Premiere Pro Guided Workflow: Organize Footage

Premiere Pro Guided Workflow: Organize Footage

Once you import footage into the Project panel, you can organize it into folders called bins in Premiere Pro. 

To create a new folder (called a bin), choose File > New > Bin. You can create a bin using keyboard shortcuts too. (WIN) Ctrl + / or (macOS) CMD  + /  Read the user guide here for more information on creating bins.

Check out this video tutorial from chinfat. He has a great video tutorial for organizing video projects.

Organization Basics

Organizing footage on your computer's hard drive before importing it into your project helps manage a video project even before you start cutting. Furthermore, having the same hierarchy for folders for your video project makes assets easy to locate, especially if they ever become disconnected (the terminology is "unlinked"). Consider placing your project file in a folder within this hierarchy. This action further organizes project assets.

For small projects, I create just a few bins, like the following:

• Footage
• Sequences
• Audio
• Graphics

The interesting thing is that, like folders, you can have bins located within bins. For example, perhaps you are making a travel video and have several locations you recorded. You could create a separate bin for each city or country in your footage bin, like this:

• Footage
  • Italy
    • Rome
    • Venice
    • Florence
    • Naples

It is time well-spent organizing footage in this manner. Once you are in the throes of an editing session, you'll be glad to be able to find suitable clips quickly and easily.

Why aren't "bins" simply called folders in Premiere Pro? In the photo on the left, we see a film bin with trimmings of film awaiting assembly into the edit. Bins like this were the original tool for organizing film projects. Pictured is just one bin. Typically, a cutting room had more bins crowding the space.

Resources

• Organization basics: Create Bins