Model building isn’t static — things come together over time not just for the pieces and components, but the overall look. As I’ve been getting back into this hobby, I’ve learned considerably from YouTube videos that show techniques for assembly and painting.
Having gathered all the gear for recording my build, I wanted to learn some skills for putting together decent-looking videos for sharing. I spent a little time seeing what programs were available and how much they cost. I settled on Adobe Premiere Elements 2018, which gives me everything I need out of the box with lots of customization that I can’t get as easily (or at all) from free programs. Also, because Adobe is a recognized name in this arena, if I needed to figure something out, I wouldn’t have much trouble finding out how to do it.
This first post (of three) will cover the basics of getting started with Premiere.
Starting somewhere
Just one option for the software, right? Too easy!
Adobe really wants you to get the $20.99/month version of Adobe Premiere Pro with some cloud storage, etc. Given I’m a hobbyist and just getting started, I wasn’t willing to part with that much money. I went with the standalone Windows version which was $99 plus tax. It took about 40 minutes to download and install.
With that done, it’s time to see what this application can do. For that, I leaned on my Pluralsight subscription and watched Kelsey Brannan’s course Premiere Elements Fundamentals. It covers the 2015 version, but I found 2018 was basically the same interface-wise. The course is about 2.5 hours. Next up let’s go over some notes I took about Premiere’s features.
Adding and organizing media, templates
Importing media (videos, pictures, sounds) is pretty simple. Just put them in a folder and then import them. There’s a Project Assets drop-down that lets you see all your stuff, search by name, etc. that only pertains to your current video project. You can also just plug in your camera and have it auto-detect everything.
Note: Deleting something from the timeline doesn’t delete it from the Project Assets or the disk.
There are templates — video stories, instant movies, and video collages; I don’t think any of those will apply for me. It was interesting to see how Adobe makes it pretty simple to just import and go for the common reasons you’d want a make a video to share.
Another neat aspect I was impressed with is that you can get as much or as little help as you want with the different modes:
You set the video settings once at the beginning of the project. It looks like AVCHD 1080p30 is the setting I need; Advanced Video Coding High Definition, and 1080p 30 fps is the default setting on my camera.
Premiere makes it simple to configure where you want to work with your assets, and Kelsey suggested having them be on an external drive rather than your computer’s primary disk, as these projects get large very quickly. So, I ordered an external WD Elements 4 TB drive for about $100 on Amazon.
Getting some videos
With Premiere installed and a place to put some videos, I recruited my cats for some obligatory footage. 🙂
Through the process of playing around with Premiere, I discovered a few other things to fix…
- My camera’s default setting adds a time watermark to the video, so I found a way to disable that.
- Given my luck with batteries and recording, I wondered how much life I’d get out of a build session. The best I could find was somewhere between 1-3 hours. I tried an experiment and learned that I can record and charge at the same time, so that prompted another purchase — $6 cable (6′ USB A to USB Micro B) so I don’t have to worry about battery issues in the middle of recording.
With a few clicks, I was able to remove the audio track from the video and bring in a music track from bensound.com. It’s on my list to look at the YouTube free music as well.
Everything seemed comfortable until I got to the video editing basics section. Upon first viewing, nothing was too technically complicated — it was just a bit overwhelming about what tools to use and all the different options (colors, typefaces, transitions, image vs. video).
Up next
At this point we’ve hit the 80/20 highlights of Adobe Premiere Elements. In the next post, I’ll spell out more of the editing options, pointing out situations where each aspect would be helpful. The post after that will be about me applying some of the techniques I’ll likely use throughout a model build to create a video.