Adobe Premiere Pro (Animation) 

The Adobe Website has many resources to help you learn Premiere Pro.  If you are brand new to the program, we suggest starting with the  Premiere Pro Get Started course
The tutorials on this page will introduce you to the basics of the program: How to open and save images, select areas of the canvas and work with layers. Be sure to download the sample files near the top of the page under “What you’ll need” so you can try out these techniques yourself.

Many times you’ll refine the timing of your animation in an animation-specific program, like Dragonframe, After Effects, Harmony or Photoshop and export a Quicktime .mov file from there.

However, if you have an image sequence with a constant exposure rate you can import it directly into Premiere.

Here’s a quick (under 3 minutes!) tutorial on LinkedIn Learning that shows you how to do just that. Richard Harrington is working with time-lapse stills, but the process for animation is exactly the same.

Importing the Image Sequence into Premiere Pro

Important: Remember to log into the NYU Home Page using your net ID first. Then enter LinkedIn Learning via the tile on the Work tab. By logging in via the NYU portal you have access to all tutorials and files on LinkedIn Learning, which normally require a subscription.

Tip for Animation: At around 2:30 in the tutorial he covers the all-important Modify→ Interpret Footage… function. Say your animation is consistently at an exposure rate of 2s, and you are working at 24 fps. You can set the image sequence to play at 12fps using this function, and effectively expose your image sequence at 2s in Premiere.

You might also note that After Effects presents exactly the same method for changing the frame rate of an imported Image Sequence.

This quick tutorial demonstrates a technique for creating a rough edit of an animatic, using the Automate to Sequence at Unnumbered Markers option.

In this demo below the audio is a music track. The technique will work perfectly well with dialogue, or any sort of guide track.

Color correction is a deep and complex topic. People make whole careers just doing this one specialized task.

However, the techniques needed to get your shots basically looking decent are not that difficult. Levels, curves and some basic color matching are covered in Essential color adjustments course,  which are introductory tutorials on Adobe. 

First, let me emphasize that correct levels are important.

Why?

In our every day, consumer lives, if something is too quiet, we just turn it up.

But when your brilliant film screens in the Spring Animation Festival, if your levels are incorrect your film will be too quiet, or painfully loud and distorted.

So when your final mix is done, check the VU meters in Premiere Pro.

With your movie playing, your levels should look something like this:

Those lingering red rectangles at the top are a warning that your sound is likely to distort. They will remain after you play a section, as a warning. To clear them, just click (as shown above.)

So before you export your final, take a moment to make sure your levels are correct.

Good sound is a super important component of storytelling!

If you are new at mixing in Premiere,  Understanding audio mixes course is a good tutorial from Adobe to help get you started. 

Watch Creating a title in Adobe Premiere Pro  on LinkedIn Learning for an introduction to how to quickly and intuitively create titles right in Premiere.

Important: Remember to log into the NYU Home Page using your net ID first. Then enter LinkedIn Learning via the tile on the Work tab. By logging in via the NYU portal you have access to all tutorials and files on LinkedIn Learning, which normally require a subscription.

You can also use Adobe Dynamic Link to create more sophisticated titles in After Effects. This is more of an intermediate/advanced technique. As with everything on this site, use the methods that suit your level and style!