Organizing Your Workspace

[00:00:00] Okay, here we are inside Premiere Pro.

[00:00:00] We have no clips in here yet, which is

[00:00:00] great. Here at the top left we have our

[00:00:00] three different modes. We have import

[00:00:00] mode, edit, and export. If you wanted to

[00:00:00] go back to import mode, you could just

[00:00:00] click import and you're back in import

[00:00:00] mode.

[00:00:00] But we're going to live in the edit tab

[00:00:00] for the majority of this entire

[00:00:00] tutorial. You can also see we have all

[00:00:00] these windows here and they're

[00:00:00] highlighted in blue once we click on

[00:00:00] them. The four main windows of Premiere

[00:00:00] Pro are going to be your project window,

[00:00:00] your source window, your timeline

[00:00:00] window, and your program window. What do

[00:00:00] they all do? The project window is where

[00:00:00] all of your clips are. Think of this as

[00:00:00] your file explorer or your finder within

[00:00:00] Premiere Pro. You can create folders in

[00:00:00] here. You can put those clips in

[00:00:00] folders. You can do all of your

[00:00:00] organizing inside the project window.

[00:00:00] And the types of folders and the type of

[00:00:00] organization that you create here will

[00:00:00] not have an impact on the folders and

[00:00:00] the organization that's on your hard

[00:00:00] drive, on your computer. The source

[00:00:00] window is where you preview all of your

[00:00:00] clips. So you can view them before you

[00:00:00] put them into your project. And the

[00:00:00] timeline window is where all of the

[00:00:00] clips are glued together one after the

[00:00:00] other in a sequence. And then in the

[00:00:00] program window is where you preview that

[00:00:00] sequence, aka your final project. So it

[00:00:00] makes sense. In the source window you

[00:00:00] preview your clips and in the program

[00:00:00] window you preview your sequence. This

[00:00:00] is a new update in Premiere Pro 2025,

[00:00:00] the properties panel. This panel will

[00:00:00] help you adjust different properties of

[00:00:00] the clips as you click on them. You can

[00:00:00] also adjust audio in here. You can

[00:00:00] adjust graphics in here. We'll get into

[00:00:00] that a little later.

[00:00:00] The tool panel is going to be your best

[00:00:00] friend. This is how you choose how to

[00:00:00] manipulate the clips.

[00:00:00] The main tool you're going to be working

[00:00:00] with is called the selection tool. It's

[00:00:00] this top left one. And when you hover

[00:00:00] over it, you can actually see the

[00:00:00] keyboard shortcut that is linked to that

[00:00:00] tool. So, let's say I'm on some other

[00:00:00] tool and I want to go back to the

[00:00:00] selection tool. I just press V and I'm

[00:00:00] back on the selection tool. Let's say

[00:00:00] I'm on the type tool. I press V. I'm

[00:00:00] back on the selection tool. So, V is the

[00:00:00] first shortcut that you're going to need

[00:00:00] to learn cuz you're going to be using it

[00:00:00] a lot.

[00:00:00] And then over here, that is your decibel

[00:00:00] scale. It tells you how loud your video

[00:00:00] is going to be. I don't know about you,

[00:00:00] but personally, I don't like to rely on

[00:00:00] my ears to tell me how loud things are.

[00:00:00] This will visually show you. So, you

[00:00:00] want your video to land kind of at this

[00:00:00] -12 decibel between -12 and -18. This is

[00:00:00] the sweet spot right here. So, you'll be

[00:00:00] able to see if your video is too loud,

[00:00:00] peaking over here, or if it's too quiet.

[00:00:00] There are a couple different ways to

[00:00:00] import clips, meaning bring clips into

[00:00:00] the project. You can click import media

[00:00:00] and that'll bring up your finder or file

[00:00:00] explorer and then you can find that

[00:00:00] footage here. You can

[00:00:00] bring them in obviously one by one, but

[00:00:00] you can also

[00:00:00] By the way, I did command Z in order to

[00:00:00] get back and undo.

[00:00:00] You can select the first one. You can

[00:00:00] hold down shift, select the last one.

[00:00:00] That selects all of them and you can say

[00:00:00] open and now they're all populated in

[00:00:00] here. You can also, command Z, my

[00:00:00] favorite way of doing it is simply just

[00:00:00] bringing them in on a folder level. So,

[00:00:00] here I'll bring in both footage and

[00:00:00] audio

[00:00:00] folders,

[00:00:00] drop them directly into Premiere, and it

[00:00:00] already creates bins for me.

[00:00:00] Folders, bins, same thing.

[00:00:00] I like putting numbers in front of my

[00:00:00] folders because otherwise, if I didn't

[00:00:00] have numbers, I wouldn't be able to do

[00:00:00] this.

[00:00:00] Click name, and they're alphabetized. I

[00:00:00] can create some more bins, too. If I go

[00:00:00] down here to new bin,

[00:00:00] I can call it 03 music.

[00:00:00] I can do 04 sequences.

[00:00:00] Maybe 05 graphics.

[00:00:00] And you can see the files here in the

[00:00:00] footage folder, they're already

[00:00:00] populating, as well as in the audio

[00:00:00] folder. I have my audio files.

[00:00:00] If I double-click the footage folder, it

[00:00:00] pulls it up in a separate little tab,

[00:00:00] and I still have the main project folder

[00:00:00] in this tab, so I can go back between

[00:00:00] them. Now, one great thing about

[00:00:00] Premiere Pro is that these borders are

[00:00:00] not rigid. If you hover your mouse over

[00:00:00] the border between two windows, you can

[00:00:00] make them smaller and larger to fit your

[00:00:00] needs. You can also go over here to the

[00:00:00] hamburger menu,

[00:00:00] the three lines, and you can close the

[00:00:00] panel, you can undock the panel, so now

[00:00:00] the panel's floating in space, or you

[00:00:00] can bring it back in wherever you want

[00:00:00] to. Now, let's say we got a little wild

[00:00:00] here, and we decided to,

[00:00:00] you know,

[00:00:00] experiment. And now everything is messed

[00:00:00] up, we don't know where anything is, and

[00:00:00] we can't get back to where we started.

[00:00:00] Well,

[00:00:00] have no fear because there's a default

[00:00:00] window configuration you can go back to.

[00:00:00] Just go to window, workspaces,

[00:00:00] editing, cuz that's the workspace we're

[00:00:00] working in, and go to reset to saved

[00:00:00] layout. Bam, we're back at it again.

[00:00:00] These workspaces can also be found up

[00:00:00] here in this workspaces button. Each

[00:00:00] workspace is essentially a way of

[00:00:00] organizing windows. So, you can do the

[00:00:00] captions workspace, and the captions

[00:00:00] workspace pulls up your text window and

[00:00:00] your sound window. You can go to the

[00:00:00] uh effects workspace, and that pulls up

[00:00:00] the effects panel.

[00:00:00] I just exclusively live in the editing

[00:00:00] workspace, and if I need to pull up a

[00:00:00] different panel of some sort, I go to

[00:00:00] window, I find that panel, and I pull it

[00:00:00] up. Like, for example, the learn panel,

[00:00:00] which you can see just popped up here,

[00:00:00] and you have all sorts of other

[00:00:00] tutorials that you can take. A lot of

[00:00:00] them are ones that I've shot.

[00:00:00] Going to close that learn panel. So,

[00:00:00] let's take a look at this footage bin

[00:00:00] and see what we've got. We've got a long

[00:00:00] list of clips, and we have information

[00:00:00] about each clip, such as the frame rate,

[00:00:00] the media start, the media end, the

[00:00:00] duration, and there's even more if you

[00:00:00] take this line here and move it to the

[00:00:00] right. If you didn't want to scroll to

[00:00:00] see all this stuff, and you didn't want

[00:00:00] to keep expanding this panel and then

[00:00:00] contracting it, you can use the tilde

[00:00:00] key, which is the squiggly line on the

[00:00:00] top left of your keyboard, to hover over

[00:00:00] the panel and expand it so you can see

[00:00:00] all that information. Now, for our

[00:00:00] purposes, we don't need all this, but we

[00:00:00] do need some of it.

[00:00:00] Take a look at what changes throughout

[00:00:00] these clips. We have this thing called

[00:00:00] frame rate, which changes. Some of them

[00:00:00] are this frame rate, 23.976,

[00:00:00] and then some of them are this frame

[00:00:00] rate, 59.94. Other useful information is

[00:00:00] here in the video info column, because

[00:00:00] some of the clips are 3840 by 2160, some

[00:00:00] of them 1920 by 1080. That might be

[00:00:00] useful later. So, let's take the video

[00:00:00] info column and drag it

[00:00:00] right next to the frame rate column, so

[00:00:00] we have all that information at our

[00:00:00] fingertips. And when we press tilde

[00:00:00] again, and this contracts,

[00:00:00] that will be what we see, the frame rate

[00:00:00] and the video info. There's also

[00:00:00] multiple ways of seeing your clips in

[00:00:00] these bins. Right now, we are in list

[00:00:00] view, which lists them out. But, if you

[00:00:00] want to see them as thumbnails, just go

[00:00:00] to icon view, and you can now see them

[00:00:00] as thumbnails. You can hover scrub over

[00:00:00] them left to right to see what's in

[00:00:00] there. If you wanted to make it larger,

[00:00:00] you can go here to this size wheel,

[00:00:00] and make them larger. So, now it's

[00:00:00] easier to see. And if you wanted to pull

[00:00:00] them up in your source window, just

[00:00:00] double-click. And now you can use this

[00:00:00] blue mark, which is called the current

[00:00:00] time indicator or the playhead, to move

[00:00:00] among the clip and see what is inside

[00:00:00] that clip. If your clips aren't

[00:00:00] organized alphabetically, you can go

[00:00:00] down here and organize them by name.