Make social cuts

Kendall Plant is a designer, content creator, and art director whose unique creations incorporate nature, street photography, and even skulls.

Plant opened her project (File > Open Project) and made sure she was in the Editing workspace (Window > Workspaces > Editing). She had previously added a video clip to the project. She then dragged the video clip (skateboard_clip.mp4) from the Project panel to the Timeline.

Next Plant edited the clip to remove the motion she did not want. To do this, she moved the playhead to 00:03:10 on the Timeline and used Control+K (Windows) or Command+K (macOS) to cut the clip. Then she moved the playhead to 00:10:09 and used Control/Command+K again.

The middle segment included motion Plant did not want to keep, so she selected that clip and pressed Alt+delete (Windows) or Option+delete (macOS) to remove it.

To blend the transition, Plant right-clicked between the two clips and chose Apply Default Transitions to create a cross dissolve effect.

Next Plant gave the clip a title by adding some text. She selected the Type tool (T), added text, and used the Selection tool (V) to place it where she wanted over the video. Plant then selected the text and used the options in the Text category of the Effect Controls panel to set the type properties — typeface: Lust Italic; size: 170; tracking: 500; opacity: 70%. Then she dragged the end of the title sequence to the end of the Timeline so it would be visible for the entire duration of the clip.

Plant pressed the space bar to preview the video. She then clicked the Morning Flow sequence in the Project panel and chose Sequence > Auto Reframe Sequence. Finally, she set the Target Aspect Ratio to Vertical 9:16 for use on Instagram, and set the Motion Preset to Slower Motion to more closely match the movement in the video.

Premiere Pro analyzed the clip, then placed the reframed sequence into a folder in the Project panel, so Plant could find it easily when she was ready to output the video for use on Instagram.

When Plant used the Auto Reframe Sequence feature, Premiere Pro added keyframes based on its estimation of where the most important action occurred in the clip. Plant had the option of accepting this analysis, or making tweaks manually by locating the sequence in the Project panel and using the settings in the Effect Controls panel to adjust individual keyframes.

Plant used the Auto Reframe Sequence feature on the same edited clip to generate the sequence for optimal display on other social media platforms by choosing the other Target Aspect Ratio options. Premiere Pro resized the video and title to best fit the aspect ratio she selected.

Spend more time creating and let Premiere Pro do the work of highlighting the most important parts of your work for others to see.

Note: Project files included with this tutorial are for practice purposes only.