Editing made fairly easy! (Adobe Premier 5.1)

Member Name: oddgal

Product:	Adobe Premier 5.1
Date:	26/03/01 (694 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very easy to use

Disadvantages: uhh...apart from the crashey thing, not much really!

Premier is a digital editing system. You can import any sort of video files and mess around with them any way you like (well...within reason!)

"Am I technical enough for this editing malarky?" You are asking yourself..."Can you click and drag a mouse?" I ask you.

Premier really is that easy to use. Ok, there are more "technical" things you can do, but if you simply want to add music to a home movie and trim off the bits where someone left the camera running a bit too long, then this will be perfect for you to use.

Premier is non-linear which basically means you can put any clips anywhere. Depending on what you are editing, you will have some sort of idea as to what order your movie will run. But, if you happen to miss something out, it doesn't matter! You just simply click on the clip you want, then drag it to the timeline window bang-smack in the middle of two other clips. The rest of it just moves along!

Ok, to get your movie files into premier (for your own footage from a camcorder/video you will need a capture card). When premier is opened you will have a few choices to make. Basically, as long as you set the frames per second to 25 (this is the PAL standard) you will be fine.

So its all set up for you now. Three windows will have opened. Monitor, Timeline and Project.

The monitor window is where you view your original footage. You drag your uneditied footage into the player window (on the left)and you can trim it down in there.

The timeline is the most important! This window is where you lay your clips. There are 2 Video and 2 Audio tracks automatically. (You can add more if needed). You drag your clip from the project window to the timeline and it places itself where you drop it.

The project folder is where your movie files are kept. (You import your files by going to file, import then find the folder where they are kept and click on them)

Righ
t then, if your footage is too long either side of your desired shot, all you do is pick up the file from the project window and drop it into the monitor window on the left (the player monitor). There are buttons underneath the window, on the bottom row two look the same, just back to back.

These are the in and out points for a clip. You mark in where you want your clip to start from, and again where you want it to end. Then, just click on the clip, a little fist should come up and move it to the project window. Your shortened clip will now ask you for a title. Give it a title, and there you have it. Your first piece of footage, ready to go into the movie!

If you just want basic cuts, all you need to do is add the pieces of footage one after the other in a row. Audio from the footage will move with the footage whenever you pick it up and drag it.

You can add transitions, such as dissolves and clock wipes etc. You may need to open the transitions window. Sometimes it is open from the begining. This can be found in the "Window" menu at the top. For transitions, you lay them on the transition track. You have to lay the two pieces that are going to go together on the appropriate video tracks though. By clicking the arrow on the track that says "Video 1a" you will see the transition line and a "Video 1b" track. Make sure the two pieces of footage are slightly overlapping, and place the transition in that gap.

If you want music, all you need are some .wav files. These are imported the same way the movie files are. Again, all you need to do is pick it up and drag it to the audio 2 track. (Audio from your clip will go to the audio 1 track).

You can add titles, by going to File>New>Title. This will allow you to put on anything you like! You can play about with its motion by right clicking it in the timeline and choosing motion.

I think that covers the basic stuff. Obviously there is much mo
re that premier can be used for. I am currently using it for a uni project. I'm not sure who exactly would use this, but as digital editors are appearing more on computers nowadays, I thought I'd write about this one!

It is fairly easy to use, just remember to save your work frequently and save multiple copies! I have found that on my system Premier will be fine for a time, then just not want to play anymore! It comes up with that annoying "This program has performed an illegal operation..." Uhh...no it didn't! Probably could be my poor computers problem, although this did happen to peole at uni. Apparantely it can get a tad muddled as its handling larger video clips, but if you save every few minutes, you won't get as irritated as me! Aparrantely this does happen to other people too, remember it is doing a lot of things at once, and it could be down to it getting in a muddle!

I went on a huge lookout to try to find out what was happening with these errors...and apparantely the error coming up could be something to do with windows rather than Premier. However, still find it annoying that this problem wasn't really sorted out within the free upgrade things. Nevermind though!

I would reccommend this probably more for people that want digital editing practice. It would probably be quite expensive for just a home-movie editor, but it is quite a good budget professional piece of software!

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