In Lesson 4, you learned to organize your video in the Organizer and Project views. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to take that footage and shape it into a refined final version. You’ll apply these basic editing techniques:
• Insert, delete, and rearrange clips in the Sceneline and Timeline
• Trim and split clips
• Use Smart Trim mode to quickly remove lower-quality segments from your videos
Over the course of this lesson, you’ll piece together a short video showing some kids playing basketball. You’ll be working with video and audio clips provided on the DVD that accompanies this book.
This lesson will take approximately two hours.
To begin, you’ll launch Adobe Premiere Elements, open the Lesson05 project, and review a final version of the movie you’ll be creating.
Your project file opens with the Monitor, Tasks, and My Project panels open.
To see what you’ll be creating in this lesson, you can take a look at the completed movie.
When you open the project for this lesson, you’ll see multiple clips in the My Project panel, in either Timeline or Sceneline view. Regardless of which view you choose, you’ll preview your work in the Monitor panel. The Timeline and Sceneline are different panels for arranging clips and applying effects, and can show different views of the project.
In contrast, the Monitor panel shows one frame of the project, and one frame only. The displayed frame is at the location of the current-time indicator (). In the Sceneline, the current-time indicator is in the mini-timeline just below the preview area. In the Timeline, the current-time indicator is positioned directly on the Timeline.
Now let’s explore the functions of the Monitor panel, particularly the multiple ways that you can move around the content presented in the My Project panel. This initial presentation will be in Sceneline view, so click the Sceneline button on the top left of the My Project panel to make sure that you’re in that view.
• To zoom in, drag the left Zoom Claw () to the right, or drag the right Zoom Claw to the left.
• To zoom out, drag the left Zoom Claw to the left, or drag the right Zoom Claw to the right.
• Scroll through the mini-timeline by clicking and dragging the gray center bar of the Zoom control.
As mentioned, the My Project panel has two views: a Sceneline for basic movie editing and a Timeline for more advanced techniques. You can switch between the two views by clicking either the Sceneline or the Timeline button in the upper-left corner of the My Project panel.
In the Sceneline, each clip is represented by its first frame. This display makes it easy to arrange clips into coherent sequences without regard for clip length. This technique is referred to as storyboard-style editing.
• To add a clip at the end of the movie:Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the My Project panel to scroll to the end of the movie (or press the End key). In Media view, click any clip, and then drag it onto the empty clip target at the end of the movie. If the SmartFix dialog opens and asks if you want to fix quality problems in the clip, click No.
• To add a clip before another:In Project view, click a clip, and then drag it onto an existing clip in the Sceneline. If the SmartFix window opens and asks if you want to fix quality problems in the clip, click No. Premiere Elements will insert the new clip before the clip it was dropped onto and will push the clip it was dragged onto and all subsequent clips to the right.
• To add a clip after another in the Sceneline:Select the clip after which you want to add the new clip. To do so in Media view, click the clip you want, and then drag it onto the Monitor panel. If the SmartFix window opens and asks if you want to fix quality problems in the clip, click No. Premiere Elements will insert the new clip after the clip currently selected in the Sceneline and will push all subsequent clips to the right.
Working in the Sceneline makes it easy to move clips in your movie. Here’s how it works.
You may find, as your project develops, that you want to remove scenes you’ve imported into the Sceneline.
• Delete Scene and its objects:This option deletes the scene and any overlays it might have. Overlays are any items included above the scene, like a title, graphic, or a picture-in-picture video. Note that the sample project that you’re working with doesn’t have any scenes with objects, so choose the next option, Delete just Scene.
• Delete just Scene:This option deletes the clip but leaves the overlays in place.
When a clip is deleted from the Sceneline, the transition following the clip is also deleted; when a clip is deleted from the Timeline, the preceding and following transitions are deleted.
The clips following the deleted clip move to the left to close the gap. This is the default behavior when deleting clips in Premiere Elements and is called a ripple deletion.
Although deleting unnecessary clips and thoughtfully rearranging the order of clips will make a better video, you will inevitably want to shorten the length of some clips to create a more compelling movie. Here’s how you’ll accomplish this task.
Every clip has a beginning and an end. In editing terminology these are referred to as the In points and Out points. Setting In and Out points does not actually delete frames from the hard disk but instead isolates a portion of the clip for use in your movie. When you trim a clip in Premiere Elements, you are simply changing the In and Out points.
The Split Clip tool allows you to cut single clips into multiple clips. You can use this tool to split a clip into sections so you can delete one of them, which sometimes is more convenient than trimming. You can also use it to split a long clip into separate clips to edit them individually.
Although most basic editing tasks can be performed in the Sceneline together with the Monitor panel, you’ll use the Timeline for many advanced editing tasks, especially those that involve layering, which means having multiple clips in the project at the same location.
The Timeline graphically represents your movie as video and audio clips arranged in vertically stacked tracks. Before beginning to work with the Timeline, follow the instructions at the start of this lesson to load Lesson05_Start_Win.prel (Windows) or Lesson05_Start_Mac (Mac OS).
The Timeline displays time horizontally. Clips that fall earlier in time appear to the left, and clips that come later in time appear to the right. Time is indicated by the time ruler near the top of the Timeline.
The Zoom controls in the Timeline let you change the timescale, allowing you to zoom out to see your entire video or zoom in to see time in more detail.
Zooming in enables you to make precise edits in the Timeline. In doing so, however, you cannot see the entire Timeline at once.
As mentioned previously, the Timeline consists of vertically stacked tracks where you arrange media clips. Tracks let you layer video or audio and add compositing effects, picture-in-picture effects, overlay titles, soundtracks, and more.
You’ll perform most of your editing in the Video 1 and the Audio 1 tracks. Directly above these are the Video 2 and Audio 2 tracks. Note that the stacking order of video tracks is important. The Monitor panel displays (and Premiere Elements produces) the tracks from the top down. Accordingly, any opaque areas of the clip in the Video 2 track will cover the view on the clip in the Video 1 track.
Conversely, the clip in the Video 1 track will show through any transparent areas of the clip in the Video 2 track. Below the Video 1 and Audio 1 tracks are two more audio tracks, Narration and Soundtrack. Audio tracks are combined in playback, and their stacking order is not relevant.
Premiere Elements starts with three open video tracks (Video 1, 2, and 3) and five open audio tracks (Soundtrack; Narration; and Audio 1, 2, and 3), which should be sufficient for most projects. Should you need additional video or audio tracks, you can add them by choosing Timeline > Add Tracks. You can delete any empty tracks by choosing Timeline > Delete Empty Tracks.
You can change the height of each track in the Timeline for better viewing and easier editing of your projects. As a track enlarges, it displays more information. Let’s adjust the height of the Video 1 track.
You can display clips in the Timeline in different ways, depending on your preference or the task at hand. You can choose to display a thumbnail image at just the beginning of the clip; at the head and tail of the clip; or along the entire duration of the clip, as shown in the previous figure. For an audio track, you can choose to display or hide the audio waveform of the audio contents. Toggle through the various views of the video and audio tracks until you find the one that best suits your eye and working style.
Editing in the Timeline is very similar to editing in the Sceneline, although several controls are in different places. Most notably, when you switch to Timeline view, the mini-timeline beneath the Monitor panel moves to the Timeline, as does the current-time indicator. Other than that, all playback controls are identical.
Beyond the interface issues, most of the basic clip-related operations are also identical. For example, you add clips to the Timeline the same way you add them to the Sceneline. You move clips around the same way, and you delete clips the same way. If you repeat the exercises you’ve already completed in this chapter using the Timeline rather than Sceneline, you’ll quickly become adept at all of these operations.
Trimming and splitting clips is also very similar, but because these operations are so critical to everyday editing, let’s run through them again in the Timeline.
Every clip has a beginning and an end. In editing terminology these are referred to as the In points and the Out points, as described earlier in this lesson. Setting In and Out points does not actually delete frames from the hard disk but instead isolates a portion of the clip for use in your movie. When you trim a clip in Premiere Elements, you are simply changing the In and Out points.
The Split Clip tool allows you to cut single clips into multiple clips. You can use this tool to split a clip into sections so you can delete one of them, an alternative to trimming that you’ll perform in this exercise. You can also use it to split a long clip into separate clips to edit them individually, although if you elect to Auto Analyze your clips, Premiere Elements will split most longer clips into separate scenes for you.
Smart Trim is an editing mode that can help you identify suboptimal regions within your videos so that you can either fix or delete them. Smart Trim relies on information gathered while Premiere Elements analyzes your clips, so you must Auto-Analyze your clips before entering Smart Trim mode. You can operate Smart Trim either automatically or manually, although I recommend that you use Smart Trim manually until you understand how it works.
You can work with Smart Trim in either the Timeline or Sceneline; this exercise will demonstrate how it works in Timeline view. If necessary, to make your screen look like the figures in this exercise, click the Timeline button () on the top left of the My Project panel to view the Timeline. Then adjust the size and positioning as necessary to place the Trafalgar Square clip in the Video 1 track below the Monitor, as shown in the following figure. Once the clip is positioned, click the Smart Trim icon () atop the My Project panel to enter Smart Trim mode. If you haven’t run the Auto-Analyzer, Premiere Elements will run it now.
As you can see in the preceding figure, Smart Trim identifies problem areas via a zebra pattern. If you hover your mouse over the zebra pattern, a tool tip will detail the problems with the clip. You have multiple options regarding any clip, or portion of a clip, that Premiere Elements flags as a problem area.
You can right-click the clip, and choose Trim, Keep, or Select All. Trim will delete the selected portion; Keep will retain it and turn off the zebra striping; and Select All will select multiple suboptimal regions within the same clip so you can trim or keep them all. In addition to these options, you can trim away any or all of the suboptimal portions of your clip by clicking and dragging an edge to the desired new starting point, just as you would trim any other clip in the Timeline.
Another approach to trimming a scene is to choose Smart Trim Options and adjust these options. Let’s view the choices available by right-clicking Clip 2.mov (or another clip identified as having problems) and choosing Smart Trim Options.
As you can see, atop the Smart Trim Options window Premiere Elements uses two variables to identify suboptimal clips: Quality Level and Interest Level. Quality is simple to understand: If a clip is shaky, blurry, has poor contrast or lighting, or has other deficits that mar quality, Premiere Elements identifies the clip in Smart Trim mode as being below the Quality Level threshold, depending on how flawed the clip is and where you positioned the Quality Level slider.
By contrast, Interest Level analyzes qualities such as the amount of motion in a clip, the presence or absence of dialog, and other criteria that tend to identify clips that are interesting to watch. If you shot a picture of a blank wall that was sharp, well lit, and completely stable, the Quality Level would be perfect, but Premiere Elements would flag it as lacking in the Interest Level department. That doesn’t do much for those boring conversations with Uncle Harold, so you’ll still have to delete those manually.
You can adjust the sliders to set the tolerance levels for either criteria: Moving the slider to the left will increase the threshold for suboptimal clips, so that fewer and fewer clips will be flagged. Moving it to the right reduces the threshold so that more clips will be flagged.
For example, if you examine the clips in your project and find that most clips flagged by Premiere Elements look good to you, move the slider to the left and Premiere Elements will set the threshold higher and flag fewer clips. If clips left unflagged in Smart Trim mode look suboptimal to you for either Quality Level or Interest Level reasons, move the slider to the right.
Note that there are two operating modes in the Smart Trim Options window: Manual and Automatic. In Manual mode, which is the default, Premiere Elements will display all suboptimal regions via the zebra stripes shown and discussed previously. If you opt for Automatic mode, Premiere Elements will immediately delete all suboptimal regions present on the Timeline. Thereafter, when you drag clips with suboptimal regions to the My Project panel, Premiere Elements will present a dialog asking if it’s OK to remove Smart Trim sections.
There’s an awful lot of bad video out there, and Smart Trim mode presents a very efficient way to identify it. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view), given the fixed capacity of the DVD accompanying this book, I was unable to pack a lot of boring and/or problem-filled video on the DVD for Smart Trim mode to identify.
In a real project, however, when you’ve shot 30–60 minutes of footage and want to quickly isolate the best 3–5 minutes to include in your movie, Smart Trim mode can be a godsend. So check it out on your own projects and see how it works for you.
Two final points: First, when Smart Trim flags quality-related problems, you can either delete the offending sections or try to fix them, which we’ll attempt to do in Lesson 6. So even if you decide to leave suboptimal clips in the project, Smart Trim helps by identifying sequences you can improve with corrective effects.
Second, to reiterate a comment I made earlier, I recommend that you not use Smart Trim in Automatic mode. Lots of “must have” sequences in your movies—such as your son blowing out the candles on his birthday cake or your daughter accepting her diploma—may not meet Premiere Elements’ quality thresholds, but you still don’t want to delete them. In Automatic mode, you don’t get that choice.
If you’re like me, you like to shoot video and still-image shots of your events and travels, and it’s fun to combine them into a single movie. Fortunately, Premiere Elements makes this very simple. Although you can add images in both the Sceneline and Timeline views, let’s work in the former because it’s more visual.
Wonderful! You’ve finished another lesson and learned how to cut, trim, split, and arrange your raw video into a cohesive movie. Over the next few chapters, you’ll polish it into a fine-tuned production.
1. What are the key differences between the Timeline and Sceneline?
2. What is an In point and what is an Out point, and what can you do with each?
3. What are two methods of shortening your video clips?
4. How does Premiere Elements combine video tracks at the same position on the Timeline?
5. What are the two criteria assessed by Premiere Elements in Smart Trim mode?
1. Premiere Elements offers two views in the My Project panel: Sceneline and Timeline. The Sceneline shows each clip as a separate thumbnail without regard to duration and doesn’t show all available video tracks. The Timeline graphically represents your movie project as video and audio clips arranged in vertically stacked tracks with clip duration represented by the length. There are many common activities that you can perform in both views, including arranging clips, trimming frames from the beginning or end of a clip, splitting and deleting clips, and adding titles and effects. Many producers use both views in the course of a project; for example, adding and sequencing content in the Sceneline, and then switching over to the Timeline to add background music, titles, and other clips. Once you start working with multiple video clips at the same location, the Timeline becomes the superior view.
2. The In point is the first frame of your clip as seen in the Sceneline or Timeline, and the Out point is the last frame. Both the In and Out points can be moved to create a shorter or longer clip.
3. You can shorten your clips by trimming their In points and Out points or by splitting the clip and deleting unwanted portions.
4. Premiere Elements renders the tracks from the top down. Any opaque areas of the clip in the Video 2 track will cover the view on the clip in the Video 1 track. Conversely, the clip in the Video 1 track will show through any transparent areas of the clip in the Video 2 track or if you reduce the Opacity of the clip in the Video 2 track.
5. Quality Level and Interest Level. The former concerns Premiere Elements’ assessment of picture and audio quality on a technical level; the latter assesses multiple qualities such as dialog and motion that tend to indicate whether or not a clip is interesting.