Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies

Keith Underdahl

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764543449
• eBook ISBN: 9781118085448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Digital Media
• Index: Computer Science

Quiet on set! Time to start your moviemaking adventure -- here's what you need to know about capturing, editing, and publishing your videos

If you're an amateur filmmaker shooting documentaries or a hobbyist putting together a family video, Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies is the book for you. From setting up a production studio and shooting good footage, to editing clips, adding effects, and working with audio, this user-friendly and comprehensive guide written in plain English can help you create your next video masterpiece and share the finished product.

This handy guide starts with the basics, getting you familiar with the Adobe Premiere Pro software and its interface and helping you set up your dream studio. From there, you'll dive into capturing footage for your videos, learn how to manage multiple movie projects, and edit movies to your liking. You'll learn to:

• Capture audio and video from your camcorder or video deck (if your computer has the right hardware)
• Pick and choose scenes to include in a movie, moving frame by frame through video to precisely place edits
• Add and edit (up to 99) audio soundtracks to your program
• Create titles and add still graphics to your movie projects
• Animate titles and graphics
• Apply one of 73 different transitions to video
• Modify your movie with 94 video and 22 audio effects
• Improve and adjust color using an advanced Color Corrector, new to this version of the software
• Use powerful new audio tools to mix audio, whether it's mono, stereo, or 5.1 channel surround
• Work with multiple, nestable timelines
• Preview edits immediately in real time

Once you're finalized your movie project, you can export it, save it to DVD, or publish it online. But that's not all! With this helpful guide, you'll learn pro movie-making tips, third-party software add-ons, and additional tools for your production studio. Pick up your copy and start shooting your film today.

Part I

Introducing Adobe Premiere Pro

In this part . . .

**IN a DROPCAP**

It wasn’t so long ago that moviemaking was “magic” that came from the shining temples of Hollywood. But thanks to the home-video revolution that got started in the mid-1990s, anyone with a reasonably modern personal computer, an affordable digital camcorder, and a video-editing program like Adobe Premiere Pro can now produce a high-tech motion picture.

This part of Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies begins the moviemaking adventure by exploring Adobe Premiere Pro and finding out just what this program can do. It also looks at what’s needed for your personal video-production studio, and walks you through configuring Premiere Pro to make movie magic.

Chapter 1

Getting to Know Premiere Pro

In This Chapter

Getting a look at Adobe Premiere Pro

Taking the Grand Tour

T he field of video-editing software is getting pretty crowded these days. Premiere Pro is now just one of many pro-caliber editing programs in the $500-to-$1000 price range, a field now populated with such offerings as Apple Final Cut Pro (for the Macintosh only), Avid Xpress DV, Pinnacle Edition, and Sonic Vegas. Adobe Premiere now has more than ten years of experience in the realm of PC-based video editing— but to be honest, it has been upstaged by some of its rivals in recent years. Thankfully, the newest version of Premiere Pro answers questions that almost everyone was asking, bringing it once again to the forefront of the video-editing scene.

This chapter introduces you to Adobe Premiere Pro by showing you what this program is designed to do and what it has to offer. You also get a tour of Premiere Pro to help you find your way around this feature-packed program.

What Is Adobe Premiere Pro?

Adobe Premiere Pro is, first and foremost, a video-editing program — although that term is almost too modest, given the versatility of Premiere Pro. Editing movies on affordable PCs has been a dream since multimedia-ready computers became common in the mid-1990s. For years, the reality of affordable video editing lagged well behind the dream. But today, video can be easily edited on computers that cost less than $1,000, and powerful programs like Premiere Pro give you editing tools that were previously available only to video and film professionals, working on systems that cost hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars. With Adobe Premiere Pro, you can skip the glitz and get right to the gist:

Capture audio and video from your camcorder or video deck (if your computer has the right hardware).

Pick and choose scenes to include in a movie. You can move frame by frame through video to precisely place your edits.

Make use of up to 99 separate video tracks that can be composited and combined to make a single image.

Add and edit audio soundtracks to your program. Up to 99 separate audio tracks can be added to the program.

Create titles and add still graphics to your movie projects. Titles and graphics can be animated in a variety of ways.

Apply one of 73 different transitions to video. Transitions can be used in any video track.

Modify your movie with 94 video and 22 audio effects.

Improve and adjust color using an advanced new Color Corrector.

Use powerful new audio tools to mix audio, whether it’s mono, stereo, or 5.1 channel surround.

Work more flexibly than ever with multiple, nestable timelines.

Preview edits immediately in real time, without having to wait for rendering.

Record movies to videotape at full broadcast quality.

Export tightly compressed movies for the World Wide Web in RealMedia, QuickTime, Windows Media, or one of many other available formats.

Output movies directly to DVD.

Even these hefty capabilities are only a smattering of what you can do with Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s one of the most versatile programs you’ll ever use.

Where’s the Mac?

Previous versions of Adobe Premiere (version 6.5 and earlier) were available for both Macintosh and Windows computers. Adobe’s announcement that Premiere Pro (technically version 7 of Premiere) would run only in Windows XP was met with some shock and surprise, especially considering that only a few years ago, Adobe was considered a very Mac-oriented software company. Exactly why Adobe chose not to develop a Mac OS X-compatible version of Premiere Pro is a subject that will probably forever remain a mystery to those of us who aren’t part of the inner circles at Adobe.

If you have a Macintosh, you might be considering running Premiere Pro on your Mac using a program that emulates the Windows operating system. I do not recommend this work-around: As I describe in Chapter 2, Premiere Pro relies hea...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Introducing Adobe Premiere Pro
• Chapter 1: Getting to Know Premiere Pro
• Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Production Studio
• Chapter 3: Getting Premiere Pro Ready to Work
• Part II : Gathering Footage
• Chapter 4: A Crash Course in Video Production
• Chapter 5: Starting and Managing Your Movie Projects
• Chapter 6: Capturing, Importing, and Managing Media
• Part III : Editing in Premiere Pro
• Chapter 7: Editing Clips
• Chapter 8: Working with the Timeline
• Chapter 9: Transitioning Between Clips
• Chapter 10: Improving Your Video Images
• Chapter 11: Compositing and Animating Clips
• Chapter 12: Affecting Effects in Your Movies
• Chapter 13: Working with Audio
• Chapter 14: Giving Credit with Titles
• Part IV : Wrapping Up Your Project
• Chapter 15: Finalizing the Project
• Chapter 16: Sending Your Project to the World Wide Web
• Chapter 17: Exporting Your Movie to Tape
• Chapter 18: Recording DVDs
• Part V : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 19: Ten Movie-Making Tips and Tricks
• Chapter 20: Ten Essential Software Add-Ons for Adobe Premiere
• Chapter 21: Ten Tools (and Toys) for Your Production Studio
• Part VI : Appendix
• Appendix: Glossary