Adobe » Adobe Premiere

Adobe Premiere has become a very popular non-linear editing system among smaller production companies and vast numbers of 'prosumer' video editors. People produce everything from home movies to broadcast television using this flexible software but even fairly experienced users can be oblivious to some of its finer points.

There are a number of different options for hardware when using Adobe Premiere but aside from the range of effects they can apply without rendering, they tend to work the same way - they always work within the design of Premiere.

The purpose of this one day course, is to give participants an overview of how to use this flexible software. By the end of the day, you should feel confident to get on with making your own movies and in a good position to learn about some of the more advanced features with self-study.

Topics covered in this course include:

1. Premiere System overview

The greatest obstacle to learning is usually familiarity. In this stage, we look at the various parts of the interface and make sure we are familiar with the purpose of the different tools available to us.

We also discuss the way in which all non-linear editing systems work with the huge files required to make moving videos, where those files go and what happens to them when you edit with Adobe Premiere.

2. Recording video onto the system

Non-linear editing systems like Adobe Premiere work like regular video recorders when they are accepting video and sound from a tape. Things are little bit different dealing with a music CD, or perhaps graphics and photos someone has prepared for you.

3. Organising your material

This is a short but vital part of the course. When you first start out editing on a system like Adobe Premiere, it is temping to forget the fundamental facts about what you are doing - You are taking various different parts of video, sound, pictures, music, voice over and titles and combining them together with special effects, transitions and (hopefully) flair. You can easily end up with hundreds of different items floating around inside your Premiere editing system and this section has some hints and tips on best practice.

This is also the time to look over your material and make sure you are familiar with it. As you watch your various shots, you'll begin to get an idea of how your movie can shape up (or not).

4. First Edits

Once you have an idea of how you want your program to look, it's time to start putting it all together. People have different ideas about how best to go about this - some people like to finely finish small sections of a program and join it all together, for example, but most people prefer to depend on the flexibility of their non-linear edit system and start out with what's called a 'Rough Cut'. These are the first edits of your program with only a vague indication of how you would like the program to look. There are no effects, hardly any transitions and probably no titles. Nonetheless, it will start to look like your movie.

5. Tidying up the edit

Now that you have a rough idea of what you want your film to look like, you need to find out about trimming, one of the most powerful (and yet simple) features non-linear video editing systems have to offer. We will tidy up the edit and end up with something pretty close to what we want.

6. Effects

Now that some of the most important creative choices have been made, we should have a clear idea about the special effects we would like to apply. It is pretty likely we will want to change around the colours a little - two shots recorded at different times may not look like they came from the same place. We may want to add something like soft focus, slow motion or picture in picture.

7. Titles

Now that our film is almost ready, it's time to work on the Titles. Adobe Premiere has a powerful title tool that will allow us a lot of flexibility in choosing our colours, size, font and more.

8. Audio

Audio is usually one of the aspects of a movie that is left until last, even though it is one of the most important. In a way, this is not to belittle it, rather that it is so easy to mess it up while you are working on other things, it's best to leave it until last. Conversely, you are unlikely to ruin your pictures by 'sweetening' your audio, so it's safe to leave until everything else is finished.

As well as adding music and adding special effects sounds (or even 'Foley'), you have a great deal of control in Adobe Premiere to adjust the level of sound for an individual clip over time.

9. Getting it out again

Now that your film is finished, it's time to put it back onto a master tape or convert it to another digital format such as MPEG1, Quicktime or MPEG2 for a DVD. Although DVD Authoring is covered in another course, the issues of producing 'compressed' video are touched on briefly.

To find out more about this course, contact us at:

123 Training
8 Hall Bank
Buxton
Derbyshire
SK17 6EW

or phone: 0845 226 0182