file you want to augment with music and click Open. Adobe Audition places the video on Track 1 and places the audio on Track 2. You also see a window that displays your video so that you can watch the video as you edit the audio. You can include footage from only one video per session, but you can mix the audio from several videos in a session, up to the 128-track limit. To mix the audio from several videos, select an empty track and choose Insert > Audio from Video File. Import an audio file to loop. Looping a sampled audio file is the quickest way to create a seamless music soundtrack, and Adobe Audition makes it easy to combine several files of this type. A short audio file works best for loops. To import a file for looping, right-c lick the next empty track below the video track and choose Insert > Wave From File. Adobe Audition imports the file at the location of the cursor on the track. Right-click and drag the imported file to the location where you want it to begi n playing, in relation to the audio track in your imported video file. To import one of the installed Adobe Audition files, navigate to the program directory and choose a .CEL file from the Audition Theme folder. A .CEL file is an .MP3 file with modifications to it that make it suitable for looping. Adobe Audition includes several such royalty-free .CEL files. In addition, there are roughly 2,000 other loop-ready files on the supplemental CD included with the product. Prepare the file for looping. Select the imported file and choose View > Loop Properties. In the Wave Block Looping dialog box, make sure that Enable Looping is selected. (If you imported a .CEL file, it is already enabled for looping.) Set the time ruler to display in bars and beats by choosing View > Display Time Format > Bars And Beats. Aligning your looped audio files is easier when you choose Bars And Beats as your time format. This allows you to time your music according to the number of beats the passages have. See Adobe Audition Help for information on using the Bars And Beats time format.