Mastering Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 Hotshot: Take your video editing skills to new and exciting levels with eight fantastic projects

Once Premiere Pro CS6 has finished launching, the Recent Projects splash screen appears. Then, select the New Project icon.

Before naming your project, select the Scratch Disks tab at the top of the New Project window, and confirm whether all scratch disks are set up for optimal performance as stipulated in the following screenshot. In this example the drive letter "V" represents the computers dedicated video drive. More information on using a dedicated video drive can be found in the Preface.

Once you are satisfied with the project settings, name this project Hotshots Template - Montage, and select a location to save that file. The default Adobe folder in My Documents should be fine for this purpose and is recommended for the rest of this book.

The New Sequence window will now appear. Select the video standard that matches the majority of your video assets (see also Classified Intel at the end of this section).

The main Premiere Pro CS6 interface will now open, displaying the default editing workspace, as shown in the next screenshot. Here, you can see the Project panel and Timeline panel sharing a one third/two third portion of the lower interface, while Source Monitor and Program Monitor equally share the upper part of the interface. If your interface is showing something else, use the keyboard shortcut Alt + Shift +3 (Windows), or option + Shift + 3 (Mac) to display the editing workspace.

Select the Project panel by using the keyboard shortcut Shift + 1. Selection will be confirmed by displaying a gold border around the Project panel.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + / or command + / to create a new Bin folder in the Project panel, and name this Bin folder as Video. Press Enter and then Esc on the keyboard to exit the renaming function.

Repeat step 7 twice to create two more Bins folders called Audio and Images. Your Project panel should look like the following screenshot when you have finished:

From the menu, select Workspace | New Workspace and in the New Workspace window enter Editing Optimized.

Right-click on the header of the toolbar panel that sits (and takes up valuable real estate) between the Timeline and the Project panels, and select Close Panel. If you prefer to use the mouse for tool selection, ignore this step.

Place the cursor between the Timeline and the Project panels, so that a double-headed arrow appears, then drag to the left-hand side to make the Timeline panel larger. Stop before the Effects tab disappears.

Take a moment now to make any other customizations to the general layout of the interface. Once you have finished, press Ctrl + S or command + S on the keyboard to save this layout.

If it is not already open, reopen the Hotshots Template – Montage file you created in the last task, and then resave it as Hotshots_Montage_X, where X is the subject matter of your montage (Edit | Save As).

Open the Audio Bin folder without creating a separate Project panel by holding down the Ctrl or command key and double-clicking on the Bin: Audio tab.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + I or command + I to open the Import window. Browse to the Audio folder on your designated video drive, and select your music file. Click on Open to bring it into Premier Pro CS6.

Drag-and-drop your music file to Audio 3, then expand the track using the Collapse-Expand Track toggle, as shown in the following screenshot:

Activate the Timeline panel using the keyboard shortcut Shift + 3, then maximize the panel by pressing Shift + accent (accent is the key next to the 1 key and above the Tab key). See Classified Intel at the end of this task if this doesn't work for you.

Zoom the Timeline to the length of the music track by pressing \ (backslash) on the keyboard.

Play the music by pressing the L key on the keyboard. Each time you hear a change in the beat of the music, hit the M key on the keyboard to add a marker at that position on the Timeline. At the end of this step, your Timeline should look something like the following screenshot:

Review the position of the markers by playing back the sequence. If there are too many markers in any one section, delete the superfluous ones by right-clicking on that marker and selecting Clear Current Marker from the context menu.

If a marker's position is slightly off the beat, move the marker nearest to the beat by first minimizing the Timeline panel (Shift + Accent), and then from the menu, select Window | Markers. The Markers panel should now open in the Project panel.

Click on the marker you wish to move, and it will appear selected in the Markers panel. To move the marker to the right-hand side (up the Timeline), place the cursor under the In: value so that it appears as a double-headed horizontal cursor, and with the mouse button held down, drag it to the right-hand side. To move the marker to the left-hand side (down the Timeline), use the Out: value and drag it to the left-hand side.

Finish by saving your project.

Use the mouse to select Edit | Keyboard Shortcuts from the menu.

In the search field, type sub.

Click on the Make Subclip… field, and then click on the Edit button at the bottom of the Keyboard Shortcuts window. This will place a cursor in the field next to Make Subclip….

Press the number 0 (zero) on the top row of keys above the letters O and P to enter this value as the keyboard shortcut for Make Subclip....

Repeat steps 4 and 5 to create a shortcut of Shift + 0 for the Edit Subclip... command.

Click on OK or press the Enter key to close this window. You are now ready to go. Proceed to the next section of this task, where you will use these shortcuts to create subclips from your video files.

Press Shift + 1 on the keyboard to select the Project panel.

If you are still in the Audio Bin file, click on the Up One Level folder button in the upper-left corner of the Project panel to move to the main Project panel.

Open the Video Bin file inside the Project panel by holding down the Ctrl or command key, and double-clicking on the Video Bin file.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + I or command + I to open the Import browser window, and browse to the folder on your designated video drive. Here, you should find all the video files you copied across at the start of this project.

Click on any file in the browser window to select it, then with the Ctrl or command key held down, click on each file you want to include in your project. If you only have a few files and you want to include them all, you can also use Ctrl + A or command + A to select all the files in that folder.

Now you need to start slicing up the larger files (large is relative when it comes to creating a montage sequence). Begin by double-clicking a long file in your Bin folder to send it to the Source window.

Use L to play forward until you find a point where you would like a clip in your montage to begin, and press K to stop playback at that point.

Once you have identified the start of your subclip, press the keyboard shortcut I to set an In point.

Repeat step 7 to find the Out point for this subclip, but this time use the keyboard shortcut O to set the Out point.

You can now create the subclip by using the keyboard shortcut you set at the start of this section (the 0 key above the letters O and P). Give your subclip a logical name, one that makes sense later in the edit process and press Enter to save this subclip to your currently active Bin file.

Repeat steps 6 through to 10 to create all the subclips you need for your montage.

It's time now to select and reject the media needed for your video montage.1. Use Shift + 1 to make the Project panel the active panel, and move up one level to show all the bins if necessary.

Use Ctrl + I or command +I to open the Import window. Browse to your Images folder on your designated video drive and import your images.

Use Shift + Accent to maximize the Project panel.

With the Project panel at its maximum size, make sure the Icon view is selected (lower-left corner of the Project panel) and review images for duplications or images that say nothing new in comparison to the other images. You can expand the size of the icons by using the Zoom tool at the lower-left corner of the Project panel.

Select the images you want using Ctrl + click or command + click. Press Ctrl + C or command + C on the keyboard to copy these files to your computer's clipboard.

Minimize the panel using Shift + Accent and return to the main Project panel area by clicking on the small folder Icon in the upper-right corner of the Project panel.

Press Ctrl + / or command + / (forward slash) to create a new Bin file and call it Montage_Name (where Name is the montage you are creating). Press Enter, and then Esc to exit the rename function.

Double-click on the Montage folder to open it in a separate panel.

Confirm whether this panel is the active one by looking for the gold border, then press Ctrl + V or command + V to paste your images into this bin.

Repeat steps 3 through to 9 for the video subclips stored in your Video Bin folder, so you have only your chosen subclips and chosen images in the Montage Bin file. See Classified Intel at the end of this task for information on how to review video clips inside the Project panel.

Close the Montage Bin file when you are finished by clicking on the red cross in the upper-right corner of the window.

Make the Project panel active by pressing Shift + 1 on the keyboard. Confirm whether it is the active panel by looking for the gold border.

With the Ctrl or command key held down, open the Montage Bin file by double-clicking on it.

Maximize the panel by pressing the Shift + Accent keys.

If icons are not already displayed, click on the Icon View button in the lower-left corner of the Project panel. Adjust the size of the icons using the zoom slider to the right-hand side of the Icon View button. Bigger is better, but ideally all icons would be visible in the panel without scrolling.

Select the clip you have chosen to display first on your Timeline, either image or video, and place that in the upper-left corner of the panel by dragging it with the mouse.

Repeat step 5 with all other video and image clips until you have a rough running order inside your Project panel.

When you have completed your rough running order, remove any unused clips from the Bin file by clicking on each one and pressing the Delete key.

Minimize the panel by pressing Shift + Accent and ensure the Timeline indicator is at the start of the music clip. Use the mouse or the left arrow key to move it there.

Click inside the Project panel (this should still be open to the Montage Bin file), and then press Ctrl + A or Command + A to select all clips in the Bin file.

Click on the Automate to Sequence button found in the lower-right area of the Project panel.

Make sure Ordering is set to Selection Order and Placement is set to At Unnumbered Markers. Deselect Ignore Audio if you would like to include the audio from your clips in the Bin: Montage tab. You can always mute them later if you change your mind, as shown in the following screenshot:

Click on OK or press Enter on the keyboard to send your clips automatically to the Timeline and aligned with your markers.

Select the Timeline by pressing Shift + 3 on the keyboard.

Play back the sequence by hitting the L key. Play the sequence back several times to get a feel for the timing; ignore any gaps in the playback at this point in the task. Once you have an idea of how you want to improve your edit, stop the play back by hitting the K key and move onto the next step.

You will have probably spotted gaps in the playback shown as a black screen. This is caused by the duration of a clip being insufficient to fill the gap between the beat markers. First of all, find a place where both files on either side of the gap are image files.

Place the Timeline indicator over the clip on the left-hand side, and then click on that clip. Open the trim editor by hitting T on the Keyboard and use Ctrl + right arrow (Windows) or command + right arrow (Mac) to expand the duration of the image up the Timeline by one frame at a time until it hits up against the next clip in the running order. Use Shift + Ctrl + right arrow (Windows), or Shift + command + right arrow arrow (Mac) to jump five frames at a time up the Timeline.

Curing the gaps caused by video subclips is not as simple because, as mentioned earlier in this project, video subclips have a definitive length that lack sufficient media handles, and they cannot be altered in the same way you altered the images in the last steps. However, it can be done using other tools. First, identify a gap that has a video file on the left-hand side of that gap.

Click on the clip to the left-hand side of the gap, then select the rate stretch tool by pressing X on the keyboard. Place the Timeline indicator over the end of the video clip, and it will appear as a red bracket with left and right facing arrows.

With the mouse button held down, drag the clip up the Timeline until it hits up against the next clip.

If you don't want to alter the speed of a clip, then you can re-edit the subclip's overall duration (thus giving it sufficient media handles for the transition to work with) by selecting a subclip in the Project panel (not on the Timeline, that won't work) and pressing Shift + 0 on the keyboard to open the Edit Subclip window.

Place the cursor under the End: field value, so that it appears as a double-headed cursor, and drag it to the right-hand side to extend the duration of that subclip. Press Enter to close this window.

Press Shift + 3 to return the focus to the Timeline, and click on the clip to select it. Make sure the Timeline indicator is over the gap, and then press T to open the trim editor.

Now use Ctrl + right arrow (Windows) or command + right arrow (Mac) to expand the duration of the video clip up the timeline one frame at a time until it hits up against the next clip in the running order. Use Shift + Ctrl + right arrow (Windows) or Shift + command+ right arrow (Mac) to jump five frames at a time up the Timeline.

Repeat the various techniques listed earlier to close all the gaps on the Timeline.

If after playback you can see some poor timing, for example, the marker you placed earlier in this project is not quite on the beat, or you would prefer the cut to be a few frames before the beat, then you can alter this simply using the Trim tool. First identify a clip on the Timeline you want to alter.

Use the + (plus) key on the keyboard to zoom in on that part of the Timeline.

Move the Timeline indicator to exactly where you want the new edit point to land, and press M on the keyboard to create a new marker at this point.

Select one of the clips below the marker, and press T on the keyboard to open the Trim tool.

If the new marker is up the Timeline (to the right-hand side of the original edit point), press Ctrl + left arrow or command + left arrow until the edit point matches the new marker. If the new marker is down the Timeline (to the left-hand side of the original edit point), press Ctrl + right arrow or command + right arrow until the edit point matches the new marker.

Repeat this process with each edit point that needs this type of fine-tuning.

Depending on which camera was used to take your images, they will either be too small or too large for the aspect ratio used by your video. First of all, locate an image on the Timeline that suffers this problem and click on it to select it.

Press Shift + 5 on the keyboard to open the Effects controls for that clip.

As with all clips in Premiere Pro CS6, the Motion effect is applied to the clip as standard. Click on the actual word Motion to select that effect.

In the Program panel (the panel displaying the Timeline output), reduce the zoom level until you can see the white bounding box that indicates the outer area of the image (you may have to reduce the viewing area in Program Monitor to 10 percent to see the bounding box). See the bottom arrow shown in the following screenshot:

Dial open the Motion effect by clicking on the small triangle to the right-hand side of the name tag. Repeat this action to open up the Scale slider.

Drag the Scale slider to the left-hand side to decrease the overall scale of the image. Note that this reduction in scale will happen to both the X and Y dimensions of the image (unless you have accidently deselected the Uniform Scale checkbox). Once the scale of the image has been reduced, you can restore the Program panel's zoom level to 50% or more.

Your images will probably have a different aspect ratio to the video you are creating, in which case, your image will still be too large on the y axis. Aside from altering the aspect ratio and making anything round into an egg shape, you will be stuck with this. You can, however, alter the position of the picture by placing the cursor under the y axis (the left-most numbers in the Position field) until you see a double-headed arrow. With the mouse button held down, drag left-hand side or right-hand side to move the image up or down.

Repeat steps 1 through to 7 for any other images on the Timeline, or use the Scale to Frame Size function. Move onto the next step once you are happy with the results.

Now that all your images are being displayed correctly, you can start to add some motion to the images. This is useful for highlighting features in certain images, a sort of zoom effect, or for panning across large panoramic photos that you may have stitched together from several images prior to importing into Premiere Pro CS6. Start by finding a simple image that you would like to add some motion and zoom to as it plays in the sequence. Click on the image you have chosen.

Place the Timeline indicator anywhere over the chosen image clip, and then move it to the first frame of that clip by pressing the up arrow on the keyboard.

In this example, the scale of this image (church bells), has been reduced to 51.6% at frame 1. At that same frame point, the y axis has been adjusted, so the top of the picture is just outside the top edge of the video-playing area. You may want to set your image to this setting in order to easily follow the next few steps.

Making sure the Timeline indicator is at the start of the clip, toggle animation on for the Position and Scale values by clicking once on the Stop Watch icon for each function. A keyframe has now been created at the start of the clip for Position and Scale.

Move the Timeline indicator to the end of the clip by pressing the down arrow, then pressing the left arrow once, so you can see the last frame of that image. Adjust the Position and Scale values to suit your needs. In this example, the image has been scaled back to 100% to create a zoom in effect. The y axis and the x axis were then adjusted to center that zoom on the church bells. This combination creates a zoom and pan effect highlighting the church bells over a smooth 5 second playback period.

Play your version of this back and you may notice the start and end to the zoom are a little sudden. To create a smoother start to the animation, drag a bounding box around the first keyframes in the effects panel with the mouse button held down. This will highlight both keyframes.

Right-click on one of the keyframes and select Temporal Interpolation | Ease Out.

Repeat this for the last keyframes in the effect panel, but select Temporal Interpolation | Ease In.

Repeat steps 9 through to 16 on each image that you would like to have some kind of motion.

Find two clips on the Timeline and place the Timeline indicator roughly over the edit point (where the two clips meet on the Timeline).

Press Ctrl + D or command + D on the keyboard to add the default cross dissolve transition between these two clips.

The transition will place itself between the clips (or to one side if one of the clips is a subclip). To alter this, double-click on the actual transition on the Timeline, and this will open the Cross Dissolve Effect Controls panel. Change the alignment to Center at Cut, Start at Cut, or End at Cut.

To alter the default duration of the cross dissolve, place the cursor just under the Duration figure until you get a double-headed arrow; drag to the left-hand side to decrease the duration and to the right-hand side to increase the duration.

To fine-tune the start or end points of the transition, toggle on Show Actual Sources, then drag the sliders until you are satisfied with the results.

When adding a transition between a video file and an image, the transition defaults to End at Cut. If you change this to Center at Cut, the display can show static frames (repeated frames in Adobe Jargon). This is because there isn't enough video on the tail of the clip to dissolve into the next clip. To correct this, open the Cross Dissolve Effects panel as described in step 3, then move the Timeline indicator to one side, so you can see the edit decision point of these clips. Change the alignment to Center at Cut if you haven't already done that.

In the center, you should see a small gray line indicating the physical end of the clip; the section beyond that is the static frame area (repeated frames). Place your cursor over this line, so that it shows as a yellow bracket with a left or right facing arrow.

With the mouse button held down, drag the tail end of the clip to the right until it reaches the end of the transition. Note that this will move the edit point of this clip a corresponding amount on the Timeline.

If you are transitioning between two subclips, you may have to repeat steps 7 and 8 on both tracks in the Cross Dissolve Effects panel.