Module 1: Editing Foundations

The Premiere Pro Workspace

Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most widely used video editing applications, found everywhere from small content studios to television and film. When you first open it, the number of panels can feel overwhelming. The good news is that everyday editing happens in just a few of them. Once you know what each panel is for and how to arrange them, you can focus on telling stories rather than hunting for buttons.

Getting started

Premiere Pro is available through an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and Adobe usually offers a free trial. Prices and plans change, so check Adobe's official website for current options. Install it through the Creative Cloud desktop app and keep it up to date. This course is written for recent versions; menu names occasionally change between releases, so if something is not exactly where described, use Help, or the search field in the top right of the application, to find it.

When you create a new project, you choose a project name and a location. Choose a dedicated folder for each project, on a drive with plenty of free space. You will learn a full folder structure in Module 4.

The four core panels

Other important panels include the Tools panel (selection, razor, type and others), Effects (a searchable list of transitions and effects), Effect Controls (settings for the selected clip), Lumetri Color for colour, Essential Sound for audio, and a panel for text and graphics properties.

Workspaces

Along the top of the window, or under Window, Workspaces, you can switch between preset arrangements such as Editing, Assembly, Color, Audio, Effects and Captions and Graphics. Each shows the panels most useful for that task. You can drag panels to rearrange them, and save your own layout with Window, Workspaces, Save as New Workspace. If you ever lose a panel or mess up the layout, choose Reset to Saved Layout.

Press the ` (grave accent) key while hovering over any panel to maximise it to full screen; press it again to return. This is handy on small laptop screens.

Playback controls you will use constantly

• Spacebar: play and stop.
• J, K, L: play backward, stop, play forward. Press J or L repeatedly to speed up; hold K and tap J or L to move one frame at a time.
• Left and right arrow keys: move one frame.
• Up and down arrow keys: jump to the previous or next edit point on the timeline.
• = and -: zoom in and out of the timeline; \ (backslash) fits the whole sequence in view.

Keyboard shortcuts are the single biggest speed boost in editing. You can view and customise them under Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts (Premiere Pro, Keyboard Shortcuts on macOS).

A worked example

Achieng, a social media assistant at a Nairobi restaurant, needs to edit a short clip of the chef preparing a dish. She creates a project called Chef_Special_Oct in a folder on her external drive, switches to the Editing workspace, and imports her phone clips. She double-clicks a clip to open it in the Source Monitor and plays it with L, pressing L twice to scan faster. When she finds the moment the chef plates the food, she taps K to stop, then uses the arrow keys to find the exact frame. She maximises the Program Monitor with the grave accent key to check the shot full screen. Within minutes she is comfortable moving around the interface.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Saving projects to the desktop or a random folder, making media hard to find later.
• Dragging panels until the layout is unusable. Use Reset to Saved Layout.
• Using only the mouse. Learn J, K, L and the arrow keys from day one.
• Confusing the Source and Program Monitors. Source shows a single clip; Program shows your edit.
• Following tutorials for very old versions, where panels and export screens differ.