Easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro: Ask a CS Pro session with Al Mooney

Last week, Al Mooney presented a seminar on easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro from another NLE, such as Final Cut Pro.

Here’s the recording.

(Note: If the Adobe Connect session loses audio/video synch, just click the playhead in Adobe Connect, and it will re-synchronize.)

In addition to the information that Al provided, these resources should help you to get started with Premiere Pro if you know Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer.

For more information about making the transition from Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro (including a limited-time offer to save 50% off the price of Premiere Pro or Production Premium), see this page. If you want to try Premiere Pro for free, you can do so for 30 days.

Here’s a brief outline of what Al talked about, as well as some links to more information about each subject:

main presentation

• working in Final Cut Pro 7 and exporting a project as an FCP XML file
• creating a new project in Premiere Pro and choosing project settings
• creating a new sequence and choosing sequence settings
• native format support, so that you can import and use files without transcoding
• quick user interface and workflow overview
• importing a Final Cut Pro XML project into Premiere Pro
• importing footage with the Media Browser
• customizing keyboard shortcuts and using Final Cut Pro keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro
• performing insert and overwrite edits by dragging from Source to Program panel
  (Note: When Al tried this in his demo, it failed because he didn’t have a video track targeted to accept the new video clip into his sequence.)
• RED digital cinema (R3D) footage and RMD (RED metadata) files
• choosing sequence settings based on characteristics of a clip
• Mercury Playback Engine, CUDA, and what it all means
• red, yellow, and green render bars; rendering preview files
• Ultra Key effect
• compositing
• improving playback smoothness by modifying playback resolution
• working with After Effects and Premiere Pro
• merging clips for dual-system sound workflow
• editing audio in Audition from Premiere Pro
• using Adobe Media Encoder for encoding and exporting:
  • dragging sequences to the encoding queue; using watch folders for automated and batch encoding
  • using encoding presets for iPad, iPod, YouTube, Vimeo, and such

question-and-answer session

• red, yellow, and green render bars; rendering preview files
• showing timecode in the Program Monitor panel
• how to submit bug reports and feature requests and other feedback
• four-point edits and Fit To Fill
• effect presets
• Dynamic Link no longer a one-way street
• making lower thirds:
  • using Photoshop and importing PSD files
  • the Premiere Pro Titler
  • using After Effects for animated lower thirds
  • automating lower third creation
  • … and so many more ways
• OpenGL in After Effects
• interlacing and video fields
• AAF
• OMF
• working with ProRes footage (and advanced options)

Several of the items above relate to performance and hardware requirements, which we get a lot of questions about. So we put together this page full of resources about making Adobe Premiere Pro (and After Effects) work faster.