TAPESTRY: The Art of Representation and Abstraction
Whirlwind Introduction
Adobe Premiere is a program for editing and manipulating QuickTime movies. You may use it to organize a sequence of stills or animations, insert transitions, overlay titles or other graphics, and add sound. The final product is a QuickTime movie which you may then record to video tape, store on a disk or CD, or place on your web site.
The Premiere screen area is somewhat cluttered, as illustrated by the screen shot shown below, but each window has a specific purpose. Once you get used to the function of each, it will seem (somewhat) less cluttered.
THE INDIVIDUAL SCREEN WINDOWS
 | Project Window This window displays a thumbnail and information about each separate media object in your project, whether that is a sound, a still image, or an animation. Objects must be added to the Project Window using (File > Import) before they may be used in a composition, so this is usually the first stop. Note: Project media objects are NOT duplicated in the project file, so maintaining their relative location is important. |
| Timeline Window The Timeline window ( called the Construction Window in previous versions) displays a wealth of information about the project. Two video tracks are visible as horizontal bars at the top, labled "Video 1A" and "Video 1B" along the left side. An object like a still image is placed in the composition by dragging it from the Project Window to the desired track in the Construction Window, and then stretching/shrinking it until the desired duration is achieved. A sequence of still images might be laid out by placing them alternately in the A-track and the B-track. The reason there are two is to permit them to overlap in time, and to permit the insertion of transitions into the overlap, as shown. |
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 | Transitions Transitions describe the process of blending or shifting from one image to another. One of the "cutest" windows in Premiere, the Transitions menu displays the name and a thumbnail animation of each available. To place a transition, simply drag it from the window and drop it into the Transitions track in the Timeline Window. If placed between two overlapping graphics, the transition will (1) size itself to perfectly fill the overlap, and (2) adopt the corect sense (A-to-B or B-to-A). Caution! one of the most common mistakes is to get the sense of the transition backwards, so that it transitions from A to B instead of B to A. Double-click the transition in the Timeline Window to see or change the direction of transition.
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 | Timeline Window: Simple Layout This graphic illustrates a simple layout in which two still images have been placed in the Timeline window with an overlap during the fourth second of play. If you place the two stills first and add the transition later Premiere will automatically size the transition to cover the overlap period. Note that if a third still were to be added to this sequence, it would be placed in the A-track, and the transition would be from B to A, rather than from A to B as it is in this example.
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| Timeline Window: Details The pale yellow bar indicates the "work area". Analagous to a zoom window in a 2D drawing system, this indicates the area in time that we are currently working on. Move it by dragging it from the center. Resize it by clicking at either end and dragging. The downward-pointing triangle and the vertical line mark the "Now" point. The turquoise and rose-colored stripes immediately beneath the yellow bar but only partly filling the light blue region, indicate the availability of preview files. Whenever Permiere is displaying a clip from a project it has to compute previews. When possible it saves these and makes a rough-cut clip from the previews. When preview files are not present, it may take significantly longer to generate the clip. |
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 | Preview Controller This window may sometimes appear at the bottom of the Preview Window, or separately. Like the front panel of a VCR, it includes buttons to stop, play, rewind, fast forward, and so on. If you are viewing a preview of the project, the triangle/line of the "Now" position will also be moving in the Construction Window. |
HINTS
- Premiere does NOT create a single project document containing all the data you will be working with. The Premiere project document references most of the graphics files. This means it keeps track of where they are on the disk, not their contents. If you move them or rename them after you have included them in the Premiere projejct, you will have problems.
- You will need to get maximum performance out of the computer system. You should make sure File Sharing is off. You may want to turn Virtual Memory off. Use the fastest disk on the computer to hold the project files. If you could defragment the hard disk, you would want to do that.
- Work exclusively off of the hard disk, not your ZIP disk. This means you will need to copy a big block of files from your floppy to the hard disk at the start of a session, and then copy them back at the end. If they are ALL IN THE SAME FOLDER, this will work MUCH more easily and you won't run into problems with the first hint.
- Collect all the material you expect to work with in one folder before beginning. If there is a very large amount of material, you might divide it into collections, each in it's own folder. These can be added to a project easily.
- Playback depends, in part, on the video hardware used for the playback. Thus, playback on the computer monitor may occur at a different rate than playback on the NTSC video monitor. Be sure to preview on this monitor.
- NTSC monitors (TVs) utilize "overscan" logic. That means the edge of the image is intentionally made to extend under the outer rim of the screen, where you cannot see it. Computer monitors, on the other hand, use "underscan" logic. The edge of the image is held away from the edge of the screen. If you position text or grapphics near the edge of the screen, don't be suprized if it is obstructed when viewed on your TV at home.
- NTSC monitors do not have the same color ranges as computer monitors. Certain colors, notably saturated primaries like "RED", cause undesirable smearing or blurring in the TV image and should be avoided.
- When preparing to record, don't forget to include several seconds of lead-in and trailer, so that your video content isn't too close to the previous project, and so there is ample time at the end to depress the STOP button on the recorder before the actual end of the playback.
- By the same token, if you are making a move for web or CD playback, there is no need for lead-in or trailer. If you are doing both, you might want to make two slightly different movies.
Last updated: April, 2014
