Getting Started
Launch Premiere Pro from the Applications folder. If you are using one of the computers on campus, sign in using your Emerson email.
Close the pop up to get to the homepage
Select "New Project"
In the top left, name your project and set a location to save your work.
We advise saving your work to a hard drive, especially if you are working on a computer on campus. Click the drop down next to "Project location" and select "choose location."
This will open a finder window where you can select a location. For organizational purposes, it is a good idea to make a new folder on your hard drive for this specific project. When you have your folder selected, click "Choose."
Importing Media (optional)
In new versions of Premiere, you have the option of importing footage as you start your project. You can always import media to your project later, so this step is optional right now.
Below, Premiere Pro will offer sample footage. You can ignore this.
On the left side of the Premiere window, you will see various locations. For example, my hard drive is listed under "Devices" as DPL 03.
If you want to import media, you can navigate to the folder where you have your audio and/or video files saved. In the example image, I have media saved on my drive "DPL 03" in the folder "Delicious Peace" I can import the entire folder by clicking the check box above the folder icon
Alternatively, I can double click on the "Delicious Peace" folder to see each individual video and audio file. From here I can add the check mark to specific clips that I want to import in my project. This is helpful if you want to import some clips, but not all of the clips in a folder.
Again, importing media at this time is completely optional. If you prefer to create your project file first and import your clips later, that is very common.
Import Settings
On the right side of the Premiere window, you will see "Import settings."
In general, it is usually best to turn everything here off
By default "Create New Sequence" may be turned on. If you have media selected to be imported, leaving this setting on will automatically create a new sequence with the footage you have selected. If the footage has varying resolutions or frame rates, you may run into issues so we generally suggest you turn it off and create a sequence after your project is created.
Final Step
On the bottom right, click "Create"
File Management
One of the nicest features of Premiere is that it keeps file management nice and simple. Your entire project will be saved in a .prproj file on your external hard drive. Keep in mind that this file does not contain any media, making it easy to transfer from place to place, but also making it easy to be disconnected from your media should you separate the two. We recommend always keeping your Premiere project file on the same hard drive as your media, and it's also highly recommended to back up that hard drive to at least one other location. Back up early and back up often.
One disadvantage of the way Premiere saves is that it's easy to continuously save over your previous project file. Good file management dictates that you keep old project files in case of major failures later on or even if there's simply something you liked better the way you had it earlier. To achieve this in Premiere, simply save your project with a dated filename (i.e."ProjectName_01-23-16") each time you open it to work on. Now, anytime you save while editing, you're only overwriting your day's progress.