In the age of mobile-first short form video it is key to know how to quickly convey important information through video editing. Unfortunately, Premiere Pro is tricky and not very user friendly. I have often found myself saying "I know what I want to do, I just don't know where to look" while looking at the myriad of menus. Here are 5 Premiere Pro tips and tricks that I wish I knew sooner in my career.
1. Auto-Transcribed Audio
These days, I add captions to the majority of videos that I edit. It's more inclusive for those with hearing loss and many people prefer to scroll on their phones with the sound off. But transcribing videos takes a lot of time and energy if you're doing it manually. Follow these steps to quickly and easily transcribe your audio into captions.
1. Temporarily mute any audio tracks that you don’t want turned into captions (ex: music)
2. Make sure you're in the Editing workspace
3. Click the Text tab
4. Click the Transcript tab
5. Click the Transcribe button
6. Click the Captions tab
7. Click Create captions from transcript button
8. Click Create Captions button
9. Check captions for errors
10. Change the font, size, color, and location of the captions as needed
11. Unmute any temporarily muted tracks
Note: You cannot add video effects or transitions to these captions like you could for normal text boxes.
This method will give you the default captions (tiny white font with a drop shadow), so you will likely need to tweak the captions a bit to ensure that they mesh well with the video. Once you edit the caption’s appearance and unmute any muted tracks, you’re good to go!
2. In-Platform Spell Check
I am a lover of spell check and use it for everything. So, I was shocked when I started using Premiere Pro and I did not see red squiggles under my misspelled words! Little did I know, there is a spell check function, Premiere Pro just does a good job at hiding it. Follow these simple steps before you export your projects to ensure that there are no spelling errors.
1. Make sure you're in the Editing workspace
2. Click the Text tab
3. Click the Graphics tab
4. Scroll through your text boxes and look for any errors (red underline)
5. Repeat in the Captions tab if applicable
3. Marking Footage
For the longest time I was leaving all of my unused footage at the end of my timeline while editing and then I deleted it when it was time to export my video. Little did I know that I could leave that unused footage in there as long as I marked what footage I wanted exported. By marking footage, now I’m able to edit one set of raw footage into multiple different ads in the same timeline without having to make separate project files.
1. Highlight the footage that you would like to export in your timeline
2. Click the Markers tab at the top of the screen
3. Click the Mark Selection option from the drop-down bar
4. Adjust the ends of the markers if needed to include your entire project
5. Click Export
6. Make sure that the Range setting says Source In/Out
7. Export
4. Copy/Pasting Attributes
Have you ever finished editing a project and then you realized that you should have color corrected the footage before you cut it up? Don't worry, you won't have to individually color correct each 2 second clip now that you know this trick!
1. Select the first clip that you'd like to color correct on your timeline
2. Make sure the preview is set to the clip that you have selected
3. Click the Color workspace
4. Edit the color as normal
5. Right click the clip that you just color corrected
6. Select Copy
7. Highlight the rest of the clips that you would like to apply that color treatment to
8. Right click the highlighted clips and select Paste Attributes from the drop-down menu
9. Make sure that only Lumetri Color () is selected under Effects
10. Click Okay
5. Make Complex Animations Elsewhere
Premiere Pro is my favorite video editing software and I try to use it for everything. But it is important to remember that it's not the best software for every type of editing. For anything beyond simple animations and transitions I would recommend that you use another software. It may be scary to try something new, but manually animating each keyframe in Premiere Pro will drive you crazy. Creating simple video animations is so much quicker now that I've gotten off my high horse and started utilizing Canva more often. If you want to do some really impressive animations, then I'd advise that you learn Adobe After Effects.
In conclusion, these are some tips and tricks that could have saved me a lot of time if I had known them sooner. I hope that you learned something that will save you energy as well. Let me know any of your favorite Premiere Pro tips below!