PPro Tutorials for Beginners

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hey, thanks for this Zach. I’m an FCP refugee currently dipping his first toe into PPro, so no doubt will get loads of useful stuff from your tutorials.

Right off the bat, I have a question though. The PPro audio waveforms are rubbish. Tiny little blips on the sequence compared with big chunky proper waveforms on the FCP timeline. Is there any way to resize the waveform display without increasing the size of the track?

Also, (ok, two questions!) in PPro you’ve got the left and right audio on one track, whereas FCP splits left and right across two tracks. This is really useful if you’ve recorded your audio via two different channels. How do I then separate in them in PPro?

Cheers!

D

[Zach Rice]

Hey Dylan,

Unfortunately, PPro doesn’t offer that many options when it comes to audio. In regards to your question, though, you are able enlarge your waveform by “unlinking” your audio file from your video clip. You can do this by right clicking on either your audio or video clip (since they are linked) and then selecting “unlink”. This separates the two files and makes them two different entities. Once you’ve done that, simply highlight your audio clip and go to “source”. Your source is the tab to the left of your Effect Controls. You should see an enlarged waveform.

I am unaware of a way to split the audio tracks : /

Like I said before, PPro isn’t the best place to edit audio, I use Adobe Audition for that.

Hope this helped!

Z

[David Mathis]

Premiere Pro does not allow you to convert mono to stereo or stereo to mono. The only way to keep your left and right channel on their own respective tracks is to make sure your sequence settings has only mono tracks is to create a new sequence and set your master audio to the appropriate settings, enter 0 for stereo tracks and the number you need for mono tracks. If you are starting a new project just do what was outlined above only you will not have to create a new sequence in this case.

You may also want to create a custom preset with settings you will use commonly. This way you won’t have to manually change settings each time.

Hope this helps.

Also new to Premiere Pro.

[Jon Barrie]

There is no need to unlink video and audio from a clip to move or open separate elements. Hold the Alt key and select the element and it will be selected without the connecting video or audio link. Then you can move it, trim it open it in the source on it’s own etc. Just like temporarily unlinking it and not having to relink it later to maintain sync 🙂

– JB

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

[Greg Leslie]

Actually, PPro will let you convert source clips from stereo to mono, mono to stereo, and get rid of unused channels. Alt-click the clip(s) you want to change and Modify -> Audio Channels.

You just have to do this before you edit the clip into the timeline.

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hey all,

Thanks for the responses. That’s helped clear another issue I’ve been having. I’m putting together an edit containing rushes the client supplied and footage we shot.

The client rushes – supplied, no surprise – as wmv, and converted here to mov, consist of one stereo track. MY footage – an interview was shot split track with the interviewee on a radio mic and a shotgun.

In a stereo sequence, PPro will not edit the audio into the timeline. I can drag it separately, but it will not edit with the video.

Only by creating a new sequence with mono tracks will the audio edit into the timeline with the video. But now, the client’s stereo rushes won’t edit into the timeline with video!

Really odd, and a big black mark against PPro in my book. If anyone knows why it does this, or a workaround, I’d love to hear it.

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Er, ok that was pretty obvious. Just set up a sequence with stereo and mono tracks, but still, that’s a really unnecessary extra bit of faff as far as I’m concerned….

[Gleb Rysanov]

[Dylan Hargreaves] “In a stereo sequence, PPro will not edit the audio into the timeline.”

You can link video and audio clips (select them all, right click -> link) and be able to move and edit them as a single clip.