Tag: editing

This video editing project was completed for the Organizational Structures course in the Media Design MFA program from Full Sail University. Edited from footage provided by Adobe.com.

Connecting, Synthesizing, Transforming

I’ve been editing with Adobe Premiere since 2008, but there’s always something new to learn. Every update has new features. The November 2019 release (version 14.0) includes graphics and audio enhancements, plus the new Auto Frame tool that applies intelligent framing to footage, keeping the action inside different aspect ratios like square or vertical video. Although I didn’t use the Auto Frame tool in this project, I can see how it could be useful when converting aspect ratios for posting videos to social media.

Solving Problems

The “Going Home” video used by Maxim Jago as an example in the Adobe tutorials was a good demonstration of Premiere’s tools, but the pacing of the edit felt slow. I decided to cut a shorter version using the same music, voiceover, and footage.

On this project, I started by editing the audio. The first step was to remix the music to be a shorter duration. The music Remix tool in Adobe Audition’s Essential Sound panel works like magic, retiming music to your desired duration with the need to manually cut and apply crossfades to clips. Unfortunately, this tool is not currently available in Premiere’s Essential Sound panel. After retiming the music to 40 seconds, I imported it to Premiere and dropped it in the timeline. Next, I dropped in the voiceover and cut it with the Razor tool into separate clips. I moved these clips around until the pacing felt right.

After editing the audio, I started adding video clips. When editing to music or voiceover, I tend to set both in and out points on the timeline to match beats. In the source panel, I will set only an in or out point, then use the Overwrite edit shortcut to drop the clip in place. Following the tutorials, I added transitions and type. One interesting thing I learned was that Premiere is very good at Time Remapping, changing playback speed. I have always used After Effects for speed changes, but Premiere can now time remap up to 20,000 percent. Wow.

Innovative Thinking

This design challenge demonstrated my ability to edit with Adobe Premiere, but unfortunately, I don’t think I did anything particularly innovative in the project. If I had more time this week, I would have liked to learn about Character Animation or more about the visual effects tools built into Premiere.

Acquiring Competencies

For many years I’ve used Audition for audio and After Effects for the majority of my motion designs and visual effects work, but many of the tools are now integrated into Premiere. Using the Essential Sound panel for audio improvements and Lumetri Color panel for color grading will speed up my workflow on future editing projects.