Managing Media in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
The Project panel in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 provides a means of accessing and organizing your assets—video clips, audio files, still images, graphics, and sequences. Each listed media asset is a link. The files themselves remain in their file folders, while the assets are stored in bins. Bins behave like folders as a way to organize and categorize assets visually within Adobe Premiere Pro.
Importing and logically arranging your assets in the Project panel is simple. You can create new bins and even bins inside bins.
In this exercise, you'll check out some of the Project panel options and rearrange some clips. If you need to start fresh, open the Project 04-1.prproj lesson file from Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Classroom in a Book. (If you don't have the book, use your own files to follow along.)
- Click the Icon View button in the lower-left corner of the Project panel (see Figure 1). This action changes the Project panel display from a list to thumbnails and icons.
- Expand the Project panel by dragging its right edge to the right so you can see all the items.
- Click 30 second score.wav to select it, and then click the Play-Stop Toggle button on the thumbnail viewer (see Figure 2).
You can click any other asset and play it. The Play-Stop Toggle button will be unavailable (dimmed) for still images and graphics.
- Click footfalls.avi and then drag the slider under the thumbnail viewer a few seconds into the clip.
- Click the Poster Frame button next to the preview to create a new thumbnail image for that clip (see Figure 3).
- Click the New Bin button to create a new file folder. The new bin appears in the Project panel with its default name (Bin 01), as shown in Figure 4.
- Change the bin's name from Bin 01 to audio and then press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac).
- Create another bin, naming it stills.
- Drag the audio clip to the audio bin thumbnail.
- Drag the two JPEG stills and the Illustrator file to the new stills bin.
- Return to List view (click the List View button, to the left of the Icon View button).
- Click somewhere in the Project panel to deselect any bin that might be selected.
- Click the New Bin button to create a new bin. Name it sequences.
- Open the PS Layered image bin, and drag the Layered Photoshop File sequence to the sequences bin.
- Create one more bin named movies, and drag the movie file to that bin.
- Click somewhere in the Project panel to deselect any bin that might be selected.
- Drag Sequence 01 to the movies bin as well.
- Click Name twice at the top of the file link list in the Project panel to put all the asset links and bins in alphabetical order. Your Project panel should appear as shown in Figure 5.