Whether you need to create a simple video clip on the Web or a sophisticated documentary or presentation, Premiere has the tools you need to create a dynamic video production. In fact, the best way to think about Premiere is to visualize it as a complete production facility.

You’d need a roomful of videotape and special effects equipment to do everything Premiere can do. Here’s a short list of some of the production tasks that you can accomplish with Premiere:

• Edit digital video clips into a complete digital video production.
• Capture video from a digital camcorder or videotape recorder.
• Capture audio from a microphone or audio recording device.
• Load stock digital graphics, video, and audio clips.
• Create titles and animated title effects, such as scrolling or rolling titles.
• Integrate files from different sources into your production. Premiere loads digital video and audio files. It also loads graphics created in Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as reading JPEG and TIFF files.
• Create special effects, such as distortions, blurring, and pinching.
• Create motion effects in which logos or graphics move or bounce across the screen.
• Create transparency effects. You can superimpose titles over backgrounds, or use color, such as blue or green to mask the background from one image so that you can superimpose a new background.
• Edit sound. Premiere enables you to cut and assemble audio clips, as well as create sophisticated audio effects, such as cross-fades and pans.
• Create transitions. Premiere can create simple dissolves from one scene to another, as well as a host of sophisticated transition effects, such as page curl and curtain wipes.
• Output files in a variety of digital formats. Premiere can output QuickTime and Video for Windows files. These files can be viewed in other programs, as well as on the Web. Premiere also features Web-specific file formats, such as animated GIF. You can also use Premiere’s Advanced RealMedia Export command to export your clips to RealVideo format for the Web.
• Output files to videotape.
• Output Edit Decision Lists. Edit Decision Lists can be used by professional production houses to re-create your digital production on videotape.

To understand the Premiere production process, it’s helpful to have a basic concept of the steps involved in creating a videotape production in which the production footage is not digitized. In traditional video production, all production elements are transferred to videotape.

During the editing process, the final production is electronically edited onto one final or program videotape. Even though computers are used while editing, the linear or analog nature of videotape makes the process very time-consuming—during the actual production-editing session, tapes must be loaded and unloaded from tape or cassette machines.

Time is wasted as producers simply wait for videotape machines to reach the correct editing point. The production is usually assembled sequentially. If you want to go back to a previous scene and replace it with one that is shorter or longer, all subsequent scenes must be rerecorded to the program reel.

Programs such as Premiere have revolutionized the entire process of video editing. Digital video and Adobe Premiere eliminate many of the time-consuming production chores of traditional editing. When using Premiere, you don’t need to hunt for tapes or load and remove them from tape machines.

When producers use Premiere, all production elements are digitized to disk. Each element in a production, whether it is a video clip, a sound clip, or a still image, is represented by an icon in Premiere’s Project window. The final production is represented by icons in a window called the Timeline.

When you need to use a video clip, sound clip, or still image, you simply click on it in the Project window, and drag it into the Timeline window. You can place the items of your production down sequentially, or drag them anywhere to different tracks in the Timeline window.

As you work, you can access any portion of your production by clicking on the desired portion in the Timeline window with the mouse. You can also use the mouse to click on either the beginning or end of a clip and to shorten or extend the clip duration. To fine-tune your edits, you can view and edit the clips frame-by-frame in the Timeline window.

You can also set in and out points in the Clip or Monitor window. Setting an In point affects where a clip starts playing, and setting an Out point affects where a clip stops playing. Because all clips are digitized (and no videotape is involved), Premiere can quickly adjust the final production as you edit.

Here’s a quick summary of some of the digital-editing magic that you can perform in Premiere by simply dragging clips in the Timeline.

• Rolling edit—as you click and drag to add frames to the clip in the Timeline, Premiere automatically subtracts from the frames in the next clip. As you click and drag to remove frames, Premiere automatically adds back frames from the next clip in the Timeline.

• Ripple edit—As you add or subtract frames, Premiere automatically adds to or subtracts from the duration of the entire program.

• Slip edit—As you drag a clip left or right, its In and Out points automatically change, but the program duration remains the same.

• Slide edit—As you drag a clip left or right, its duration is kept intact, but Premiere changes the In or Out points of the preceding or succeeding clip.

As you work, you can easily preview edits, special effects, and transitions. Changing edits and effects is often a simple matter of changing in and out points. There’s no hunting down the right videotape or waiting for the production to be reassembled on tape.

When all of your editing is completed, you can export the file to videotape or to a digital file format. You can export it as many times as you want, in as many different file formats as you want.