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description: "Premiere Pro Basics — Premiere Pro is Adobe's video editor: you import footage, arrange it on a timeline, trim it into a sequence, and export a finished…"---

04 · Premiere Pro Basics

Premiere Pro is Adobe's video editor: you import footage, arrange it on a timeline, trim it into a sequence, and export a finished file. This module covers the workspace, importing footage, the timeline itself, basic cuts/trims, and exporting a rough cut — the exact loop you'll repeat in every editing session.

1. Workspace tour

  1. Open Premiere Pro and create a new project: on the Home screen click New Project, name it, and choose a save location.
  2. The default Editing workspace layout has four areas:
  3. Project panel (bottom-left) — every imported file lives here as a clip you can drag into a sequence.
  4. Source Monitor (top-left) — previews a clip before it's placed on the timeline, and lets you set in/out trim points on the raw clip.
  5. Program Monitor (top-right) — previews the sequence as it will actually play, i.e. what's currently on the timeline.
  6. Timeline panel (bottom) — where clips are arranged in sequence.
  7. If a panel goes missing, Window menu lists every panel; Window > Workspaces > Reset to Saved Layout restores the default arrangement if things get rearranged.

2. Importing footage

  1. File > Import (⌘/Ctrl+I), or double-click empty space in the Project panel, and select your video/audio/image files.
  2. Imported files appear as clips in the Project panel — this is just a reference to the file on disk, not a copy, so don't move or rename source files after importing without relinking (Right-click clip > Link Media if a file goes missing, shown as a red offline warning).
  3. Organize the Project panel with bins: Right-click > New Bin (or the folder icon at the bottom of the panel) to group clips, exactly like folders — useful once a project has more than a handful of files.
  4. Double-click a clip in the Project panel to load it into the Source Monitor for previewing before you commit it to the timeline.

3. The timeline and creating a sequence

  1. Drag your first clip from the Project panel directly onto empty timeline space — Premiere automatically creates a new Sequence matching that clip's resolution and frame rate.
  2. A sequence has numbered video tracks (V1, V2, ...) stacked with higher tracks drawn on top, and audio tracks (A1, A2, ...) below, mixed together on playback.
  3. Drag additional clips onto tracks to place them in time; drag a clip left/right along its track to reposition it. Use the Selection tool (V) for this — it's the default tool and the one you'll use most.
  4. Zoom the timeline in/out with =/- (or the zoom slider at the timeline's bottom edge) to see more detail or the whole sequence at once.
  5. Press Spacebar to play/pause the Program Monitor from the playhead's current position; drag the playhead (the blue marker at the top of the timeline ruler) to scrub to a specific point.

4. Basic cuts and trims

  1. Razor tool (C) — click anywhere on a clip in the timeline to cut it into two separate clips at that point, which you can then move/delete/replace independently.
  2. Ripple Delete — select an unwanted clip segment and press Shift+Delete (or right-click > Ripple Delete) to remove it and close the resulting gap by shifting everything after it left. A plain Delete just leaves a blank gap in its place.
  3. Trimming a clip's length — hover over a clip's left or right edge with the Selection tool until the cursor shows a trim icon (a bracket), then drag inward/outward to shorten or lengthen that clip's in/out points without affecting other clips.
  4. Setting in/out points before placing a clip — in the Source Monitor, press I at the desired start frame and O at the desired end frame; only that trimmed range is inserted when you then drag the clip (or press the Insert/Overwrite buttons below the monitor) onto the timeline.
  5. Insert vs. Overwrite onto the timeline: Insert (comma key, ,) pushes existing clips at the playhead position rightward to make room; Overwrite (period key, .) replaces whatever is already there at that position with the new clip.

5. Exporting a rough cut

  1. With the sequence you want to export active (click its tab), go to File > Export > Media (⌘/Ctrl+M).
  2. In the Export Settings dialog:
  3. Format: choose H.264 for a standard shareable MP4 — the most universally playable choice for a rough cut review.
  4. Preset: Match Source - High bitrate keeps your sequence's existing resolution/frame rate, which is usually right for an internal review cut.
  5. Output Name: click the blue filename link to choose where it saves and what it's called.
  6. Click Export to render immediately, or Queue to send it to Adobe Media Encoder (a separate app for batch/background exports) if you want to keep editing in Premiere while it renders.
  7. A progress bar appears (in Premiere or in Media Encoder); once complete, the exported file opens in your OS's default video player if you leave "Open when complete" enabled, or you can find it at the path you chose in step 2.

\"Rough cut\" means good enough to review, not final

A rough cut is for checking pacing and story, not polish — don't worry yet about color correction, audio leveling, or transitions between clips. Those are covered in Module 8, once you're comfortable with the basic cut/trim/export loop from this module.

Cheat sheet

Tool/Action Shortcut
New project (Home screen) New Project
Import media ⌘/Ctrl+I
New bin (Project panel) Right-click > New Bin
Selection tool V
Razor tool (cut a clip) C
Ripple Delete (remove + close gap) Shift+Delete
Set in point / out point (Source Monitor) I / O
Insert onto timeline at playhead , (comma)
Overwrite onto timeline at playhead . (period)
Play/pause Spacebar
Export Media dialog ⌘/Ctrl+M

How It Actually Works

  • A sequence is a timeline of edit decisions, not rendered video. Every clip on a track is really a pointer to a source file plus an in/out range and a position in time — this "edit decision list" model is why trimming, moving, or deleting a clip is instant regardless of the source file's length or resolution: Premiere is only rewriting timestamps and references, not touching a single pixel of the underlying media, until you export.
  • Playback is real-time decoding plus compositing, which is why some footage plays smoothly and other footage doesn't. The Program Monitor has to decode every visible track's source codec, apply any effects, and composite the tracks together fast enough to hit the sequence's frame rate — live, every time you move the playhead. Long-GOP formats (like H.264 from most cameras) are cheap to store but expensive to decode because each frame depends on nearby frames; that's why heavily-compressed footage often stutters in the Program Monitor even though the same file plays fine in a simple media player (which doesn't need to seek/scrub arbitrarily or composite anything on top).
  • Ripple Delete vs. plain Delete is a difference in what happens to every clip after the cut point, not just the one you touched. A plain Delete only changes the range you selected, leaving a gap because nothing else on the track is told to move. Ripple Delete additionally shifts every later clip on that track (and, depending on settings, linked clips on other tracks) leftward by exactly the duration removed — it's a global time-shift operation on the sequence, not a local edit, which is also why it can silently desync unlinked audio on a different track if you're not careful.
  • Insert vs. Overwrite differ in whether existing content is time-shifted or destroyed. Insert performs the same ripple-shift as Ripple Delete but in reverse — it pushes everything at and after the playhead later in time to make room. Overwrite does no shifting at all; it just replaces whatever frames already occupy that exact time range on that track, which is why Overwrite can silently delete footage outside the visible timeline area if you're not watching the duration of what you're dropping in.
  • Export is where the edit decision list finally becomes pixels. Media Encoder (or Premiere's own export) walks the sequence frame by frame, decodes every source clip needed for that frame, applies effects and compositing in the order the tracks and effect stack specify, then re-encodes the composited result into the target codec/container you chose. This single-pass render is why export time scales with sequence duration and effect complexity rather than with how many edits you made to arrive at that timeline — a heavily-edited sequence assembled from simple footage exports faster than a short sequence with heavy color or motion effects on every frame.

Exercise

Import at least two video clips (or download short stock/sample clips if you don't have any on hand). Build a sequence that cuts between them at least twice, using the Razor tool to trim unwanted footage and Ripple Delete to close the resulting gaps. Set in/out points on a third clip in the Source Monitor before inserting just that trimmed range onto the timeline. Export the result as an H.264 MP4 rough cut using File > Export > Media.