One major point to remember is that Adobe Premiere Pro’s settings or preferences sit independently from the system preferences on the machine. This can often be confusing at the early stages of playback. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get your project settings right at the beginning to avoid not understanding why premiere is behaving in a particular way in the future. The first few times you begin a project check each setting independently until you are familiar with what each one does, also be sure to understand the folder structure, which I shall talk about in a short while. Let’s take a look at the new project settings. Unless you have double clicked on a project you will not avoid seeing the open or new project screen. Select new project and you will be faced with the first of two opening screens, let’s look at each setting separately. Firstly choose New Project and you will be faced with the first of two options menus.

In the first new project window leave the Action safe and Title safe areas as is, next to Display Format be sure this dropdown is set to Timecode, Capture Format should read Quicktime but will be different if you are using a windows PC. Next set the Location to the location of intended project folder (See folder structure below) and then name the project something convenient. I recommend something searchable so you can find files easily as your project portfolio builds.

Next swtich the top tab to Scratch Discs and you will see the options below. Set all to Same as Project (see Folder Structure below for details) Now click on OK and move onto the second set up window.

Under the Sequence Presets tab select the native video format you have been working in or your intended output if you intend to output to a format of a lesser dimension i.e. Mobile Device. If you know what you would like your first sequence to be then name it accordingly. I shall go into the benefits and uses of sequences separately.

The majority of the settings under the General tab are governed by your choice of setup on the previous tab. You should not need to change any of these settings.

Again you should not need to touch the settings in the Tracks tab unless you anticipate needing to add more video tracks to your timeline or output your projects audio to 5.1 surround sound. Otherwise leave these set to 3 tracks of Video and Audio set to Stereo.

Click OK and Adobe Premiere Pro creates your project.

Folder Structure
As I mentioned before I like to keep all my files in one place just in case I want to put the project on a hard drive and work on it at home. Also working on projects across multiple user set ups on an operating system can cause errors. Files that reside in a users documents folder will appear offline signed in as another user and will be impossible to reconnect. For these reasons I set all my Scratch Discs to Same as Project. This keeps everything together but the folder can soon get cluttered once you have begun capturing a few videos. When begin a project I drag and drop a folder structure comprising of the following folders, images, after effects, sfx, buzz tracks, music, voice over etc download the example project to see how I have set this up. It also means that once you have populated a particular folder you can drag the file into your projects, creating a new bin and maintaining an efficient structure within your project. I also create a new bin for assets created from within premiere such as titles and also for every scene, cutaways, gv’s, chapter, camera etc so that I can immediately ring my clips as and when I need them.

Capture Device
Setting up the capture device or video camera can bring about a few headaches. Premiere recognizes most firewire decks and cameras but if you see a black screen in the capture window, check your settings. You can find the Settings on the second tab on the capture window under the Device Control section. Be sure on the dropdown you see your device, if not restart the program with your peripherals plugged in and you should achieve success.

Fortunately Premiere seems to be keeping up to speed with all HDD cameras to. Most require you to install additional drivers or codecs on your machine but once installed allow for a simple drag and drop to your projects and playsback in their native format with no need for a further conversion.

Now see Basic editing technique