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Add text and music
Overview
Name of explainer: Add text and music
Creative theme: Video editing
Software used: Premiere Pro
User level: BEGINNER
This is explainer 4 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 cross-fades
- Add text and music
- Putting it all together: Project Stonehenge!
This explainer series is also available in a microlearning course format! The course is completely FREE and you can download a PDF certificate of completion like the one below at the end! See our sister site pixelsofcourse
The Software
This series of explainers for beginners uses Adobe Premiere Pro. You can download a free trial version from Adobe if you have not used it before.
Premiere Pro is a PAID app, usually purchased as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud ‘All Apps’ subscription. It can also be subscribed to on its own. Here are example pricing options:
Premiere Pro has a ‘baby brother’ called Premiere Rush, a simpler video editor designed to work on mobile devices and laptops. It offers ‘quick and simple’ workflows but doesn’t include many of the features of Premiere 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 will need.
Please review all the subscription options before committing to a purchase. Also look for subscription offers.
This month we’re also running an explainer series for Vegas Pro (which can be purchased for a one-off fee or by subscription).
The final product
Here’s the simple ‘Spring has 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 the previous explainers 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 who’s familiar with downloading and installing.
Why would I do this?
Text is often added to video projects to create a title sequence, provide additional information for the viewer (E.g. Lower thirds) or introduce individual scenes or sections (E.g. For software explainers).
Almost every video has a soundtrack, which can include any mix of music, sounds effects, ambience (E.g. A busy street or forest) and spoken voice (VO). You might not realise how important a well-mixed soundtrack is until it’s clearly ‘wrong’ or ‘missing’. For example…
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.
Download the video clips used in this series
If you’d like to follow the explainers using the video clips demonstrated, you can download them below. These files are for personal use only and must not be distributed or sold.
Good to know
Our short springtime video is complete! In the final part of this series, we’ll give you a new set of short video clips to work with as we set you an historical project!
Where to next?
Adding static text is a good place to start. Premiere Pro also includes text animation options…
1: Start by selecting the ‘Captions and Graphics’ workspace, then the ‘My Templates’ tab. Scroll down to find example templates for titles, lower thirds, credits and logos…
2: Drag and drop the template of your choice directly on to the timeline where you want it. For a transition, this will need to be between two existing video clips. Below, we’ve added the ‘bold credits’ template to the end of our cinematic flower video 🙂
We’ve used a single music track for this video. If you go on to study sound design, you’ll meet the terms diegetic and non-diegetic early on in your studies. Ready for a fun primer?
Notes and updates
There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in March 2023. This page was last updated in April 2025.
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.
This is number 9 of the 10 explainer videos available for video editing month. Make sure you check out the others!
