Using premiere to set up your film cut

                Creating the project

Okay I know a lot of people hate this program but it is really helpful if you practice using it and better understand what you are doing. First we are going to set up your project so it is properly tailored for your film. If it’s properly tailored exporting will be less of a pain in the butt.  If you already understand how to do this skip to the next section:

When you open premiere, select new project, place it the folder you want to save it, name it, and hit okay. The new sequence box will appear. Select the general tab.  Select the information below from the dialog boxes. There’s more in the new sequence box than what I am displaying but these are the most important to pay attention to:

Editing Mode: Desktop

Time Base: 24 frames/second

Video:

Frame Size: (enter in the original dimensions of your film. If you work in 1280x720 then put in       1280x720)

Pixel Aspect Ratio: (this depends on what your dimensions are. I believe Square Pixels(1.0) are good for 16:9 ratio and the default D1/DV NTSC (0.9091) is good for 4:3 ratio like 720x480)

Check the Maximum Render Quality box

Click okay

Great now import your image sequences and put them together in your sequence panel’s timeline. Make sure that when your files are imported they have the same frame rate of the sequence setup. In our case it is 24 fps. Sometimes premiere will import your files to a different fps like 29.97. This is annoying and I have no clue why it happens, but to fix it right click on your file in the project panel and go to modify< interpret footage from the little menu that appears. Next select Assume this frame rate and type in 24. This should fix it.

Using premiere and sound

The reason why premiere is important is because it makes it easier to sync up your imagery with sound effects and dialogue. With after effects you will have to RAM preview your workspace in order to hear any sound then try to sync things up then RAM preview again to see if your audio matches with your footage. This may not sound like a big deal but it’s a pretty inefficient way to work if you have a lot of audio files. With premiere it is a lot faster because there is no need to preview.

You will need two sequences in your project file. To make another simply go to file

For the sake of clarity we will call the first sequence panel “Originals” and the second sequence panel “Final”. You will be putting your image sequence files in the Originals panel timeline and nothing more. Once you have your film cut together, export (fileOptimize stills box is checked. Export your stuff and be aware that this will take a while. My short film of 2 minutes is about 1¼ gig uncompressed and took approx. 30 minutes to export. If you are unsure of your settings or want to experiment around some try a smaller compressed codec like H.264 until you get what you want. H.264 is smaller and takes less time to produce. Once you find the settings you like best apply them to your export window and export uncompressed.

So now you have your uncompressed footage. Import that into your project file and place your movie file into your second sequence panel labeled Final. Make sure it is the correct frame rate. Right click over your movie file (inside of the sequence panel not the project panel) and choose scale to frame size. Your movie will then fit appropriately according to the 720x480 dimensions assigned to this sequence. It may not fill the entire space completely. For instance my film is 16:9 therefore it has black bars present at the top and bottom. This is expected and totally okay. Now import all of your audio (remember to keep your project panel tidy and organized). In the Final sequence is where you will put your audio and sync it up easily. Once you are done with that export this sequence uncompressed again, 24 fps, 720x480, uncheck the optimize stills box and make sure both the export video and export audio boxes are checked.

After it’s exported check the file and make sure everything looks good.

Now it is time we get this file compressed to the correct codec. Go to my Using Mpeg_4 Codec post to read this tutorial (finally yeah!)