Step by Step Guide to Editing using Adobe Premiere

Get an overview of the process of editing on a computer using the Adobe Premiere editing program as an example...

This section of the site explains how you edit a basic project with a computer. This is shown using Adobe Premiere 5, although the general principles apply to all programs.

Some programs have more effects and features than Premiere and some have less but all have to follow the same general procedure. If you want more information on the other editing programs available see our 'other editing programs' pages.

The Edit Procedure

Step 1 - Capture the footage

You connect your video source to the computer and then use a program to grab these clips, in real-time and with sound on to the hard drive. Because hard drive space is limited, you do not capture everything, just the sections you intend to use. If you later realize that you need a different clip you have not captured you can always capture it when you need it. You do not have to capture the clips in any sequence - just capture them as you come to them on the tape.
The whole editing process inside the PC is non-linear - i.e. .any clip or part of a clip can be accessed at any time at the press of a button - no more waiting for the tape to rewind or fast forward.

If you want to know more see the section 'More Info on Capturing'.

Step 2 - Edit The Clips

Use your editing software (such as Adobe Premiere) to arrange the clips with titles, transitions, special effects and extra soundtracks. You can carry out as many changes as you like, re-editing the footage as many times as you like without dropping quality. During this process you can preview the project in various ways before you commit to the final step.

For more detail on basic editing concepts see 'Editing Video in Premiere'

Step 3 - Render The Movie

Render the movie. During this process all of your edits etc. are combined into one final file. How long this will take is dependent on how complicated your project is. A big project with many transitions and flying clips will take a lot longer to process than one with just simple cuts and a few transitions.

Step 4 - Record The Results

Plug in your video recorder and record the result. The combined video, no matter how complicated originally, is played back in real-time: you simply press record on your video and play on your computer.

A computer equipped with a DV card - one that will communicate with your camera or video deck through a Fire wire or ILINK connection, can control the video recorder. To record using a DV devices play on the computer and the video recorder automatically records.

To edit in this way you will need a special type of PC.
We will describe the details of what is inside the PC later but first we would like to give you a basic run through on the most interesting part - the editing software. This is where you arrange the video in the order you want, with effects, transitions, sound etc.. Basically where you have all the fun. Without this software the computer is nothing more than a glorified video recorder. There are various editing programs available but we will use our favourite, and the industry standard, Adobe Premiere 5.

More Info on Capturing

Plugging In Your Deck

You plug your camera or video deck into the computer through standard Video sockets. Most editing cards have SVIDEO and composite inputs as well as FireWire, however,  some cards just have a digital FireWire connection.  If you want to record from a non-digital source with one of these cards you will need to either record your analogue footage on to DV first using a deck, or get an analogue to digital converter like the Grass Valley ADVC110.   

Sound will either be connected through standard phono plugs or through jack plugs.

DVC systems are supplied with a selection of leads for connecting to the non standard connectors that come with the system.
For details on the different connectors available on different capture cards please see the hardware section of this booklet.

Basic Capturing

There are various methods of capturing the footage into the PC but all follow the same pattern -You load up a program, press a button and the clips are captured as you watch them onto your computer.

Capture limits

Older capture cards scan only capture a maximum of 2GB worth of video in one hit. This equates to about 9 minutes at DV quality. New cards use a new version of video file Open DML.  This format allows you to capture larger than 2 GB files - although on Windows 98 or ME systems there is another limit of 4GB per file!  If you use Windows 2000 there is no limit to a capture card using Open DML. Some cards, like the Canopus cards have a cunning way of getting round this limit meaning they can capture an unlimited amount of footage on either Windows ME or Windows 2000.

Large files can be a pain to navigate, and so it is good to split your captures into smaller sections.  Some cards come with a scanning program that allows you to scan a tape and detect every shot simply by scanning the date and time at which is was recorded.  This can then for the basis for your capture list.

You do not have to capture everything you want in one go, or do it in any order.  Also, if you have missed something you can always go back and capture it  later.

Capturing Using Timecode

Many cameras have timecode recorded on the tape together with the picture.  Using a device controller you can read this information into the PC and can also control the camera (start, stop etc.) all from the PC. You can, therefore make up a list of the clips you want to capture, using the timecode on the tape, and tell the machine to capture these clips, starting and stopping the deck as required. This process is called batch capturing.  

For analogue cards we have devices like Media Motion, whilst DV Cards have this ability built-in via the firewire.  The accuracy of the devices does depend on the quality of the video equipment (for instance most LANC devices are only accurate to within a few frames); the DV Capture cards, when combined with a Sony deck or camera are normally frame accurate.

Batch capturing is used to enable you to save the capture and project files so that you can recreate your project from the original footage at a later stage, for back up, or so you can  produce an Edit Decision List (EDL) to give to someone else at a later stage.

Differences Between DV & Analogue

When capturing from an analogue source, for example via an S-Lead, you can change the brightness, contrast, detail, and colour balance of each clip as it is grabbed.

When using DV you are not really capturing the footage, just copying it from one place to another.  The footage once on the PC is exactly the same quality as the footage that was on your DV tape, and you have no option to change it until you are editing.  DV always captures at 5:1 compression at the fixed size of 720x576. These are fixed due to the loss-less quality and cannot be changed.

DV footage can be recorded on the computer and back again without losing any quality - when you copy footage down an analogue lead there will always be some noticeable drop in quality. With analogue footage you can vary the compression and picture size and, therefore, vary the amount of video storage space.

OHCI Support

An OHCI card is a standard firewire card and can be found on many machines.  You can plug in various devices including hard drives to this port.  Premiere 6 supports OHCI for capture and playback, even with a deck attached as well!

The OHCI support in Premiere is good, and supports widescreen, proper DV aspect pixel ratios, and over 2GB files. The device control is particularly interesting because you select the make and model of the camera you use.  Every device I have tried this with, including the JVC twin DV/SVHS deck, which can sometimes be problematic, has worked well.

When capturing video is displayed both on the computer and video deck.  When playing back all clips are played through the DV deck attached live, although the display on the computer screen is not smooth. (this is nothing new -with Edit DV when you playback to the DV deck you get no playback on the PC screen).

The video is actually handled by the Microsoft DV codec and saved in AVI format.

Using an OHCI card you do not, of course, get any real time effects and to get any footage out of the computer you have to have a DV deck connected.

OHCI is commonly used on Laptops but you can use them with desktop machines as well.  However, if looking to buy Premiere and an OHCI card you would be better off buying a dedicated solution like a Canopus EZDV because it would be cheaper and slicker than using Premiere with and OHCI card.

Audio Capture

You can capture sound from any sound devices - a tape deck, CD player, keyboard etc.. To do so you simply plug the device into the PC, load up a sound capturing program, set the levels and then press the record button.

Rostrum Stills

You can bring in still images using a scanner.  There are two types of scanner: flatbeds for prints and slide scanners for negatives, slides and Kodak film.

Once in the PC you can treat the images like video clips, adding filters, motion path etc..  You can also use these devices to take in images to touch up and enlarge and then reprint in photo quality using a printer like the Epson Stylus Photo 880 (£101 Ex-VAT).

Editing Video in Premiere

After you have captured your clips you enter the editing program

The computer screen then fills up with several windows:

1. The Project Window

This shows you all the clips you are using in your project. The first stage is to load all the captured clips in here. You have various ways to organize these clips, you can change the name and add comments and view the list in several ways. You can also add bins and subdivide up your clips for ease of access.

2. The Monitor Window

Here you do all your basic editing. It has been set up to mimic the way you would edit traditionally. This shows the source and destination window. These can also be called the 'play' and 'record' windows. By dragging the video clips from the project window into the source to view and start editing. The destination window - the equivalent of the old preview window. Here you view you final movie in rough mode before rendering...

3. The Timeline

The timeline shows you the project with tracks for video and audio.

4. The Transitions Window

This shows a list of possible transitions you can place between video tracks. One example is the simple cross-dissolve. There are other extra pieces of software to give you more detailed transitions.

5. The Navigator Window

Unique to Premiere a way of finding your way around long projects. This shows the entire timeline whereas the timeline itself just shows a section of the project.

How To Create A Straight Cut

1. Open the video clips from the Project list.

1. To view the video simply drag and drop into the left monitor window. At this point you can view the entire video, mark in & out points.

2. Place the clip onto the timeline by dragging across to the right hand monitor window, otherwise known as the Preview window. This automatically lays the video onto the timeline.

3. If you wish to create a straight cut you can drag a new clip into the monitor window and repeat this method. Using the controls (below no.2) you can play, stop, move one frame forward/backwards and jog shuttle either way at different speeds. Notice as well the time code displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you captured using a device controller then this will show the time code on your original tape.

 Insert Edit

Achieving an insert edit is very easy.  Simply take the clip you want to insert and put it in the overlay track of Premiere.  Normally you use this track to fly clips around the screen or overlay using chromakey or lumakey, but if you do not assign any special properties then is simply blots out whatever is on the video track below it.  As a default Premiere will now mix the two audio tracks but you can simply turn off the audio on the new clip and you will have an Insert Edit - the picture flips to the new clip whilst playing the sound from the old clip.

Adjusting Clips

Once your clips have been placed on the time line it is possible to adjust them interactively, changing the rest of the project as you do so.  In other words you can put all your clips down, view the result and then go back and make small changes without having to redo the entire editing session. You can:

• Change the length of clips
• Swap clips around
• Change one version of the clip for another
• Add a frame to the in and out point whilst changing the rest of the project

Storyboard

As a quick alternative to editing on the time line you can pull clips into the storyboard and lay them one after another.  This allows you to make up a quick sequence which you can then drop onto the timeline for refining, adding filters and titles etc..
The story board will automate clips onto the time line either as a series of straight cuts or putting a transition you choose between each clip.  You can also put an audio clip on the time line and put a series of markers down corresponding to the beats.  Then when the clips are sent to the time line it starts each new clip on the beat...

Audio Editing

An often neglected area in video production, the sound is tremendously important. Using a PC you can overlay sound, in stereo, and line it up to specific frames of the video. You can mix up to 99 sound files together in your final edit, and control volume speed etc.. of each file at will. Putting a continuous background track over several clips is child's play, just bring it into the project and put it on the timeline where you want it. Once you compile your final edit the sound will be smooth with no jumps or cracks at the joins of clips and seamlessly mixed with all the other tracks.

Only 3 video tracks, but we have added more audio tracks to encompass sound effects, backing track etc. You can have up to 99!

The bar underneath the audio clip controls the levels.  In the middle is normal, at the bottom is silent and at the top is maximum. You add moveable points to adjust the levels.

Some Tricks you can play with sound

Say you have two video clips and you want the sound from one clip to continue over the top of the second clip, simply put both clips on the timeline and drag the sound section of one clip underneath the other.

If you have a conversation filmed with two cameras just grab both versions in full and place them on the time line. Then look through the sound track of both and find the same point (a large peak caused by the start of a sentence or sound effect). Using the keyboard quickly select the exact frame where the sound starts (which you can see, graphically on screen), add a marker to both clips at the same point and line them up. Because the video track moves with the audio the video will also be lined up. Now delete one of the sound tracks. This leaves both video clips, but only one sound track from one microphone. Now simply choose which shot is seen at a particular moment by adding a 'direct' transition between the two (this in effect is just a cut between the A & B video tracks) and the sound will stay wonderfully in sync no matter which shot is on screen, plus the sound track will be smooth and consistent because it's all from one microphone. Using this technique we have been able to quickly achieve cuts at any point, even halfway through a word if you want, and it is unnoticeable.

Re mix a pop video.

Record the music on to the PC and then load it into Premiere. Put markers on the sound track where you want the video to change and then slot the shots in between the markers. If a clip is too short slow it down.. If it is too long either cut it or speed it up.

Re-Mix music to fit your purposes.

On our demo tape there is a credit section which features part of the nutcracker suite. Unfortunately the intro wasn't long enough, so, in Premiere, we simply copy the first few bars a few times and put them in front of the main track. Hey Presto a longer intro.

Here are some of the new audio filters now bundled within Premiere. If you wish to play the audio separately simply drag and drop into the left monitor window. This symbol is shown when you play audio only. You can mark points on the audio by pressing the (+) symbol.

Audio Markers

It is possible to place a visual marker on the audio track to mark a specific sound or word. This can enable titles to be brought in on queue or special effects to be triggered.

A musical beat can also be marked in real time.

Audio Controls

You can control the level of each track or the overall audio level using Premiere’s audio mixer panel,  You can even change the levels as you are listening to the sound playing.  There is also a visual display of levels which is extremely useful.

Adding Transitions

You can perform various transitions between two video tracks in Premiere. These range from a simple dissolve from one to the other, to more advanced transitions such as page turning. These transitions can be as long as you like, just place the clip on the time line and drag until it is the length you want. You can also overlay titles or other clips at the same time as well as adding sound effects.

To add a transition simply set two video clips up so that they overlap as shown and then drag a transition from the list into the overlap between the two clips. The length of the transition is defined by the amount of the overlap. You can also change the length an in and out points of the clips at any time during the edit.
This picture shows a simple Cross Dissolve between Video 1A and 1B. You can also see how the audio is cross faded underneath the transition.

Transitions can be added from other companies that will work within Premiere and appear in the transitions list:

Spice Rack

Is a collection of excellent gradient transitions which work with Premiere's gradient wipe.

Boris FX

Boris FX adds a couple of hundred new transitions to premiere from page turns to a water ripple dissolve.

Adding Effects

Each clip can have a filter applied to it - and you can layer the filters so that more effects are done at the same time. These filters vary from changing the brightness, contrast or colour correction, to full blown special effects with clips twirling around the centre. The pictures on this page demonstrate some of the effects possible. These filters are key-framable which can vary over time, so, for example, a clip could get slowly brighter, or become distorted over time. Premiere has a huge list of filters. Here are some examples of a couple of them. Samples are available in our demonstration tape.

Colour Correction

Colour correction allows the user to adjust the amounts of Red, Green and Blue in a clip. Using these 3 sliders colour balance problems can be sorted out. Colour correction allows the user to adjust the amounts of Red, Green and Blue in a clip. Using these 3 sliders colour balance problems can be sorted out.

Image Pan

1. Select the correct size and crop of the picture you wish to start within the left hand box.
2. Now decide where to end the pan. To maintain the ratio click on the 'Copy' button.
This filter can be placed over video to give a camera zoom effect. It can give single images, possibly photos scanned into the system. For example the scan from left to right across a wedding photograph to incorporate into the video.

Better Gaussian Blur

This filter creates a subtle out of focus effect that can be varied over time. It can be used to pull focus on a title or give a perception of depth of field.

Titling In Premiere

Premiere comes with a dedicated titling facility that allows you to add smooth type faces, with shadows, on your video clips.
Combine this with the moving path option and your titles can fly around the screen. Now a new scrolling button which allows top to bottom or side to side movement.

The main titling window

1. Type in the text you want.

2. This screen uses a preset built into Inscriber which adds extra shapes on screen.  There are loads provided.

3. Choose the colour of the font and shadow. This can either be one colour or a graduated range as shown. The title can also have an edge, again with a gradient as desired.

The typeface used can be any installed on your PC. The standard PC only comes with a few typefaces (also called fonts) but 1,000s more are available, given away on magazine cover disks, with desktop publishing programs, or with programs like Corel Draw 6.0 (which comes with 1,000 fonts.) There are even programs available to make your own.. We now sell 500 fonts disks with all our systems.

Overlaying Clips

You can overlay up to 99 video tracks in Premiere. These clips can also be flying around the screen at the same time as being overlaid. There are various methods to overlay clips as detailed below:

Premiere's list of overlay options.

Each option has different parameters which can be changed. Edges can be smoothed, or on some you can add a drop shadow.
The sample window shows a preview of the effect and you can zoom in and out on this window to check the key. Of course the effects still have to be rendered to see the results.

The various overlay options:

• Chromakey - Choose a colour from your video to be transparent. You can adjust the range of shades to be grabbed as well as the blending.
• RGB Difference - a similar effect to Chromakey
  Luminance keying - Key out certain levels of brightness/darkness
• Alpha Channels - a computer generated mat that is basically an invisible layer on top of an image that tells the computer which parts are transparent and which are opaque - this gives absolutely brilliant, sharp edges to every overlaid object. Titles use Alpha channels
• Image Matte - draw and black & white image and use this as a matte.
• Blue Screen/Green Screen/difference matte-non red, these can achieve better results than Chromakey in certain circumstances
• Track Matte - Use a black & white moving image as a mat, just as you would with cine film.

Keying is hard to get right.  Filming against a blue screen or green screen can look pretty good but the edges are always a bit rough.  Using a 3rd party keyer like the one that comes with the Canopus real time cards can get you better results than the standard Premiere keyer which by today’s standards is a bit limited.

If you want to do better keying than is possible in premiere then you can use a different program all together -
Adobe After Effects has one of the best keyers around. Called the Keylight keyer it offers exceptional quality and customisability.  It also gives you keyframable shapes which you can get to follow a path on screen.  This process is used extensively in film and TV these days to take an image out of it’s standard back ground and put it into an new one but it is very time consuming. 

Flying Clips

The motion path option allows you to define a path for the clip to follow, with the clip zooming in and out while it does so, rotating or being distorted to give a 3D effect. The flying clip is then overlaid on the other clips in the project using an ALPHA CHANNEL to ensure a smooth edge.

The path can be saved and applied to other clips, so that, for example you could have several pages of tiles fly in at specific timed intervals, following the same path, and all you would have to do is type the words, define the path once and then put the clips on to the time line.

Rendering and Outputting to Tape

Rendering And Output To Tape.

Once you have made all the decisions relating to the editing of your video it is then necessary to make up any special effects and play the program out to video tape. How this is done depends on the editing card and editing programme used.  All modern cards allow you to play straight cuts off the timeline without any further procedure.  Effects will have to be rendered unless the particular card can do them in real time - i.e.: without having to make, or render, them first. The speed of the rendering depends on several things :  The editing card, the speed of the processor in the computer, the complexity of the effect. 

 Some capture cards can do effects in real time i.e.: without rendering, although what they can do will depend on the capture card.  Some only do real time effects through the analogue connections - through DV everything has to be rendered. The Canopus Raptor RT, Matrox RT2500, Pinnacle DV500 and ProOne are all examples of cards like this, whilst the Canopus Storm SE and Rex Pro are cards which do real time effects through firewire.  More information is available on exactly what these cards can do in the hardware section.  Real time cards have limits on the number of effects you can mix together and so at some point you will need to render even with real time cards.  For really complex effects your rendering may take a long time and it may even be worth considering not using an editing program but in fact using a compositing program like Adobe After Effects for these sections because you will have a lot more control over your effects plus better quality and better ways of previewing the results. 

Recording to tape

With an analogue card you have to start your VCR recording yourself, there is no device control that will start it for you. This simply means you press record on the VCR and Play on the computer.

With DV cards  it is possible to automatically start the DV Deck recording as the computer plays using a 'Print to Tape' command. Mostly this is frame accurate however this does depend on your video deck or camera. On most devices it is not possible to do accurate insert edits.

Outputting your video to something other than video tape....

Of course, these days you may not be intending to put your masterpiece on to tape, you may want to put the footage on to a CD or DVD or to put it on the Internet.  All these are possible using a DVC system.  To do this you will have to take the footage you have created and change it into something else depending on what media you want to end up.

Video For The Internet

Saving video for the Internet is the same as saving footage on CD - you have to remake it.  Internet video quality is basically bad and will not improve until the connection we use - the phone line - improves dramatically.  There are three main formats: Real Video (the established format which seems to have limitations), Quicktime (Apple’s format which they are trying to establish as the Internet standard) and Microsoft’s MPEG4 standard.

Premiere can make all three using plug-in provided with Premiere 6 or using Media Cleaner EZ also provided.  Some of these formats also provided the possibility of making different versions of your video - called alternates. When someone logs onto your website their computer will choose whichever of these alternates matches the speed of their computer.

After the video is created you will need to actually write your web page using a program like Frontpage, Dreamweaver or Go Live

Video On CD

There are many ways of putting video on CD.  Most of these give you disks that can only be played back in other computers, rather than DVD players although there are a couple of formats, SVCD and VCD which will play in some players,

If making a disc to play in another computer the main question is “On what computer will this disk be played?” Apple Macs for example will require footage in Apple’s own video format, Quicktime.  Pcs will be able to play Quicktime files and Windows format, AVI. There is also a huge number of different compression formats you can use - the person playing the video will need the same compression on their machine to be able to play the footage although it is possible to include the installation files needed to add this to their machine on the disk you send them.  Premiere tried to make the whole procedure easy by including Cleaner EZ, a wizard driven program that asks you questions about what kind of computer your files are destined for and then sets all the parameters for you.

It is also possible to give disks to people in MPEG format.  MPEG is the format used by DVDs amongst other things.  There are two types of MPEG: MPEG1 and MPEG2.  MPEG 1 is limited in size to 352 x 288 - roughly a quarter of the screen area of a full pal image, and therefore is not as sharp as proper video footage.  It is roughly equivalent to VHS in quality.  MPEG1 is the format used for VCDs.

Video CDs

VIDEO CDS were invented several years ago and were the for runner to DVDs.  They are popular in many countries although not in the UK.  At Video CD quality you can get around 1 hour onto a standard CD at roughly VHS quality. These will play in many, but not all DVD players. To make VCDs you will need software to turn your Video clips into the correct format, and a CD writer.  The Canopus software does a very good job  of making VCDs as does LIGOS, a program that you can buy on it’s own and that comes free with The Matrox RT2500.

Super Video CDs

As the quality of VCD was not quite good enough for most people MPEG2 and DVDs were invented.  A DVD will give you a disc which is practically DVD quality and can store 2 or even 3 hours of video.  However, set top boxes will only play DVD discs made up on DVDs.  SVCDs were invented as a halfway house between CD and DVD.  They are in MPEG2 but at 480 x 576, not the full PAL RES of 720 x 576.  Many set top boxes do not play SVCDs but quite a few do.  As with VCDs, the Canopus software and Ligos produce good SVCDs.

Making DVDs

Making DVDs is now possible and although not thoroughly straight forward is getting easier.  To find out more check out our guide to making DVDs.