How to Assemble a Series of Video Clips in Premiere

What's the difference between home video and the stuff on TV? Editing. A TV producer cuts raw video into "clips," removing extraneous, badly done, and other waste footage. These clips are assembled with cuts - or transitions - between them, to create a movie. Now you can do the same thing with Adobe Premiere 4 for Windows.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Premiere

1. Open or create a project. (See the Related eHow "Begin a Movie Project in Premiere.")

2. Import your clips into the project. They will appear in the Clip window.

3. With the Construction window active, open the Window menu and choose Construction Window Options. Set your icon size and select the track format and display that's best for you. Click OK.

4. Open the Tool menu at the bottom of the Construction window. Select the Zoom In/Out tool and adjust the Construction window to show the timeline that you want. You can set it to display anywhere from 1 frame at a time to up to 1 minute of video at a time. Experiment to see which setting works best.

5. Place the cursor over the first clip that you want to use in your movie. The cursor turns into a hand.

6. Depending on what the clip is, drag it into the first video or first audio track.

7. If you want to use a transition between scenes, drag the second clip into the video (or audio) track that is underneath the first track. Overlap slightly.

8. Drag a transition into the Transition track that is between the two video tracks.

9. Continue adding clips and transitions.

10. Preview your movie.

11. Save your project.

Tips & Warnings

• If you want to use a cut instead of a transition, drag the second clip onto the same track as the first clip, lined up so the last frame of the first clip is next to the first frame of the second clip.
• To save time, use Select All from the Edit menu to select all clips, then drag them into the Construction window all at once. Alternatively, hold down the Control key (Windows) or the Shift key (Mac) to select individual clips. Once your clips are in the Construction window, you can change their order by dragging them around.
• To use a linked clip (containing both video and audio), drag it into a video track that has a similarly numbered audio track. Both your audio and video drop into their respective tracks. Although Premiere allows you to have a different number of audio and video tracks, to drag a linked clip into a track named 8, for instance, you must have an audio track 8. Once your audio has been dropped in the Construction window, though, you can shift it to another track if desired.