Tuesday , April 16 2024
Do you want to learn to work with Premiere Pro CS5?

Book Review: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5: Learn by Video (Book with DVD-ROM) by Maxim Jago and Jan Ozer

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is a complete program that consists of high quality, Adobe approved video training that is meant to teach you the fundamentals of Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS5. When you register your book at Peachpit, you will get bonus training that covers CS5.5

The videos contained within are short, focused, and solution-oriented. Exercise files are included so that you can get hands-on experience using this powerful program. This HD (720p) video is 15 hours in length and contains 13 chapters. There is also an 120 page booklet that highlights what you learn in the video as well as additional information.

Chapter 1, “Introduction,” begins with a look at how Premiere Pro works. Here you will take a tour around the interface, see how to start editing, how to share assets with After Effects, and perform some basic tasks. Chapter 2, “Getting Set Up,” next shows you how to create and set up new projects, looks at Premiere Pro preferences, recording clips, capturing clips, creating a storyboard, saving your work and much more.

Chapter 3, “Editing Clips,” examines one of the main purposes of Premiere Pro is in cutting. Here you will see how to work with tracks, timelines, and sequence structures as well as track patching and other types of editing. Chapter 4, “Transitions,” describes not only how to move from one clip to another, but how to add edits, trim clips on the timeline, transition effects, how to select video and audio separately and together, as well as keyframing opacity to create transitions.

Chapter 5, “Nested Sequences and Multi-Camera Editing,” looks at more advanced editing techniques such as working with nested sequence clips, multi-camera editing, synchronizing multiple clips, switching camera angles on the fly, and finalizing multicam edits. Chapter 6, “Effects,” let you correct problems like poor exposure or white balance as well as embellish your clips. Here you begin with an introduction to effects and then go through everything from the new Mercury Playback Engine, keyframing effects, picture-in-picture effects, 3D effects and much more.

Chapter 7, “Creating Titles,” is a powerful and commonly used element of video production and here you will begin working with text, title templates, creating moving titles, and creating titles in Photoshop. Chapter 8, “Integrating Premiere, Photoshop, and After Effects,” is really one of the big “WOW” factors when working with Premiere Pro and this chapter explores the Creative Suite Production Premium and looks at Photoshop basics, After Effects, and how they can interact.

Chapter 9, “Audio,” is at least as important as the video and you will now look at working with audio in Premiere Pro. Here you will see how work with the extensive audio-related toolset that comes with this product. You will work with audio volumes, gain, waveforms, creating submixes, Soundbooth, recording voiceovers, and more. Chapter 10, “Metadata and Content Analysis,” shows how to add metadata to clips, convert speech to text, work with transcribed text, and face detection in the project panel. All of this will improve the efficiency of your workflow.

Chapter 11, “Outputting Video,” means that it is time to share your project with the world. This chapter examines recording to videotape, working with the output settings dialog box, work with Adobe Media Encoder, and optimizing your project.

Chapter 12, “Working with Adobe Encore CS5,” takes a look at the Encore interface, what Encore does, how to link everything together, and building your DVD, Blu-ray, and Flash output. Chapter 13, “Production Support with Adobe OnLocation CS5,” finishes the video up with working with OnLocation – a unique tool for pre-production and location filming. Here you will see how to prepare for your shoot, calibrate your monitor, and record your footage as well as direct-to-disk recording and selecting clips for Premiere Pro.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is really well done and easy to understand. The presentation is straightforward and presented in a manner that almost anyone can understand. What I liked best is the fact that they work through a real editing situation while still managing to show you almost everything there is to know about Premiere Pro.

Also, in addition to having the ability to send the videos to your iPhone or iPad, there are lesson files and media that come with the DVD, there is a section at the end that will allow you to quiz yourself, and a booklet provides summary information so you don’t have to always go back and re-watch the video. If you want to learn how to use Premiere Pro, if you have worked with it, but want to really get better fast, then I highly recommend Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

About T. Michael Testi

Photographer, writer, software engineer, educator, and maker of fine images.

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