How to use Premiere Pro CC

How to use Premiere Pro Creative Cloud – a user’s guide

 This short guide will instruct you through the process of editing your footage, ready for release, in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Step 1: Accessing the iMac 

After getting your footage you will need to boot up the iMac using the Macintosh operating system partition. To do this you should turn on the computer and when the screen lights up, hold “Alt” on the keyboard. Otherwise it will load the Macintosh partition. You will then be met with a screen asking which partition you wish to load. Select Macintosh from this list, it should be highlighted already, however if it is not use the arrow keys to move to it and enter to select. Once Macintosh has booted up you will need to log in. The standard login for the network will not work on the iMacs as it runs on a different network, you will therefore need to login to the appropriate user area. The username and password are exactly the same. Firstly type “media”, without the quotes, followed by the letter specified by your teacher – usually the same letter as the lesson block (for example if you have media in block B, the login and password will be “mediab”). It is important that you use the same iMac for each editing session as well as the same login and password as the data is not transferred from machine to machine.

Step 2: Importing your footage

Now that you have logged in to the local user area on the iMac you will need to get your footage from the SD card. The back of the iMac contains all of the different ports. Insert the SD card into the SD card slot. The slot is the thin slot, next to the USB ports. The card should slide in, face up. This will then mount the SD card to the computer. This will allow you to access the camera footage from the SD card. Now you will need to copy the files to the computer from the SD card. Double click on the icon named “Macintosh HD”. This will open finder and allow you to navigate to through the iMac so you can create a new space to contain all of your editing assets such as sound and video. In the favourites on the left-hand side of the finder app should be “Movies”. Click on it to navigate there. Then create a new folder with the date and the name of your production. Now return

to the desktop and open the SD card by double-clicking on it, it will be seen on the desktop, as seen left. Navigate through the SD card and find the footage; if you used a Handicam to record it will save the footage as a file named “AVCHD”. Click on the file, or if there are multiple files hold shift and click to select multiple, you want from the SD card and hold “cmd” on the keyboard and press “C” to copy the files. Then click on the copy of finder that has your folder in movies open and hold “cmd” and then press “V” to paste. Then wait for it to copy the files over. Once the files are copied to the computer rename the folder to the title of your production and the date, then return to the desktop. It is important that the files are named correctly so that they can be found easily and the date is so you can identify that it is your work and not that of the previous year's class. Find the SD card on the desktop and click and hold over it. Then drag it down so that the dock appears on the bottom of the screen. When it appears drag it on to the far right icon which is the recycling bin – however when dragging a mounted drive it will look like a small arrow. When you are hovering over it let go and the card will be unmounted, ready to safely remove the card. The card on the desktop will go slightly transparent, meaning it is unmounting. When the icon disappears the card can be removed safely. Before moving on to the next step ensure that the folders are all named correctly as if you change them after importing them into Premiere Pro the program will not be able to find the files as it will be looking at the old path, and it can take a long time to correct it.

Step 3: Creating a project in Premiere Pro Creative Cloud 

Load Premiere Pro Creative Cloud from the dock on the bottom of the screen, or click on the CC logo on the top left of the screen and select “Premiere Pro”. This will load the program that we will use for editing. The splash screen will appear, as seen on the right, and the program will load. Once it has loaded the menu will appear, as seen below. You will need to create a new project for editing your footage. Select new project as seen on the screenshot. This will take you to the next screen, as seen on the next page.  

You should enter an identifiable name in the name box of the “New Project” dialog, as seen to the left, and choose the location as the location of the footage; in our case we saved the footage to our folder in movies where we stored our advertisement for PG Tips. All the other options can be left the same as Creative Cloud works differently to that of CS6 in that it is a lot more adaptable and works easier with clips with different frames-per-second. The only other thing to ensure is that under “Capture” the setting is set to “HDV”, as seen in the image. This tells the program that the files are of a certain type, so it can work with them easier, then click “Ok”.

Step 4: Importing and editing footage 

To have footage to edit you will need to import it into the blank project you have just created. First click the “File” option from the menu and select “Import”, or alternatively press “cmd” and “I”. A picture of how to do this can be seen on the right. This will open a dialog allowing you to find and select your “AVCHD” file, which will open allowing you to go through the folder structure to find the files you want to import, they are normally in a folder named “Stream”. This will then import the footage. I have done this with our PG Tips advertisement footage. Once it has been imported it is stored in the area called the “bin” which contains all files imported.
You will need to import all of the files you want to use including images and sound through this method. Once you have imported all of the files you need for the project you can begin editing the clips, cutting them down and editing them. Firstly you may need to cut clips down as they are too long, or boring parts may need removing. To do this you will need to drag the clip you wish to edit into the playlist. To do this click on the clip you want in the bin and then drag it into the playlist.
The playlist is on the right of the screen, as can be seen in the image below. Once the clip is in the playlist you will need to select the razor tool, this is the seventh tool on the toolbox, to the left of the playlist editor. Once it is selected you will be able to click anywhere on the blue clip in the playlist to cut it, this will turn the two blocks into four. The top block is the video, and is stored in the video channels; the bottom block is the audio and is stored in the audio channels. The razor will cut both audio and video channels. Once it has been cut you will end up with two clips that can be positioned and ordered as you wish with the top tool in the toolbox, the cursor. This can be seen below. You can then select the clip you do not require and press “Delete” on the keyboard of the iMac.

Finally you can view a clip before you drag it into the playlist view by double clicking it. This will open it in the viewer to the left of the playlist viewer, above the storage bin. An example of this can be seen below. The left side is the preview and the right is the playlist view, showing the clips in the playlist.

Step 5: Exporting a finished product

Once you have completed your production it is time to export it as a file that can be shared and

uploaded to the internet. To export your project go to the “File” menu and select “Export” from the menu and then choose “Media”, or alternatively hold “cmd” and press “M”. This will then load a dialog allowing you to save your project as an MP4 file, this is the correct format. The dialog can be seen below. All you will need to do is change the filename by clicking on the blue text, as named “Output name”. This will also allow you to change where the file will be saved. Once you have selected everything for export, click “Queue”. This will show an export bar which, when it completes will be exported as a file in the location specified. An example of the loading bar can be seen below.