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Sequence video clips and render an mp4 file

Overview

Name of explainer: Sequence video clips and render an mp4 file

Creative theme: Video editing

Software used: Premiere Pro

User level: BEGINNER

This is explainer 2 of 5 in this series

This series includes:

Create a project, import video clips and save the project
Sequence video clips and render an mp4 file
Trim video clips, add fades and transitions
Add text and music
Putting it all together: Stonehenge!

The Software

This series of beginner explainers uses Adobe Premiere Pro. You can download a free 7 day demo version from the Adobe website.

Premiere Pro is a PAID app, often purchased as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud ‘All Apps’ subscription. It can also be subscribed to on its own. Here are example monthly pricing options:

Pricing can change at any time – Always see Adobe’s live site for the latest information.

Premiere Pro has a ‘baby brother’ called Premiere Rush, which is a simpler video editor designed to work as well on mobile devices as traditional desktop computers and laptops. It offers a ‘quick and simple’ workflow and doesn’t include many of the tools and features of Pro. Premiere Rush is part of Adobe’s ‘Creative Cloud Express’ bundle which may be suitable for content creators working between mobile and desktop devices. It’s worth trying a free demo to see if it includes the features you need.

Please review all subscription options before committing to a purchase, bearing in mind the various bundles and pricing plans available. Also look for special subscription offers which last between 1 month and 12 months depending on your initial subscription.

This month we’re also running an explainer series for Vegas Pro (paid as a one-off fee or by subscription) as well as offering a single full-workflow explainer for Premiere Rush. Check them out!

The final product

Here’s the simple ‘Spring is sprung’ video we’re creating as we work through explainers 1 to 4. Notice the added text, fades, transitions and music track.

The pre-requisities

This is a BEGINNER workflow explainer, so you just need to install and open the software. We’ll take it from there.

We suggest watching explainer 1 in this series before continuing here.

If you’re new to IT / computing, you may need help downloading and installing the software. Start with a search for ‘how do i install premiere pro’ or speak with someone familiar with downloading and installing.

Why would I do this?

Video creation is all about storytelling! It’s essential your video clips are in the right order – Imagine if the explainer below used 26 clips in a random order!

Even if you’re new to video editing software, you’ll have heard of ‘mp4’, the most popular video file format for general use, including uploading to YouTube and Vimeo.

Let’s do it!

Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.

Good to know

Premiere Pro uses context-sensitive menus. If you find a menu option isn’t available, you probably need to click on a particular panel first.

For example, below ‘sequence settings’ is greyed out:

This is because we need to select the SEQUENCE panel first. Just click anywhere on the sequence panel, and the option is immediately made available…

Where to next?

For this beginner explainer we’ve stuck to the default option to ‘match sequence settings’ to render the file as an mp4 video. To take control over your output, in the ‘export settings’ dialog, select H.264 as the format and have a look at the various presets available. For example, below we’ve selected ‘match source – medium bitrate’ which will create what Premiere Pro considers to be a ‘medium’ size file:

There is no single ‘best’ option – If you have a long-form video to be played back in a professional environment, your choices will be different to uploading to social media or YouTube, where the platforms will further compress your videos regardless.

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in March 2022. This page was last updated in March 2022.

We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software gives users many ways in which to accomplish the same task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to reference multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risk.

Download the asset pack for this series

If you’d like to follow our explainers using the actual assets demonstrated, you can download them using the link below. Not only do you receive the logos and images used in this series – You also gain access to versions of the videos without the background music. Nice!

ASSET PACK AVAILABLE END MARCH.