Introduction to Adobe Premiere Pro

Today you will be learning the basics of Adobe Premiere Pro.

Overview of Adobe Premiere Pro

This video provides a short overview of what Adobe Premiere Pro is and how you might use it:

Making Your First Video

To start to get familiar with Adboe Premiere Pro, you’re going to be making a short video featuring some turtles.

Start a New Project

Download the following .zip file into your video-editing folder by right-clicking on the link and selecting Save as (or save target as): premiere-videos.zip.
Extract the contents of the .zip file (Windows instructions, Mac instructions).
The extracted .zip folder has four files:
- duck-and-cover-intro.mp4
- tmnj.gif
- led-zepplin.mp3
- turtle-walking.mp4
On your computer, create a new folder inside your tutorials folder named: video-editing.
Open Adobe Premiere Pro and start a new project.
Name the project intro-premiere.prproj
Make sure the Project location is inside your video-editing folder.
On the right hand panel, de-select Create new sequence (so it’s not checked)
Click the blue Create button.

Get Oriented

Adobe Premiere’s interface is organized into Panels of different features.
There might be a lot of panels open by default when you open the app, but we don’t need all of them since we’re going to be only doing some basic things today.
Go to Window -> Workspaces -> Learning - this reduces the number of available windows and tools.
This will give you just a few panels (they should be empty right now):
- Project: an overview of the different pieces of media (video, sound, images, etc.) that make up your full video - your “raw material” you’re going to use to build the full video
- Source: Use this to preview individual media files (video, sound, etc.) to see what they look/sound like.
- Timeline: This panel is where you will splice together, edit, and overlay different pieces of media
- Program: Where you can see and hear the combined media pieces - ie. your full video.

Import and Preview Your Media Files

Click the Import tab at the very top left. This brings you back to a screen you were just on when you created a new project.
Use the left-hand panel that says Local with some folders on it to navigate to the folder you downloaded earlier: premiere-videos. When you’ve found the folder and clicked on it, you should see four thumbnails corresponding to your four files.
Select the duck-and-cover-intro thumbnail by clicking once on it, then click the blue Import button at the bottom right.
Look at the Project panel Double-click each of the thumbnails of files in the Project panel to load it into the Source Monitor Panel and get a preview of what it contains:
Repeat the above steps to import:
- tmnj.gif
- led-zepplin.mp3
- turtle-walking.mp4
Note: You can import multiple files at once by clicking on each of them before clicking the Import button.
Preview each of your four media files by clicking on the thumbnails in the Project panel and dragging them onto the Source panel. Then click the play button to see/hear them.

Add Clips To Your Timeline

The Timeline panel is where you’re going to splice and layer together all of your media clips
Click and drag the duck-and-cover-intro video clip in the Project panel onto your Timeline.
This creates a new “sequence” in your timeline named duck-and-cover-intro should see a long colored ribbon on the timeline with a small thumbnail of the video on it.
Your Program panel should also be showing the video you just added. Click the play button on the Program panel and notice that a vertical bar advances along the Timeline panel as it plays.
Click and drag the turtle-walking.mp4 clip onto the timeline and release it to the right (immediately after) the end of your Duck and Cover video clip.
Click and drag the tmnj.gif clip onto the timeline and release it above the turtle-walking clip, so that it appears “on top of” the ribbon roughly roughly halfway (in the middle) of the turtle-walking clip.
Click and drag the led-zepplin.mp3 clip onto timeline and release it immediately to the right of your duck-and-cover-intro clip and directly under the turtle-walking clip.
Use the blue upside-down arrow at the top of the timeline to rapidly “scrub” through your timeline.
Zoom in or out on your timeline using the two dots at the bottom of the timeline (this is helpful if you have clips with much different lengths - ie. one very short and one long clip).
The Program field should have a video that looks something like:
- Extended footage of old film with a turtle
- Immediately followed by video of a turtle walking with Led Zepplin music playing in the background
- Somewhere in the middle of the turtle walking it should briefly cut to a clip of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before going back to the video of the turtle walking.

Trim and Rearrange Clips

Let’s make the clips shorter so the final runtime is closer to 35-40 seconds.
Our first trim is going to shorten the video of the turtle walking (turtle-walking) so that the end of the clip lines up with the end of the audio clip of the Led Zepplin song (led-zepplin):
- Hover your mouse over the right edge (the end) of the turtle-walking clip until it turns into a red bracket icon with an arrow pointing to the left.
- Click and drag the new icon to the left until it “snaps” to align with the right edge of the audio track led-zepplin underneath it.
Our second trim is going to cut the first video clip duck-and-cover-intro down to around 20 seconds so that it transitions to next clip right around when the dynamite explodes:
- Instead of dragging the edge of the clip like we did in the first trim, we’re going to use the Ripple Edit Tool - this makes sure that there isn’t a gap between clips.
- Click the Ripple Edit Tool in the narrow tool panel immediately to the left of the timeline (hover over each icon to see its name). It is one vertical bar with two arrows pointing out from it.
- Hover your mouse over the right edge of the duck-and-cover-intro clip on the timeline so that it turns into a yellow bracket with a left-hand arrow.
- Drag the new icon to the left until you get to the 20-second mark (when the dynamite explodes).
Our third trim is going to cut the two seconds of black screen at the beginning of the duck-and-cover-intro clip:
- Click the Selection Tool on the toolbar above the Ripple Edit Tool
- Hover over the very beginning of the duck-and-cover-intro clip until your mouse turns into a red bracket with an arrow
- Click and drag to the right on the clip while watching the Program panel until you see the clip transition from a mostly black screen to the turtle first appearing and then let go of your mouse (roughly 2 seconds).
- Notice that this has trimmed off the beginning of the clip, but that this leaves a gap on our timeline.
- To fix the gap, make sure you have the Selection Tool clicked and then click and drag the white box over all of your video and audio clips in the timeline so that they’re all selected (each of them should now have a white box around them)
- Click inside any of the clips on the timeline and then drag to the left until it “snaps” and aligns with the very beginning of the timeline.
Tutorial video if you get stuck

Export Your New Video

Export your project content as a single new video file named my-first-video.mp4
Go to File -> Export -> Media
Change the File Name to my-first-video
Make sure the Location is set to video-editing folder on your computer
Set the Preset to: March Source - Adaptive Medium Bitrate
Set the Format to H.264
Click the blue Export button
Go into your video-editing folder on your computer and make sure you have a new file named my-first-video.mp4. Try opening it and watch your amazing new video!

Prof. Cameron Blevins