- Look at that.
That is a perfect, mathematically, nearly perfect cubic inch
to point zero zero one thousandth of an inch.
That's just, that's just fantastic.
Love things like this!
It's just, it's just great.
I just, I love that.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here,
and welcome back to yet another tutorial.
Very excited for this one, the highly, highly,
highly requested 10 tips in Premiere Pro
that you should know, that your friends,
and everybody who's at all interested in editing a video
that uses Premiere Pro should know.
Buckle up, do what you gotta do to get your coffee,
whatever, we're about to dive into this thing.
Let's get started.
(gentle music)
Okay, so these tips kind of range from some simple tips
to some, like wow how did you think of that tips,
to some old tips, things that've been passed around
and floating around the Internet,
a little amalgamation if you will, love that word,
a little collection of things that I thought
would be great for anybody to know.
Kind of ranging all skill levels,
from people that have never opened the program before,
to people that use it here and there,
to people that use it every single day.
My goal here is not to just single out one type of person,
but to try to appeal to the masses,
so that you guys get the most out of watching this video.
So with that being said, let's dive into tip number one.
(gentle music)
Tip number one, Drag & Drop, folks.
So you guys know, I am a big fan of organization
and when you're organizing your media,
before you even start editing a project, that's key.
You wanna have all your ducks in a row
before you start building out your timeline,
so that you can just work more efficiently,
so usually to do that, you create different bins.
Now, bins are just folders within your project window.
The way I used to do this, was I would click the new bin,
it would pop open the project window, I would name it
one DX Mark two, and I would go over,
highlight all my footage,
drag it into the one DX Mark two bin,
but there's a way faster way to do that,
just drag the whole folder in.
Whatever folder that you need, drag it right into that
project window and all your files will come along with it.
So we got some B roll here, we got a drone, we got a vlog,
we highlight them all holding Shift,
we drag them down, we let go, and we expand these,
you can see that they all have contents.
You don't have to do that separately,
it's all done in one motion, good to go.
Taking that organization a step further,
you want to label your footage.
That way, it's color-coded on the timeline,
so when you just look down at a glance,
you can see everything from a bird's-eye view,
and know exactly where vlog clips are,
drone clips, B roll clips,
you can zoom into that spot very fast without having
to be like, "Where, what, was it here, was it,
"I guess, I thought I had it, I thought I had it where..."
You don't have to do any of that.
It's all color-coded for you, so just highlight the clips
in your project window by clicking on the bin itself
and then hold down Shift, click on the bottom clip,
it's gonna highlight everything,
right-click and select Yellow,
select whatever colors you want for the remainder
of the bins you want to do this for.
Then, when you drag those into the timeline,
they're color-coded.
Look at that, I just love stuff like that.
Color-coded clips, organized bins, yes please.
Moving on to tip number two.
(gentle music)
All right, tip number two is Master Clip Effects.
And you might be saying, "Pete, what does that mean?"
Let me give you a little backstory on this.
Sometimes I'm editing a vlog,
you guys know I do a lot of jump cuts,
that's something I do for my style within these tutorials,
within the vlogs, but if you forget to color grade
that clip first off, and you make 20 jump cuts,
from one piece of footage, what do you do?
Well, you color the first clip, and then you would have
to copy and paste attributes and paste and paste and paste
over every single cut that you made, to try and get
that color grade to match, but no, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't even worry about that.
Instead of applying the color grade to the clip
in the timeline, apply it to the clip in the project window.
Let's open up our effects tab here and type in Mojo,
that's from Colorista, quick kind of color grading,
we'll drag that onto the clip in the project window.
So once you drag that effect to the clip in
the project window, you'll notice all of those clips
are now color graded the same way in the timeline.
However, I know what you're thinking,
I know you're saying to me right now,
"But Pete, what if I want to change the opacity
of those edits, like how can you actually tweak,
maybe like I only want 50% of that color grade on that clip,
but now it's full and it's on all of them."
Zoom on up here to where it says Sequence,
and you'll notice to the left, it says Master.
Go ahead and click on that tab that says Master.
This is where you can control all the effects for
that master clip, that master color grade.
We'll come down to the bottom where it says Strength,
we'll change that to 50%, 43%, whatever.
And now you'll notice that 43% is applied to
every single clip in our timeline.
Just love learning new things.
(gentle music)
Tip number three is Adjustment Layers.
And very much like tip number two, you can apply
an adjustment layer over top of all your footage,
and apply effects to that layer.
That way, everything underneath that adjustment layer
has the effects that the adjustment layer has.
So you kind of just apply all of your stuff to that layer
and it affects what's below it, like this for example.
Here's a couple B roll clips from the wintertime,
I miss winter.
Down at the bottom, you'll notice the little page icon,
that kinda has a little turned corner.
Go ahead, click on that corner, select Adjustment Layer.
Just hit OK when that box pops up.
That's gonna add a new adjustment layer to
the project window, so go over to the project window,
click on that and drag it onto your timeline.
Drag it all the way out so it matches
the length of your footage.
Now, we can apply our color grade or our effects
to that adjustment layer and it affects every single clip
that that adjustment layer covers.
Another little fun fact about that adjustment layer,
if you guys like doing those fake widescreen bars,
I know some people hate it and they're like,
"Why do you do that? Don't you know anything?"
But if that's something you like because you didn't shoot
in a widescreen format, but you still kinda wanna give it
that cinematic look, we're just talking YouTube videos here.
You can go over to your effects tab, hit crop,
drag that crop onto your adjustment layer,
change the top and bottom to 13%.
I'm dying here, guys.
That's gonna throw those widescreen bars
over top of your footage,
but it's not going to actually affect your footage.
It's on the adjustment layer, so if you didn't want,
at any time, you can just piece that out, and good to go.
(gentle music)
Tip number four, kill switch.
This isn't a new tip, this isn't something I discovered,
this is old as the hills, there's tons of literature,
if you will, scattered across, strewn about the Internet
with regards to this little hack, but we all know,
the spinning wheel of death is absolutely no fun.
That disgusting beach ball sometimes,
that just shows up when you're editing in Premiere Pro,
and it's like, "No, you're not editing anymore.
We've decided that you're finished."
There's a way to get through that, so banter aside,
if your software freezes when you're editing,
there's a way to actually kill that spinning ball of death
within terminal so you can get back and save your project
without everything just crashing, you might be like...
What? This is how you do it.
It's a little convoluted, but it totally works.
So let's say you got the spinning ball of death here.
What you're gonna do if you're using a Mac,
I don't know how to do it with a PC,
but you're gonna open up your search,
you're gonna type in activity monitor,
and then you're gonna find Adobe Premiere Pro.
You'll notice a little tab up there that says,
PID, that's the PID number, you wanna record down
that PID number for Adobe Premiere Pro.
In this case, it's 2034.
Once you've memorized that, or written it down,
you're gonna go back up to search,
you're gonna type in terminal.
When terminal opens, you're gonna type in,
kill space dash S-E-G-V,
space dash two zero three four, the PID number.
I'm gonna put it on the screen what you have to write
as I'm doing it here.
Kill space dash, all caps, S-E-G-V, space dash,
the PID number.
Bear with me.
Hit enter, and this is gonna pop up to say,
Sorry, an error has occurred.
You can hit okay and you're gonna be able
to save your project and get out of that lock screen.
So you don't have to just like hold the power button,
or yank it out of the wall, or throw it down
a flight of stairs, it's kind of like your escape key.
Use it at your own risk, but that is a way to get out
of your stuff being frozen.
And sometimes get a save back out of it.
That's some hacker stuff right there,
I feel like we're in The Bourne Identity and I'm like,
I'm routing in through Reykjavik.
I'm trying to hack this server before...
Tip number five, moving on.
(gentle music)
This is a super fast one.
Tip number five is quick copying clips.
Quick Copy, we'll call it.
Now this is a super basic one, but a lot of people
that don't know anything about video editing
or just starting in Premiere, you might always be
selecting a clip, command C for copy, command V for paste.
But if you want to just duplicate a clip,
just hold down Option, click and drag that clip over,
and let go, and you've duplicated that clip super fast.
I use this every single day, this is one of those keystrokes
that is always being used when I'm editing,
way faster than copy and paste.
If you didn't know that, now you do.
If you already did, congrats!
You're amongst the elite few that are
ripping through Premiere Pro.
Maybe not the Elite few, but you know, I'm just,
I'm pumped for you, I'm glad you know it.
(gentle music)
Tip number six, we're gonna call Select All.
Sometimes, you have a massive timeline,
you just want to move the whole thing to the right
or to the left, so you can squeak a new clip in there,
but if your timeline's huge, you gotta zoom
all the way out and then highlight the whole thing
and hopefully you highlighted it right to the right,
say no, that's just no.
Hit A on your keyboard, you're gonna notice
two arrows pop up.
If you just click on the one clip that you want,
it highlights everything to the right of that,
then you can just drag and move it out of the way.
If you want to go left, hold Shift and hit A again,
that moves all the arrows to the left.
And we can just click everything to the left to select it,
drag it that way.
If you want to get back to moving it to the right,
you just hit A, and it flips those arrows back around.
So it's a very fast way to just,
kinda part the Red Sea there, drop in a couple clips,
and Bob's your uncle, you're good to go.
Way faster, way more efficient doing that.
If when you hit A, you don't get that,
it might be because your keyboard's set up differently,
so just go into your Keyboard Shortcuts,
type in the search for track select forward or
track select backwards and you're gonna assign
that hotkey to any key on your keyboard.
Listen to me, I sound like James Earl Jones right now.
This would be a fantastic cinematic.
That's why that voiceover was so good folks.
Just get sick and then record a voiceover,
and you're just off to the races.
I sound so much more epic right now,
I sound like I'm narrating Planet Earth.
Planet Earth. Dig it.
(gentle music)
All right, tip number seven, we're gonna call Drop Shift.
A lot of these little shortcuts and hotkeys are gonna
help you edit faster like we've been talking about.
'Cause sometimes if you want to drop a clip on the timeline,
but you wanna place it in the middle of the edit
you're already building, sometimes you'd be like,
all right, I guess I'll just highlight everything
on the right, zoom out, highlight, move over,
drop that clip in, highlight, move it back,
whereas that whole process could be eliminated
by just holding down a key and dragging a clip in,
and it would just do all of that for you.
So the more of these things you get comfortable with,
you start flying through an edit and that takes you
from five hours editing a vlog to three hours,
or maybe it takes you from ten hours to seven hours.
But now that's extra time to hang out and go live life
or make more content, or learn more skills
that you can get better at what you're doing
and take that from seven to three,
so that's why I'm kinda teaching you some of these,
and why some of them may feel like,
well that's not very substantial.
But they actually are substantial,
so this next one, drop shift is exactly that.
You wanna drag a clip into the timeline,
let's say we have an edit right here,
we wanna drag a clip into that into the middle,
if you'd have just dragged that and let it go,
it would just drop it right in and it would delete,
it would replace everything you're dropping it over,
but if you were like, no I want everything from
where I want that clip to be to move to the right,
but I don't want to have to highlight everything,
but if you hold Command, and drag that clip over,
everything to the right of where you want that clip to drop
is gonna move over to the right and make room for it.
It's not gonna replace.
Now if you hold Option and drag a clip over and let go,
it'll replace the clip.
Just a quick little way to kind of move in and around
the timeline without having to zoom out and highlight
and slow yourself down.
Moving on to tip number eight.
(gentle music)
Tip number eight is locking,
locking the layers.
Very easy to do, very helpful when you're working with
music or adjustment layers,
music tracks and adjustment layers.
That way, all the cuts that you could be making to
a vlog or an edit aren't affecting those layers
above and below, because that can get super annoying.
For example, let's say you're ripping through an edit,
and you start making cuts 'cause you've got your hotkeys
set up, and you're like, cut here, here, cut here, here,
here, you'll notice it's cutting the adjustment layer above
and the music tracks below and you're like,
this is a mess now.
So just go over, lock those layers and you're golden.
For example, over on this side here, there's a little lock
beside the track, click on that.
Click on the lock for the music track,
it'll kind of gray it out with these like hashed lines,
and then you're free to do whatever you want,
it's not gonna affect your actual timeline.
So now we're making our cuts, more cuts, cuts, cuts,
cuts everywhere, and the adjustment layer
and the music track are not being affected.
Once you're done, you can go unlock those,
and you are off to the races.
So locking your layers can really help you
not mess up your timeline.
You want to keep it clean and keep it nice,
so it's not more convoluted than it already is,
when you're trying to make these long crazy vlogs,
videos, or whatever it is that you're filming.
Lock your layers.
Tip number nine coming right up.
(gentle music)
Okay, we've all been there.
We've flown a drone, we've got some incredible footage,
maybe you're shooting with a red, whatever,
you've got some hardcore, 4K and up footage.
You drop that drone footage on your timeline,
and you're like, yo, why is this not playing back,
why is it skipping, why is my computer going to explode?
It's melting, it's just not, I can't,
I gotta watch this at like 20% quality
in order to even get a smooth playback,
or even edit, so the answer to that is proxies.
What is a proxy, you might be asking.
So a proxy for those of you that don't know,
is kind of like creating duplicate footage
that is lower resolution, so that it's just easier to edit
and easier for your computer to manage while
you're working on your project.
Your 4K and your high-res footage is still there
so when you go to export, those proxies that you made
that are lower res, they kind of call back to that
original high-res footage that you have
and you can still export your project with all the same cuts
and color grades and everything that you did to
those proxies will then be applied to your high-res footage.
Essentially, it's saving time, it's just saving
your computer from exploding and melting
and saving you lots of frustration.
So this is how you do that.
Let's drag in some drone clips here.
Here we go, we got our yellow drone clips,
'cause we labeled them.
Call back.
And you can see it's like super choppy.
It's just garbage.
So you're gonna come down to the toolbar
that's right below your preview window.
You're gonna hit that plus button and then you're gonna
drag this little kind of recycling looking icon
down to your toolbar.
Let it go there, hit OK, so come over to your clip
in the project window, right-click, hit Proxy,
then select Create Proxies.
This opens up a little dialog box and this is where
you wanna change that resolution to be a little bit lower,
like 720p so that your computer can actually handle it.
And you can do that by clicking on where it says
Preset, and selecting 1280 by 720 and then just hit OK.
Once that's done, it's doing its black dark magic,
the dark arts, its wizardry in the background.
You're gonna come over to that little icon
that we dropped on our toolbar.
We're going to toggle proxies which turns it on,
which effectively takes all that high-res footage
and makes it so you're using your 720 proxy
and now that footage plays back super smooth.
Check that out, I love it!
That is editing with proxies, you're welcome,
you're gonna love it.
(gentle music)
All right folks, that brings us to tip number ten.
You've done it, you've done it all.
You stayed through one through ten, unless you close it now
and then you didn't do anything, you quit.
Don't quit.
Tip number 10 is editing while you export.
And it's the easiest little thing, because a lot of times,
I would export a rough cut so I could send it
to a client or send it to a friend.
And while that's exporting, you just gotta sit there.
You sit there and you're looking around,
and you're just wasting time instead of just editing
in the background and continuing to work on your project
while it's exporting.
And it's super easy to do.
That just sounds so terrible.
I just want this to go away.
(coughing)
I apologize.
So open up your export window like you normally would,
and instead of hitting Export, hit Queue.
That's gonna queue it up,
you can go up to the top right corner
where that little green play button is,
hit Play and then you are free to edit
while that does its work, and then you're done.
You can keep editing on your crazy timeline,
like we are right now.
How awesome is that?
It's the little things folks, that make the big difference.
I always say that.
It's not necessarily huge, obvious tips,
it's the little things added up that make you
a better artist, a better editor, better at what you do.
And that's what I'm trying to do with you guys here.
I'm trying to just help you out as best as I can.
These are 10 tips that I love.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
Thank you for putting up with my crazy deep voice
that's just cracking and going all over the place,
'cause, oh, virus.
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Hit that Like button if you like this video.
Smash it if that's something that you're into, 2018 style.
Subscribe if you aren't already and folks,
I will see you next week.
Goodbye.