How to Use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 | Video Editing Tutorial

I dedicate this one to my aspiring video editor friends. We will learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 here, but the video editing tutorial wouldn’t be limited to that. You will see some cool tips and tricks as well and how to tackle different challenges while working on the Premiere Pro CC 2015. You can use the same logic in almost every Adobe video editing product. Hence, this video editing tutorial wouldn’t be as specific as its title says.

Video Editing is fun. Just open YouTube and see for yourself. How many amazing videos are out there? Some of them look really cool, don’t they? So how are they getting it done whilst you are sitting here wondering?

Don’t worry! With the help of this video editing tutorial, I will make sure you get in on all the action as fast as possible. By the end of having learnt how to use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015, you will be creating your own videos just like all the cool peeps.

Let’s get to it.

Adobe Premiere Pro

You must be wondering by now – why Adobe Premiere Pro? Well Adobe provides you tons of reliable, easy to use and dependable products and one of these products is titled Premiere Pro. It is a video production and editing software that comes in handy when you are aiming to create your very own movie.

In order to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015, you need to first have the software on your system. You can download the Software from the official website of Adobe. Here’s the link for the same.

http://www.adobe.com/in/downloads.html

Just click on the Premiere Pro button or the Pr symbol. The setup will download. Adobe gives you a trial of sorts first. You need to buy the full version if you plan on acquiring it for full-time usage.

How to Use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015

I will be helping you to learn the basics of how to use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 in this video editing tutorial using steps.

Once you have downloaded the product the next thing is, of course, installing it on your system. Once you are past that and you open the application this is what you would get:

Time to create your first project.

Step 1: Click on New project. If the wizard doesn’t show you can always go to File > New > Project.

Doing so will open the project dialog box.

Step 2: Just enter a cool name for your project, provide the location where you wish the project to be saved. You can leave the latter since it will feed a default location. Then click on Ok.

Workspace

You will get your playground to play around which looks like something like this:

It is called a workspace.

All the symbols and tools might be overwhelming to see at first glance but I assure you, as you will keep working on it, you will come to revere and love this version of your workplace.

As you can see there are four main panels each serving a different purpose. You can, of course, at any time, change the workspace depending upon your needs. You can do so by navigating to Window > Workspaces and then select any kind of workspace you are looking for. For starters, we will let defaults be defaults.

NOTE: The current workspace we are working on is called Editing.

Step 3: Time to import some media to get things going. As you can see one of the smaller panels says “Import Media to Start”. That is basically a representation of your hard drive and will reflect any folder you wish to add there.

Double click on the panel. It will open an Import dialog box. You can specifically add a video to be imported through there.

Alternatively just drag and drop the folder or video you wish to add into that panel, that will do the trick as well.

Click on Open once you have selected your video.

The Bin

Step 4: So I went ahead and dragged and dropped my folder into the panel. Once you double click the folder you will get something like this:

It is known as the bin and is useful in displaying all your videos in the form of thumbnails so you get a better insight at the videos you wish to add.

Also one of the cool features of the bin is that it lets you preview what’s in the video if you hover your mouse over it. You can choose to delete videos from the bin too by selecting them and pressing the delete button. It wouldn’t delete it from your system so you are safe to do that.

Step 5: Just double click on the video you wish to add.

When you do, you will notice that the video automatically opens in your Source panel located on the left side.

You can choose to close the bin (it can be opened again by a mere double click on the folder so chill!) or minimize it.

Mark In and Mark Out

One of the most basic things to do in a video is to get only a portion of it for your movie. You would be required to remove the unrequired bits and focus on what you need at a lot of junctures.

Let’s just say we need only a part of our video and not the entire thing.

Step 6:  There’s a small marker on the media panel that you could use to go left or right on your video just like they provide you in a media player. Using that marker click on the part from where you wish to begin the trimming. Once you are there at that exact spot, press the button ‘I‘ on your keyboard. It will set a marker In point.

Alternatively, you can just right click on that spot and select Mark In.

Step 7: Now what’s the end point you wish to use the video till? Figured that out? Just go there and press ‘O’ on your keyboard.

Alternatively, you can right click on the spot and select Mark Out.

As you can see the part you wish to use for your video has been highlighted.

Timeline

Timeline is the place where your actual editing will be taken care of. It will be recording the stuff you do with your video and audio, will help you assemble other pieces of video and audio to perform other video editing stuff.

Step 8: Simply drag and drop the image you see in the Source Timeline panel.

If you just want the Video part there’s a small film strip button right underneath your image that will read “Drag Video Only”. If you want just the Audio part, there’s a wave form button right next to it, that will read “Drag Audio Only” if you hover your mouse over it.

As you can see, in this example, I didn’t have an audio in my video, so when I dragged it to the timeline it just shows Video in purple. In your case, it might have an Audio timeline too.

NOTE: You can play or pause your video in the Program panel by pressing ‘Spacebar’.

Trimming a Clip from Your Timeline

One of the most important things while learning How to Use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 is the trimming bit. The most basic way to trim a clip is using the drag method.

Here I have added another video clip to my existing one.

Step 1: When you take your mouse pointer to either end of the clip in the timeline you will notice it turn “Red” and become square bracket in shape. It would also point where you can push your clip to trim.

I am going to push my second video in further to make the clip a tad shorter.

Better Way to Trim

The other way to trim a video is via using Razor Tool. It is a blade symbol attached alongside timeline. If you can’t find it you can press the ‘C’ button to activate it. That’s the shortcut.

Step 2: Press the Razor Tool button or ‘C’. Then make necessary cuts or incisions on your video clip. I have made four of them as you can see.

Step 3: Click on the Selection Tool (that’s always selected by default and helps in moving clips around) once again. Or you can use the keyboard button ‘V’ to quickly navigate to the last selected tool.

Then move around the clips by dragging and dropping them where you wish to put them. You can check how the whole clip would appear by pressing the Spacebar button to play your clips in the Program Panel.

How to Apply Transitions to Your Video Clips

You might remember transitions from Powerpoint or from a cool movie wherein when a frame changes from one form to another it appears to fade in or fade out. There are tons of transition effects available in Premiere Pro, and goes without saying that it is one of those interesting steps of learning How to Use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015.

The simplest one or the default one that you might use a lot is what is hidden behind the Ctrl + D button. It will use the default transition of Fading and place it at the beginning or ending of the video clip you have selected.

Step 1: All you have to do is click on the video clip and press ‘Ctrl + D’. You will notice a small button created like this on either side of the video clip you have selected.

Step 2: Go ahead and repeat Step 1 for all your video clips so that each transition from one video to another has a Fading effect.

Step 3: Now run the video using backspace in the program panel and you will see the difference.

NOTE: In order to delete the effects, you can simply click on the button like structure and then press delete.

Another Way to Use Effects

What if you didn’t want the default effect and wish to browse other effects provided by Premiere Pro? Yes, there are tons of effects that come with the software. Here’s how to use them:

Step 1: Click on Effects Panel which you might find lurking around your Project Panel.

This will open the Effects panel for you.

Step 2: Navigate to the part that says Video Transitions. Select any preferred transition effect and drag and drop to your clip.

Step 3: Press Play and check out how the transition appears on your video clips. There are many gorgeous transitions. Go ahead and play around with them. Experiment!

How to Add a Title to Your Video

The next step to learn How to Use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 is adding a title.

A video clip isn’t really complete if there’s no title to support it. Adding a title to your video isn’t that big a deal. Here’s a step by step process explaining how to do that.

Step 1: Drag your video and audio by selecting them and moving across the timeline to incorporate some space for the title clip.

NOTE: Yes, I added a cool audio using the same method we used to add video. It’s to complement the theme of the video. You know, just making things cool.

Step 2: Navigate to Title > New Title > Default Still….

It will open you a window “New Title”.

Step 3: Enter a title of your choice in the Name box and click on Ok.

The Title Editor Panel

Notice the editing area provided to you. It has all the cool fonts that you can use to press out a cool title. I am gonna keep things simple for now.

Step 4: Type in whatever title you wish to type. I am going to type “Dumb It Dude Presents”.

Step 5: To take care of alignment you can simply right click on the text and navigate to Position > Horizontal Center and then in a similar manner right click and navigate to Position > Verical Center to make sure the text is properly in the center of your video clip.

Step 6: Click on close button of the editor. You don’t need to save it or anything because Premiere Pro does that automatically for you.

Step 7: Go to the Project Panel. That’s where your title would be. (If it is not in your project panel it might be in your Bin.)

Step 8: Simply drag and drop it in your Video Timeline just like you did for all your video clips before.

Step 9: Click on the Video and then press “Ctrl + D” to add the fading filters. You can see them take form by playing the video in the program panel.

Notice that little extra space in between your title and your first video?

You can get rid of all such extra spaces in between videos by clicking on that space and then right clicking and selecting ripple delete.

Step 10: Time to run the whole thing. See how cool all of it seems now.

Let me know how things panned out for you.

How to Export a Video

Now that you are sure that this is what you want for your video, you need to Export the video in the format you wish. This is one of those crucial steps on how to use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015, since you are getting the end product ready to be uploaded to Youtube.

Step 1: Click on File > Export > Media

This will open Export Settings Dialog box. You can make necessary adjustments here too.

Step 2: Select the format you wish to see the video in. By default, AVI would be selected. I am just gonna go ahead and click on Export.

On clicking on Export a small dialog box might open that would start processing the video, encoding and what not. Just relax for a while till it closes automatically.

Step 3: Locate the created file on your hard disk. It must be in your Documents folder where Adobe folder is located.

That’s it!

So with that you know How to Use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015. Keep watching the Adobe Category space on our website to see more cool stuff you could achieve using the software. Read all these cool video editing tutorials that will help you get a good grasp on how to use Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015.