Adobe Premiere 6.x -- Quick Tour

    Derived from How to Use Adobe Premiere 6.5. Used with permission.

This Quick Tour of Adobe Premiere 6.5 is designed to help you get started with Premiere by taking you through the basic steps involved in using Premiere to create a video production: setting up your workspace, importing audio and video clips into a Project window, organizing the clips into bins, assembling them into a project in the Timeline window, and previewing the resulting program in the Monitor window.

• Initial Workspace Layout
• Project Settings  
• Premiere Workspace
• Import a Clip
• Project Window
• Clip Window
• Timeline Window
• Monitor Window
• Palette Windows

This tour will also introduce you to the Premiere user interface and organizational elements, including menus, windows, buttons, and other controls. Premiere provides lots of options for how you work, so go ahead and experiment to find the way that works best for you.

Select the Initial Workspace Layout

The first time you start Premiere, it displays the Initial Workspace dialog. For now, you can just click Select A/B Editing to configure your default Workspace layout of windows and tools for using Premiere. (A/B Editing simply means editing your clips into pairs - A and B - possibly with a transition from one to the next.) If you have already run Premiere, then you have already seen this dialog and can skip to the next step.

Specify the Project Settings

Each time you start a new project in Premiere, it displays the Load Project Settings dialog. Use this dialog to specify your Project settings to match the type of material that you will be working with. For the moment, select a basic file format: Multimedia QuickTime (for Macintosh users) or Multimedia Video for Windows (for Windows users). Then click the OK button to set up your Project.

Organize the Premiere Workspace

Premiere opens a new empty project with the default workspace window layout. After you have worked in Premiere for a while and have moved around the different windows, the screen layout can become cluttered and disorganized. To restore the workspace layout to the default arrangement, pull down the Window menu and choose Workspace, A/B Editing.

Import a Clip

The Project window at the top left of the Premiere work area is where you load, organize, and access the clips that you are going to use in your project. The clips are organized into bins or folders, from which you can access and drag them to be edited.

The Premiere product CD-ROM contains sample clips in the Sample Folder, which is also installed with Premiere on your hard disk. To import a clip file into the bin area, select File / Import, File. In the Import dialog, navigate to the Sample Folder, typically installed under "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Premiere 6.0\Sample Folder" (Windows) or "Macintosh HD: Applications: Adobe Premiere ® 6.0: Sample Folder:" (Macintosh). Then click to select the file Cyclers.avi (Windows) or Cyclers.mov (Macintosh) and click Open.

        Sample Folder (Windows & Macintosh)
        
        

The Project Window - Preview a Clip

Premiere adds the Cyclers clip to the bin folder in the Project  window. You can add additional clips to your project in the same way. For a quick preview of the contents of a clip, simply click the clip to select it, and a thumbnail viewer appears in the top-left corner of the Project window. Click the Play button to preview the clip in the thumbnail window.

The Clip Window - View a Clip

To view a clip, double-click the clip in the project bin, or select it, use Clip / Open Clip. Premiere opens the clip in a separate Clip window. Use the playback control buttons at the bottom of the Clip window to play through the clip. You can open multiple clips, and switch between them by clicking them or by selecting them from the Window menu.

The Timeline Window - Assemble a Program

After you have organized your clips in bins in the Project window, you can begin assembling your production by arranging the clips into a sequence in the Timeline window along the bottom right of the Premiere work area. You can then enhance your presentation by adding other components such as transitions, effects, titles, overlays, and background audio.

To add the Cyclers clip to the Timeline, drag it from the bin area in the Project window to the Video 1A track in the Timeline window.

The Monitor Window - Preview Your Program

As you assemble and edit the program that you are editing on the Timeline, use the Monitor window to the right of the Project window to preview the results. Click the VCR playback controls along the bottom of the Monitor window to play through the Timeline.

The Palette Windows

The three smaller windows down the right side of the Premiere window are tool palettes, which provide convenient access to additional tools and effects to apply to your program. Although the Project, Timeline, and Monitor windows are contained in the main Premiere window, the palette windows actually float above the Premiere window.