Muffins Recipe Video: Adding Audio & Video in Premiere Pro

Topics Covered in This Premiere Pro Tutorial:

Editing Music, Adjusting Audio Levels, Selecting and Organizing Clips

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

In a series of exercises, we’ll create a how-to video for a banana muffins recipe, similar to what you would see in BuzzFeed’s Tasty videos. You’ll learn to speed up footage, work with more text graphics, and export the final movie so it’s ready for YouTube or social media.

In this exercise, you’ll learn some new audio editing techniques, and select the shots we’ll be using in the final video.

Previewing the Final Video

1. Let’s see a preview of what you’ll be making. It has sound, so make sure your speakers are turned on, or your headphones are plugged in.

2. On the Desktop, navigate to Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Banana Muffins > Finished Movie and double–click Muffins-Recipe.mp4.

3. Play the video and notice the following (watch it as many times as you need):

   • Making the muffins is a very sped-up process.
   • We can see each ingredient as it’s being added and the process of how we incorporate each ingredient into the batter.
   • Almost all footage is shot at one camera angle—a fixed medium camera angle from above.
   • Text outlining the recipe is overlaid onto the footage. We’ll add that later.
   • Around 00:39 there is a second and then a third camera angle, before returning to the first camera angle again for the ending.

Getting Started

1. In Premiere Pro, go to File > Close All Projects to close any open projects.

2. Go to File > New > Project.

3. In the New Project window, next to Name, type yourname-Muffins-music.

4. To the right of Location, click Browse.

5. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Banana Muffins and click Choose (Mac) or Select Folder (Windows).

6. When done, click OK.

7. Let’s set some preferences for this project. Go into the Premiere Pro (Mac) or Edit (Windows) menu and choose Preferences > Timeline.

8. Set Video Transition Default Duration to 1.00 Seconds.

9. Set Audio Transition Default Duration to 1.00 Seconds.

10. Set Still Image Default Duration to 3.00 Seconds.

11. On the bottom right, click OK.

12. Make sure you’re in the Editing workspace by going to Window > Workspaces > Editing.

13. Go to Window > Workspaces > Reset to Saved Layout to make sure we’re all using the same preset (not customized).

14. Go to File > New > Sequence.

15. On the left, under Sequence Presets, expand into Digital SLR > 1080p and click DSLR 1080p24 so that it’s highlighted. Notice we’re using p24 this time, not p30!

16. At the bottom of the window, next to Sequence Name, type Muffins-edit.

17. Click OK.

18. In the Sequence menu, make sure Selection Follows Playhead is turned not checked.

Editing Music

1. To import the music file we’ll be using in our project, keep Premiere open but switch to your Desktop.
2. Navigate to Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Banana Muffins > Capture.
3. Drag the music folder on the Project panel in Premiere Pro (to import the folder and all of its contents).
4. In Premiere’s Project panel, expand the music folder.
5. Drag Morning_Stroll.mp3 to the Timeline, dropping it on A1.

6. In the Timeline, make sure you can view the entire duration of the audio file.

   You’ll notice by looking at the waveform that the audio file is around a minute and a half long, which is quite long. We want to shorten the duration of the audio so that it’s only 54 seconds long.

7. In the Timeline’s top left timecode field, type 5400 to move the playhead there.

8. Drag in the right end so that the clip ends at the playhead at 54:00.

9. Let’s listen to see if we can add a simple fade to the end. Move the playhead to around 49:00 and press Spacebar to play through the end. Hmm, that’s not really going to work with just a simple fade.

10. The song actually has a really great ending that would be perfect to use so let’s see if there’s another section of the audio we can edit instead.

    In the Project panel, double–click the audio file so that it opens in the top left Source Monitor.

11. Preview the ending from around 1;28;00. Perfect ending music!

12. Because we can’t just cut off the end of the clip to get the duration that we want, we’re going to use a technique called “back-timing.” First, we need to locate the end of the music. The last note reverberates for a little while so the actual end of the song seems to be at about 1;33;05. Move the playhead there.

13. Unfortunately, we can’t just end the song here and drag it in to the Timeline because it’s 1;33 long, and we only want 54 seconds. Instead we’re going to drag in the last 10 seconds of the audio clip and align it with the audio track in the Timeline.

    With the playhead still at 1;33;05, hit the letter o.

14. We just want 10 seconds of the audio file so move the playhead to 1;23;04

15. Hit i.

16. Drag from the Drag Audio Only icon down to the Timeline and drop it on track A2, aligning the end of the clip with the end of the clip on A1.

    

17. Increase the height of both the A1 and A2 tracks so you can see them better.

18. Press the plus (+) key to zoom in on the Timeline so we can see the waveforms better. What we want is for the two sections of music to align nicely.

19. Play back the clips together from around 46:00. Not quite in sync at the moment!

20. Let’s try and find the beginning of the musical phrase on that end piece (on A2). Next to A1 click the Mute Track button to mute the track.

21. It seems like that ending phrase is a little cut off so drag out the beginning of the clip a few frames to extend it a little more.

22. Locate the valley around 43:15. This is probably a good spot to shorten it up.

23. Move the playhead there and drag in the left end of the clip so it snaps to the playhead.

24. Use the waveforms to align the tracks. You’ll have to move the bottom clip back a bit by a few frames. (Make sure to drag it over from inside the clip.)

    NOTE: Turning off snapping in the top left of the Timeline will help to move the track. Just remember to turn it back on before continuing.

25. Unmute the A1 audio by clicking the Mute Track button .

26. Play back the two tracks together again to see how they’re sounding.

27. We found that the second track should start at 43:12 for them to be in sync so move it there if it isn’t already.

28. Now that they’re in sync, we can put them together. Drag the clip on A2 up to A1.

29. CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on the seam between the two clips and select Apply Default Transitions.

30. Move the playhead a little before the transition and play the section of audio back. Nice and seamless!

31. At the moment there are a few extra frames at the end, left over from the first clip. Zoom in on the end of the Timeline and Delete the extra section as shown below:

    

32. Drag out the end of the audio clip so it ends at 54:00. Great, we have our audio clip!

Adjusting Audio Levels

1. Let’s double-check our Audio Levels before we move on to our video editing. Play through from the beginning while keeping an eye on the levels in the Audio Meter on the far right of the Timeline.

   Notice that the levels are popping up between 0 and –6 at times. Optimally we want the audio to be no louder than –9 decibels (so within the green to yellow range).

2. In order to adjust the volume of both of these clips together, we’ll switch workspaces. At the top of Premiere, click the word Audio to switch to the Audio workspace.

3. So that we can get a nice big read of the levels, drag the Audio Meters panel currently located to the right of the Timeline over to the Essential Sound panel on the far right, if it’s not already there.

4. We want to universally lower the clip’s audio, so make sure you’re in the Audio Track Mixer (the second tab in the middle panel).

5. In the leftmost A1 column, drag the volume slider down to –10. This should give us a better volume level. Play it back to be sure.

   NOTE: You can also click on the blue number at the bottom and type in the value.

6. Go to File > Save.

7. We’ll actually use a different project to get our video shots so go to File > Close Project.

Selecting & Organizing Clips

Next, we’ll select the shots we’re going to use and string them together into an edit. We’ve already started the process and done some of the groundwork for you.

1. To open the starter project, go to File > Open Project.

2. Navigate to Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Banana Muffins to open the BananaMuffins-start.prproj file.

3. Go to File > Save As.

4. Save this project as yourname-BananaMuffins in the Banana Muffins folder.

5. At the top of Premiere, switch back to the Editing workspace.

6. In the Project panel, notice that this project has:

   • A footage sequence
   • A Titles sequence
   • A video folder of numbered videos. Take note that these videos were all shot with the same camera in the same order.

7. Double–click the footage sequence to open it in the Timeline.

   Notice that there are some cuts already made for you, and the selected shots that we’ll be using have been lifted up on to the V2 track.

8. While working in the footage sequence, make sure Snapping is turned on (blue) and Linked Selection is also turned on. This is important, otherwise our cutting won’t behave the way it is supposed to.

9. We need to make a few additional cuts, so we’ll do those now. Move the playhead to 15:04.

10. Choose the Razor tool .

11. Click at the playhead to cut the clip.

12. Move the playhead to 23:16 where we want to make the next cut.

    TIP: To jump to a specific timecode, you don’t have to click on the timecode readout first. If you have a full size keyboard with a numberpad on the right, you can simply start typing the numbers! Just make sure no clips are selected when you start typing (or else you’ll move them to the timecode instead of moving the playhead).

13. Use the Razor tool to cut at the playhead.

14. Move the playhead to 30:20 and cut here.

15. Move the playhead to 3:52:07 and cut here as well.

16. Make one more cut at 4:54:10.

17. Choose the Selection tool .
18. We’re now going to select all of the shots that we intend to use. Move the playhead back to 15:04.
19. As needed, zoom out on the Timeline with the minus (–) key or zoom in with the plus (+) key.

20. Find the clip that begins at 15:04 and drag it up to V2. This is the first section that we want to actually use in our final video.

    NOTE: We don’t want to use the audio from shooting so we removed it from the first clip already. We’ll be deleting it from the others later on.

21. We won’t use the next clip we cut, but we will use the following longer section beginning at 30:20.

    TIP: You can use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow to navigate between cuts, on active tracks.

22. Drag the clip that starts at 30:20 up to the V2 track.

23. We’ll also be using the section immediately after, so go ahead and drag that section up as well (beginning at 3:52:07).

    Great, we’ve isolated 3 additional shots that we’ll be using.

24. Do a File > Save and leave this project open to use in the next exercise.