Specifications
30
A Digital Video Primer
Still more ways to enhance your productions
Adobe Premiere Pro lets users create motion, picture-in-picture, and keying eects. You can cre-
ate smooth keyframed animations of ying video, controlling such parameters as rotation, scale,
and distortion. Chroma, luminance, and alpha keying are also supported in Adobe Premiere
Pro. You can also use Photoshop images as mattes, then superimpose clips with transparency to
create composited sequences. But for even more advanced control over compositing and anima-
tion (and to learn a little bit about the techniques mentioned in this paragraph) you’ll want to
look ahead to the section of this primer that describes some of the sophisticated features found
in Aer Eects.
Marking time
Markers can be used to indicate important points in time, help you position and arrange clips,
and perform a number of other functions. Working with markers is much the same as working
with In and Out points, but markers are only for reference and do not alter the video program.
In Adobe Premiere Pro, each sequence and each clip can contain up to 100 numbered markers,
labeled from 0 to 99, and any number of unnumbered markers.
In general, you add markers to clips to identify important points within individual clips; you add markers
to sequences in the Timeline panel to identify signicant time points that aect multiple clips, such as
when you need to synchronize video and audio on dierent clips. Timeline markers can include:
• A comment, which will appear in the Program Monitor
• A chapter link, which can initiate a jump to a specied point in a QuickTime movie or on a DVD
• A web link, which will initiate a jump to a web page in the browser when the video is playing
on a computer connected to the Internet or an intranet
Don’t forget titles, graphics, and credits
Text and graphics can play an integral role in conveying information in a video program. And,
when you’re proud of all that you’ve accomplished, you’ll want to include credits that acknowl-
edge your hard work and that of everyone else who helped create your production. Titles may
include lines, shapes, images, animations, video, and text. You can create titles using still graph-
ics soware applications, like Illustrator and Photoshop; using motion graphics soware, like
Aer Eects; or simply by using the Titler in Adobe Premiere Pro.
e Titler gives you the ability to design complex titles using customizable templates and styles
created by professional designers, or develop your own custom styles that you can save and use in
other title documents. Use familiar spline-based drawing tools to create and freely manipulate
shapes. Import still backgrounds to appear behind your titles or view a frame of video footage in
the drawing area as you create a title to ensure that your titles will look their best as video plays
behind them. Add logos or other custom graphics with ease and use the Align and Distribute
features, similar to those found in Illustrator, to facilitate the design process. Incorporate any
vector type font in your system, including Type 1 (PostScript), OpenType®, and TrueType fonts.
e Titler gives you the artistic control you’d expect from an Adobe product, letting you easily
adjust such properties as font size, aspect, leading, kerning, tracking, baseline shi, slant, and
small cap size. You can also apply strokes, lls, gradients, sheens, textures, shadows, and glows to
both objects and type to create exactly the look you want.
TRIMMING CLIPS AND PROJECTS
Editing a video project means choosing and arrang-
ing audio and video segments from the elements you
have shot or gathered. In the rst stage of the process,
capturing, you record the elements you think you
might want to use to your hard disk. Typically, you
capture more material than you will actually use.
When you insert clips into your video project, the
clips do not become part of the project le; rather,
the project le contains references to the source
clips stored on your hard disk. Clips become part of
a nished project only when you export your project
to a delivery medium, such as videotape or a le to
be posted on the web. Unless you are absolutely sure
you will not be using some of the source clips you
captured, it’s best not to delete any of them from your
hard disk until your project is completed.
Trimming clips
You dene the beginning of the clip’s appearance by
marking an In point (the rst frame that will appear in
your program). You dene the end by marking an Out
point (the last frame that will appear). During capture,
you select rough In and Out points that contain
extra footage before and after the parts you want to
use. These extra frames are called handles. You can
remove the handles later during editing or use them
to provide overlapping footage for transitions.
It is common to ne-tune the beginning and end
of a clip just before moving a clip into a project. For
numerical precision, you can set In and Out points
in the Monitor window in Adobe Premiere Pro. For
visual precision, or if you prefer to use the mouse,
you can edit directly in the timeline. Even if you use
only a small portion of a captured clip in your project,
the entire clip remains available on your hard disk,
enabling you to make adjustments at any point in the
editing process. “Trimming clips” usually refers to this
process of selecting In and Out points for individual clips.
In Adobe Premiere Pro, you can use the Trimming
window to trim two clips at once, setting the In point
of the second clip simultaneously while setting the
Out point of the rst.
Trimming a project
The term trimming is also used to refer to the practice
of removing frames from clips when you have com-
pleted your project and you want to tidy up your les.
This function in Adobe Premiere Pro is nondestruc-
tive, meaning that the original footage remains intact.
When you use the Project Manager to trim a project,
Adobe Premiere Pro creates a new version of a proj-
ect, called a trimmed project, that contains only those
portions of clips actually used (including specied
handles). You can then delete or archive the original
clips to save disc space. The Project Manager can also
help you consolidate or collect a project in one loca-
tion for sharing or archiving.
MAKE AN AUTOMATIC MUSIC VIDEO!
Organize a sequence of clips in the Project or Story-
board window. Then drop a series of unnumbered
markers onto the timeline, highlighting rhythmic
features as you listen to your audio track. When you
perform Automate to Sequence, your clips will be
choreographed to the music, cutting in and out on
the beats you marked.