Working with Adjustment Layers

As you'll see in this lesson, Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 provides a range of tools to achieve many different goals, but its primary function is as a "cutter" that joins together pieces of video and sound to make a finished sequence.

This course is designed to give you the core skills you need to edit with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and introduce you to more advanced skills that you'll use to fine-tune your production. This lesson tells you what to expect and how to use the exercise files included with the course.

There are many new and enhanced features in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and this lesson introduces some of the most significant ones. We'll look at changes to the interface, the new JKL trim, the Warp Stabilizer, new audio features, and more.

No matter what kind of project you are working on, it's likely you'll go through the same stages in your edit. This lesson walks you through the standard steps you'll usually take to complete your project.

Before you start clicking the buttons, it's probably a good idea to get some familiarity with the main part of the interface. This lesson introduces the panels in Premiere Pro that you'll work with every day.

Adobe describes Premiere Pro as the hub of post-production, and in this lesson you'll see how all the pieces fit together. We'll look at some of the ways you can incorporate the other components in the Creative Suite into your workflow.

The specific layout of panels in the Premiere Pro interface is called a workspace. This lesson shows you how to adjust workspaces and how to create your own.

There are many different kinds of settings in Premiere Pro, and this lesson highlights some that are worth knowing before you begin to edit.

Some preferences are mostly a question of personal taste. This lesson introduces some options you may want to adjust as you develop your skills as a Premiere Pro editor.

When you first create a project in Premiere Pro, you'll need to specify some simple things related to the display of video and audio time. This lesson introduces the General project settings.

This lesson explains the settings you'll use to tell Premiere Pro where newly created video and audio files should be stored.

Premiere Pro uses sequence settings to decide how video and audio should be played. This lesson shows you how to use an existing preset as a shortcut to avoid going through each setting one by one.

Once you know the exact settings you need for your projects, you can use individual settings to create sequences that exactly match your requirements. This lesson describes the main settings you'll use.

When editing, there are times when you'll need Premiere Pro to create a temporary video file that shows how your video clips look combined with special effects. This process is called rendering, and this lesson shows you the sequence settings you can use to change the way Premiere Pro renders video.

Premiere Pro uses multiple track types for audio, and you'll need to use the right track type for the audio you have. This lesson explains how to create a preset with the right kinds of tracks (you can always add or remove tracks later).

If you are importing regular video, audio, and graphic or photo files, the process is very straightforward. This lesson explains the options.

Some cameras create media files that are fragmented into several different folders. The question is, which bit do you import? Fortunately, Premiere Pro has a special tool that fixes this problem, as this lesson explains.

If your original media is on a videotape, you can use Premiere Pro to record directly to your hard drive, creating media files that you can use in your project. This lesson shows you how to capture from tape.

If you have many video clips you would like to record from tape, you can ask Premiere Pro to capture them as a batch. This lesson shows you how.

Premiere Pro has excellent support for the media formats used by Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer. In fact, you can share edited sequences from those systems with Premiere Pro, and this lesson shows you how.

When you import or capture files to a project in Premiere Pro, no media is actually added to the project. The clips you'll work with are really shortcuts to your media files, as you'll see in this lesson.

The Project panel is an important part of the Premiere Pro interface, where you'll keep all of the available video, graphic, and audio clips that you might want to add to your sequences. This lesson introduces the settings and controls.

Sometimes you'll find you have so many clips in the Project panel that it's hard to find the one item you're looking for. This lesson shows you some quick search tools built right into the Project panel.

Premiere Pro has an advanced speech to text feature that converts the sound of speech into typed words. This lesson shows you how to connect your clips to a text file to improve the results.

This lesson walks you through the options Premiere Pro offers for analyzing your audio and creating text based on the spoken words.

Premiere Pro uses information attached to your media files to know how to interpret them. Things like the number of frames per second and the shape of the pixels are all stored in this information, but... sometimes it's wrong! This lesson shows you how to correct the problem.

Premiere Pro CS6 has advanced audio controls, many of which you won't need if you are working on a relatively simple edit. But if you're configuring advanced channel mapping for your audio - where you decide exactly which part of your source audio goes to which output - this is the lesson for you.

The Source and Program monitors are where you view the media you're working with. They have almost exactly the same controls, and this lesson walks you through them.

You won't usually want to use the whole of a clip from start to finish. This lesson shows you how to select just a part of your clip before you include it in your sequence.

Depending on how powerful your computer is, you may find that some kinds of media won't play back properly. This lesson shows you how to adjust the playback quality to compensate.

Subclips are shorter clips based on longer originals; they can help you stay organized when your media has long sections. This lesson shows you how to create and use subclips.

The Timeline panel is an important part of the Premiere Pro interface - this is where you go to build sequences. This lesson introduces the Timeline panel and its main controls.

The main work of editing is adding clips to a sequence. This lesson shows you the key steps you'll be taking time and time again while editing with Premiere Pro.

When adding a clip to your sequence, you'll be using in and out marks to tell Premiere Pro which part you want and where you want it to go in your sequence. This lesson shows you both simple and more advanced ways to do this.

If you're in a hurry and want to get a bunch of clips into a sequence quickly, you can use the fast and easy technique demonstrated in this lesson to add multiple items in a single step.

If you're editing with the mouse, you can drag and drop clips anywhere you like. If you're using the keyboard - which is usually a little quicker - you'll want to tell Premiere Pro which track to use when you make an edit. This lesson shows you how.

Each Timeline track has a set of controls that change the way it behaves. This lesson looks at what each of the controls does and when you might want to use them.

Sometimes you will want to work with just part of a clip on the Timeline. This lesson shows you how to make partial selections.

Once you have some clips in your sequence, you may decide you want to move them around a little. This lesson shows you how to do just that and highlights a few gotchas you may encounter along the way.

There are often several ways of achieving the same results in Premiere Pro, and using standard cut/copy/paste commands is one way you can edit your sequences as if clips were text in a word processor. This lesson shows you how.

There are two ways you can work on the Timeline in Premiere Pro: film style or videotape style. This lesson shows you how to remove clips from your sequence using both ways, so now you can add, move, and remove items on the Timeline.

There are essentially two ways of interacting with the Timeline in Premiere Pro CS6: You can have things move around each other or you can overwrite things. This lesson describes the two modes and how they affect what happens when you remove clips.

Markers are small marks in time that can store information, including comments. They can have a duration and be used by other applications to create things like chapter points or cue points. Premiere Pro CS6 has a newly enhanced marker system, and this lesson tells you all about it.

This lesson shows you how to add transitions and explains some of the key options.

The work area is a special control on the Timeline panel that tells Premiere Pro which parts of your sequence you want to export or render. This lesson shows you how to use it and introduces a new alternative that was added in Premiere Pro CS6.

Most special effects have a similar array of settings, and this lesson walks you through them and what they do.

Audio can have transitions too! This lesson shows you how to work with audio crossfades.

Slow motion is one of the most commonly used special effects; it helps the viewer to get a deeper sense of what is happening, focusing attention and giving even simple events a greater significance. This lesson shows you how to play back clips in slow motion, or at any speed for that matter, in Premiere Pro.

In addition to adjusting the playback speed for a whole clip, Premiere Pro allows you to adjust speed over time. This lesson introduces a special form of keyframe control that enables you to achieve this.

It's common to need to replace a clip on the Timeline with another take or with alternative action. Premiere Pro makes this super-easy, thanks to the Replace Clip command.

Although it's rare, you'll sometimes need to keep a clip in the bin but change the media file it links to. This lesson shows you how.

Most of the time you will be editing clips into sequences, but the sequences themselves can also be edited into sequences. This mind-bending fact allows for some of the most powerful editing and special effects workflows in Premiere Pro and is known as nesting, as you'll see in this lesson.

This lesson introduces some shortcuts that you can use to create nested sequences. Once you understand these, you can use them to speed up your editing.

The Source monitor is usually used to browse clips in your Project panel, but with it you can also open up a clip already in a sequence and adjust the in and out marks, as this lesson demonstrates.

Trimming is one of the most powerful features nonlinear editing systems offer, and in this lesson you'll see how to use it to adjust the content of your clips on the Timeline.

In addition to trimming directly on the Timeline with the Selection tool, you can also use a few specialized tools to perform specific trimming functions. This lesson introduces you to them.

Most experienced editors agree that using the keyboard is faster than using the mouse. This lesson introduces some valuable trimming keyboard shortcuts to speed up your cutting.

J and L cuts involve the audio from one clip being played while you see the video from another. This classic technique, which you'll learn in this lesson, is used on countless films and television shows.

One of the most asked-for features in Premiere Pro CS6 is JKL Dynamic Trimming. This powerful feature dramatically speeds up trimming on the Timeline, as you'll see in this lesson.

The Timeline tools provide numerous shortcuts to achieve common tasks. This lesson introduces you to all the options not covered in the rest of this chapter.

This lesson introduces the Trim monitor, a dedicated tool for the most advanced trimming techniques.

The fixed effects change the way visual clips appear, offering scale, rotation, and position controls. They also include standard controls for your audio clips. This lesson introduces you to this important part of the Premiere Pro interface and provides an overview of working with effects.

Once you understand the controls to change the fixed effect settings, you're ready to begin animating. This lesson introduces the core keyframing controls you will use time and time again for many different effects in Premiere Pro.

Once you have a special effect set up just the way you want it, there's a good chance you will want to use it again. This lesson shows you how easy it is to create your own effect presets and apply them to multiple clips in your sequences.

Before you begin your multicam edit, you need to prepare your sequence. This lesson shows you how to get ready for multicam edits.

Once your sequence is set up and ready to go, you can quickly perform multicamera cuts. This lesson will show you how to produce fast edits from multiple angles.

Having created your multicam edit, it's possible you will want to make some adjustments to the timing and content of your cuts. This lesson shows you how easy this is.

Just as there is a standard Editing workspace, Premiere Pro also has a standard Audio workspace, where the tools you'll need to clean up and adjust your audio are brought to the fore. This lesson shows you how to find it and introduces the key tools.

Premiere Pro CS6 has a dramatically improved set of options for dealing with multitrack audio. This lesson gives an overview of the different track types and offers advice on choosing the best options for your project.

In addition to making manual adjustments to the audio level, Premiere Pro can automatically adjust the maximum volume of your clips using a special feature called Normalize. This lesson shows you how to quickly establish a standard level for multiple clips in your project.

With Premiere Pro, it's easy to have your audio raise and lower over time, just as you need it to. This lesson shows you how.

The Audio Mixer is a powerful tool based on real-world audio mixers that lets you work with audio on a track-by-track basis. This lesson shows you all of the controls.

The Audio Mixer allows you to adjust volume levels for your tracks while your sequence plays, recording your adjustments as a series of keyframes. This powerful feature can make adjusting your audio mix super-fast, as this lesson demonstrates.

EQ effects are used to make changes to the volume of specific frequencies in your audio, and the Parametric EQ effect achieves this particularly efficiently. This lesson introduces the audio effect you'll want to go to first every time.

In addition to adding effects to individual clips, you can use the Audio Mixer to add them to tracks. This lesson shows you how.

The Effect Controls panel is specifically for working with clip settings, and that includes audio levels. This lesson shows you the various ways of making audio adjustments on a clip-by-clip basis.

This lesson introduces the different types of video effects available in Premiere Pro.

To be able to self-train, you mainly just need to know how to add an effect, change its settings, and remove it again. This lesson gives you the key skills you need to work with effects in Premiere Pro.

You can animate the settings for most of your effects over time using keyframes in the Effect Controls panel. This lesson shows you how to manage keyframes to produce advanced results.

Previously only available in Adobe After Effects, the Warp Stabilizer and Rolling Shutter Correction effects are now right inside Premiere Pro. This lesson introduces these powerful filters and walks you through using them.

Sometimes you'll want to produce video that has the timecode visible right in the picture. This is a very common way to provide copies of a project for review before it's finished. This lesson shows you both the old and the new technique for creating "burned-in" timecode.

The fixed effects give you powerful controls to adjust the appearance of your video but they don't include 3D. This lesson shows you the special effect that adds depth to your media.

There are several kinds of blur available in Premiere Pro. This lesson introduces the ones you'll use regularly.

Just as there are Editing and Audio workspaces, there is also one dedicated to color correction. This lesson introduces some tools you'll use time and time again when adjusting the look of your clips.

Vectorscopes and waveforms are your two best friends when making adjustments to the color and brightness of your pixels. This lesson describes how to use them as a guide when working on your clips.

The clue is in the name! The Fast Color Corrector special effect makes it quick and easy to adjust the look of your clips. This lesson walks you through the controls.

The Three Way Color Corrector effect has been updated for Premiere Pro CS6. It provides advanced color correction controls and several ways to automate fixing your shots.

Secondary Color Correction allows you to make adjustments to just part of your picture, not the whole thing. This helps you make fine-tuned adjustments to the look of your project.

There are several standard ways of working with visual media, and Curve controls are one of the most flexible and easy to use. This lesson introduces a favorite tool for adjusting color and light.

Blend modes, originally found in Adobe Photoshop, are now also available in Premiere Pro. They allow foreground and background video clips to interact in several different ways, as you'll see in this lesson..

This lesson looks at the Ultra Key effect, which allows you to pick any color in a clip and make it turn transparent. This process, known as keying, is sometimes complex, but Ultra Key makes it quick and easy.

While Ultra Key uses the color of your clips to make areas transparent, the Lumakey effect uses brightness. This lesson explains the difference.

Garbage mattes allow you to make any region in your picture transparent. You will commonly use them in combination with other effects like the Lumakey and Ultra Key. This lesson shows you how to apply and animate garbage mattes.

The Track Matte key effect uses the alpha channel or brightness information from one clip to define areas of another clip as transparent or visible, allowing some particularly powerful special effects workflows. This lesson introduces one of the most flexible special effects Premiere Pro offers.

The Premiere Pro Title tool is a flexible, object-based panel that allows you to produce quite complex 2D titles. This lesson shows you each of the main areas of the panel.

The Premiere Pro Title tool offers advanced text editing controls. This lesson shows you how to make adjustments to the appearance of your text-based titles and raises some of the issues you'll want to consider when creating new titles.

You can add a lot of shape and color to your titles in Premiere Pro. This lesson shows you the shape tools and describes ways of combining them with your text.

Premiere Pro comes with many professional title templates preinstalled. This lesson shows you how to access them and how to customize them to make your own.

Once you have your media in your project, it's well worth spending a few moments to get organized. This lesson offers some tips on organizing your projects in a way that will be sustainable throughout the process.

The Project Manager is a special tool for archiving or sharing your project. This lesson shows you all the options and gives some advice on making the right choices for your own projects.

Before you play your sequence out to a tape, you'll want to double-check to make sure it is ready and won't lose any frames while it plays. This lesson shows you how to make sure you are totally prepared for your master tape.

Playing out from Premiere Pro to a tape deck is simple. This lesson shows you the options.

It is becoming increasingly common to produce a file from your sequence rather than play out to a tape. This lesson shows you the options for exporting to a file and offers some advice about which format you should choose.

Premiere Pro integrates perfectly with the Adobe Media Encoder. This lesson shows you how to use AME to produce multiple versions of your finished sequence while you carry on working in Premiere Pro.

If you are collaborating with an FCP or Avid editor, you can send your sequence back using XML or AAF files. This lesson shows you the settings you'll use.

In addition to exporting video clips or audio, Premiere Pro can easily produce single still images or complete image sequences, as this lesson demonstrates.

File-based distribution of media is on its way to becoming the standard, but DVDs and Blu-ray disks are still in high demand. This lesson shows you how to quickly produce a Blu-ray disc from your sequence in Premiere Pro, using Adobe Encore.

In this lesson we'll begin by creating a project, making a sequence, and importing some media. This takes you up to the point where you are ready to begin editing.

Now it's time to pick out the shots you'd like to use and start adding them to your sequence. This lesson shows you some quick ways of selecting your content.

Now that your sequence is edited, in this lesson you'll add a title, fade your clips up and down, and mix in some music.

There is a super-efficient workflow for sending your sequence from Premiere Pro to Adobe Encore, and this lesson shows you a couple of shortcuts.

Once Encore has your sequence from Premiere Pro, you can begin to create an interactive DVD. This lesson shows you how to build a menu from scratch, adding buttons and a title and using Adobe Photoshop to adjust the final look.

This course has given you the core skills you need to begin using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 to create advanced projects with multiple media formats, mixed audio, special effects, graphics, and titles. This lesson offers a valuable tip for improving the speed at which you learn Premiere Pro.