Good book for Premiere Pro?

[John E Anderson]

I've been using Premiere Pro on and off (mostly off) for almost 2 years.  Have made a couple of videos but I feel lost every time I go to do anything.  Wanted to create a letter box mask and just could not get it to work.  Even basics of changing the shape did not work (could not keep it parallel).

I'd like to know a good book that really teaches how to use this monster of a program.  I bought the Kindle edition of Maxim Jago's book (2018) and did most of the lessons, but I still stuggle.  Is there another book or author out there?  Checked Amazon and Maxim Jago was the only book I could find.

Are there tutorials out there that are any good?

[Name of the author of the book edited by mod]

[Ann Bens]

Do a Google search for

The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro - Learn advanced editing techniques to dramatically speed up your workflow

by Jarle Leirpoll.

[salvo34]

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Wanted to create a letter box mask and just could not get it to work.  Even basics of changing the shape did not work (could not keep it parallel).

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I think I saw Ann post something where if you press shift key when on the corner of the mask it turns into a tool that allows expanding rather than rotating ( default now ). She knows all that stuff so anything she recommends would be good to have. Probably has good index too ( to look up stuff like a reference book).

[R Neil Haugen]

Here's the link where you can find Jarle's most excellent and massive tome ... it's heavily indexed with an extensive table of contents.

The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro

Neil

[John E Anderson]

Wow.  The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro is 1280 pages.  If it's heavily indexed, that might be a good investment.  I just need to know where to go to fix things like my letterbox issue.  The shift-click suggestion above just does not work for me.  Hopefully this book gets into the details like this.  A little concerned it's 3 years old.  Don't know if the 2020 verion of the software will differ significantly from the book.

[R Neil Haugen]

99% of everything there is still accurate.

It's detailed on both how stuff works and how to get stuff done faster.

Neil

[John E Anderson]

Thanks.  I ordered the book from Amazon.  Funny that when I searched Amazon for "Adobe Premiere Pro 2020", this book didn't come up.  When I searched for the specific title, it did.  Maybe it's because I put "2020" in the search string.

Anyway, I should get the book this week and hopefully dive in next weekend.  Thanks for the suggestions!

[R Neil Haugen]

I initially got the ebook version ... had it on my tablet, and that tablet was always with me when in Premiere.

Last year, at Adobe MAX in LA, going through the bookstore in the "Pavillion" area with all the vendors & Adobe product booths, I saw a paper copy on the shelf. I didn't even look for the price ... just grabbed it and got in line to pay.

I lug that big thing around with me if I go to the studio to my room, or come home where I might wanna look something up or maybe work in Premiere on my laptop.

Yea, it's that useful.

Neil

[John E Anderson]

After spending a couple of hours with this book, I'll have to say I'm disappointed.  For a professional who has done a lot of video work, it's probably a good book.  A lot of tips and tricks for better workflows and getting things done faster.  Great for professional editors.  For a novice like myself, it's nearly useless.

For example, I want to know how to create rolling credits.  The book says "Enter names in your graphic..." and "Format the text as usual".  OK, how do I do that?  What is a "graphic" and what panel or workflow is it in?  How do I format text?  I know most everyone here probably knows this, but I don't.

I'll look for a "Adobe Premiere Pro for Dummies" book.  Once I get past the dummy stage, I'll come back to this.

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

For a lot of that, what I would recommend is to get a couple months of subscription to LinkedInLearning.com. They have numerous good tutorial series, including project files & media downloads, and the basic operations like that are covered there.

You really need to do this for a bit to get that sort of thing down, and spending a month or two working some of those tutorials is the fastest way to get that down short of spending such time at the shoulder of a working editor.

Neil

[Averdahl]

...or maybe the Adobe Premiere Pro Classroom in a Book (2020 release) book. This covers the basics.