Work flow help please.

[mercurycoach]

I'm a newbie with my editing experience, and coming from some experience at work with Premiere 8 now to 11.

I think I need some experts to help me on how to layout my workflow.

I worked on a project today that included clips from 2 separate cameras of a cross country race. One of the cameras was on a tripod catching action as I was working the other camera running around on the course. There is some overlap of the action.

I do not like the way the Organizer places my clips from each of the cameras "at the end of the time line" as I would like more control over when and where the clips are placed. Did 8 do this the same way? I seem to remember that I had more control over placing them on the timeline as I saw fit.

I need some help in splitting clips and getting them in the right places on the timeline. I worked with markers but became frustrated with trying to split up longer clips, getting them apart, and trying to work them into the right spots on the timeline.

I think moving the different clips into their own timelines (using 1 through 99) may be the answer and tried to do that with a couple of split clips, but it became overwhelming rather quickly and I felt the need to walk away and have a drink.

I'm sure with more trial and error I can get there, but any big picture/workflow help from the experts will be appreciated!

Thanks!

[Bob]

Premiere Elements 11 changed the user interface around quite a bit, but you should still be able to work to your liking a bit easier.

To start off, don't place the clips directly on the timeline. Go into expert mode and open the assets panel. You can now drag and drop your clips to the asset panel from the Organizer or from Windows Explorer. Adding to the asset panel will not place the clips on the timeline. This lets you work with the clips in the asset panel to preview and add in and out points before you move them to the timeline. When ready, select the clip or clips in the asset panel that you want to place on the timeline and drag and drop them to the timeline in the order you want. If you select multiple clips, the order you selected them will be the order they are placed.

Double clicking on the clip in the asset panel will open it in the clip preview window and you can set in and out points. Subsequently, when you drag the clip to the timeline, it will have those end points already set. Setting the in and out points in a clip this way will not change the endpoints of an instance of the clip that is already on the timeline. It only applies to clips copied to the timeline afterwards.

In earlier versions of Premiere Elements, you could change the in and out points and drag from the preview monitor to the asset panel and it would create a subclip which you could name. Without closing the preview panel, you could continue to set new in and out points and create subclips until you had created all that you wanted. You could then work with the subclips as desired. I don't know if you can still do this in Premiere Elements 11. I see nothing about subclips in the help file or in the table of contents of Steve's book. I suspect you can still do this and I would certainly try it. If it still works, creating subclips using a good naming convention will help you keep track of your multi-cam edits much easier. I don't have Premiere Elements 11. Perhaps Steve or someone with Premiere Elements 11 can comment.

[Steve Grisetti]

And be sure to check out our free 8-part Basic Training tutorials for Premiere Elements 11. They'll show the differences between how the program performs now and how it used to perform, how to use the Quick and Expert editing workspaces, etc. There are certainly ways to make the program work as you'd like it to.

You can see view these tutorials by going to our home page and typing "Basic Training Premiere Elements" in the search box -- or you can just view them in the lower left of this page:
http://Muvipix.com/pe11.php