ALC Video Editor Standards
Course Video Editing Guidelines
This is a guideline of standards for how to organize media assets within Adobe Premiere Pro, some best practices for workflow, and how to export your final rendered media. While each project could potentially have different requirements, sticking closely to these guidelines will ensure a more efficient workflow and will make it easier should another editor need to compete or collaborate with on a project.
Setting up the project
Launch Premiere and create a new project making sure it is saved in the Premiere Projects folder in our Project folder on the NAS.
In the project window make sure you have properly labeled bins for each asset that you will be working with. These bins will somewhat mirror what is on the NAS with the exception that you may not need each assets for each project. (ie there may not be any sound fx.) Also there has to be a module folder in Premiere, however the NAS will not have that.
Import all of your videos and separate them out but Module or Lesson.
After you set up your main bins, make sure that each Module or Lesson has its own bin.
Creating Sequences
Under each module bin start with creating a new sequence named by the course, then module title and lesson title, with the underscore _MC after the title. (Example: CourseName – ModuleName – LessonTitle_MC) Then grab your A and B footage that will be found in the video folder and place in in your timeline.
Your timeline should look like this. Feel free to delete any extra audio clips that are not needed.
Afterwards you can right click on audio tracks, go to delete tracks and select Delete Audio Tracks with the “All Empty Tracks” drop down selected.
After your Multicam sequence is cleaned up make sure you sync all the audio clips together. You can do this manually or by right clicking and choosing synchronize and use the option “Audio” and “Track Channel 1”
Once your MC sequence is done for now, create new sequences for each of your parts of said Module or Lesson. At this point when naming the sequences make sure they are named based on lesson title only and have no reference to the Module numbers. We can use the numbers as bin titles for internal organization but the actually sequences and thus the subsequent rendered files need to be by title only as they are subject to reorganization later on by the course developer and course design team.
Next open up each sequence that you created and next our MC sequence into them, followed by right clicking and selecting make multicam sequence.
Once they have been turned into a multicam sequence you can bring up all the monitors in your program window by click the icon below.
If you don’t see it click the plus icon in the lower right hand corner of the program monitor.
Once you see the monitors you can use them to edit your footate.
Editing the Footage Together
Graphics
When complete make sure you add opening and closing bookends, title card splash screens and lower thirds as well as any graphics that may be necessary.
Bookends: Go to the NAS under Generic Assets\Logos\Video Intros to find the appropriate logo into for your project.
Title card splash screens: Open the Essential Graphics panel and you should see it. If you need to add it go to Generic Assets\Graphics\Splash Screen\EssentGraph_ templates and make sure you have the latest one by date.
Lower Thirds: Find them in the same place under the Essential Graphics Panel. If you need to add them go to Generic Assets\Graphics\Lower Thirds\EsstGraph_Templates.
PowerPoint slides: Open Powerpoint and export high rez images into a PNG sequence. (Make sure they are at least 1080p, do not scale.) If you need help making sure they are high rez see Steven or James. Import those images into the appropriate sub folder under the graphics folder in Premiere.
Color
Next you will want to clean up the color of the footage. Open the MC and apply a lumetri color grade and work to make sure the images look the best as possible and that they match each other. DO NOT do this on the edited sequences. Do this only on the MC as this will allow you to fix it once and it will ripple through.
Audio
There are two approaches to cleaning up the audio.
Simple
- Go to each edited sequences, and apply a Multiband compressor
- Make sure its set to Broadcast (you will have to select another option and come back to this to make it work properly) Adjust your gain if its too quiet, and then set the Margin to -3.5 if there is no music and -4 if there is.
- You can also add a bit of noise reduction too if necessary.
Advanced
- Open up your MC sequence and go to Edit -> Edit in Adobe Audition -> Sequence
- Make sure video is set to none click OK.
- Make you edits in Audition, such as adding a compressor, removing noise, and any other fixes that need to happen.
- Send back to Premiere as a mixdown file (for more info on this talk to Steven)
- Let Premiere add it to a new track.
- Most important. Make sure your new mixdown mastered audio is the TOP level track or the multicam won’t see it and you want hear your sweenented audio. (If you need to have more than one track, it gets crazy, talk to Steven)
Exporting
Once you are all done, shift click and right click on all the final sequences (not the MC). Go down and select export media.
When this box appears choose the DVDish settings.
Note: If you dont see DVDish installed you can install it yourself by going to Generic Assets\Encoder Presets and grabbing the .epr file. You will have to click the import settings icon to install the preset.
It will from there open in Media Encoder, make sure you choose the project’s Output folder as your final destination and you are done.
If you have any other questions or comments let Steven or James know.