Editing Professional Videos With Adobe Premier Software

By: Adriana Notton

A few years ago it was virtually impossible to edit a movie on a home computer, but over the past two decades there have been incredible advances made in both the hardware and software for PCs and Macs. Now virtually anybody can make professional videos with Adobe Premier Software, Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and other similar packages.

Many top editors, filmmakers, videographers and creative professionals use a package like Adobe Premier to capture and edit their footage. The price is very reasonable, it has excellent features and is quite simple to grasp. It also available for both the PC and Mac, but make sure your computer has enough power to handle the software.

A lot of editing can be time consuming, but Premier has a number of features that can help make things go faster. It comes with codecs to read almost any type of video format so there is no need for transcoding the footage before importing it in. And this of course means that you can export your final edit into many different formats too, and through the program you can also deliver it online, burn it to a disc or export it to a hard drive.

But of course what makes a good editing package is of course what you can do to the raw footage to turn it into your final product. There are many simple drag-and-drop type programs available, where you edit in a very linear format, and for some simple projects or home movies they are ideal. But if you want to have no limits when editing, then a non-linear package like this is your answer.

You can edit and add effects to clips before you put them into the time-line, or even create sub-clips from those clips. You can also apply an effect to multiple clips with one move. And there are hundreds of basic effects and transitions which you can customize to suit your project.

There are some brilliant plug-ins that come with the program, and hundreds of third-party plug-ins available on the net. Depending on what you want from your video, using some of these can take it to the next level. A good example of this is the 3 way color corrector, where you can match clips to look similar with just a few basic adjustments. This can really make a difference if for example two scenes were shot at different times of the day and the light is different.

Apart from Premier, Adobe also has a number of other software options that can enhance your project, from the widely-used and loved Photoshop for photo manipulation amongst other things, to the fantastic OnLocation, which automatically digitizes your footage on set and captures it to disk. There is also After Effects which is brilliant with regard to adding effects or digital motion graphics to your project.

So whether you are a Mac or PC user, you can be editing professional videos with Adobe Premier Software in no time. There are thousands of tutorials available on the net, many by top industry professionals, to get you going. There are trial versions of the software available online, so try it before you buy it, I am sure you will be won over in no time.