Premiere Pro Organization

Organization of the Project Panel

In such a large scale program as Adobe Premiere Pro, workloads quickly become hefty and huge. With such significant projects including mass amounts of video clips, audio and graphics it's imperative to remain organized for a clean and efficient work environment.

First Step to Organization: Bins

Bins are a feature that can be used in your project panel to organize your files by what they are, what relevance they have, or what parts they are to a storyline, for example. It's essentially like organizing papers into files. This is extremely beneficial to large scale projects, as files can be ambiguous and it quickly becomes a quest to find the specific file you need in a moment of editing. 

In the project panel, all your files used in the project are stored in an ambiguous group; not organized by any specific means. Sometimes you find yourself having to guess where files are; or searching among a sea of them to find the specific type you need in that moment.

Click the button that resembles a manila folder in the lower right of your project panel- this is the New Bin button. You can create as many bins as you want to organize your clips.

The folder icon/bin will pop up among your files in your project panel. It will allow you to change its name, so as for you to name it in order to know what you are utilizing it to organize. Here, I am naming this initial bin 'Clips' as all my video format clips will reside in it. 

Click and drag all the files you want to be put into this bin and drop them into it by dragging them onto the bin and un-clicking. Now these files are not roaming free but are kept inside this bin, and can be hidden under the name of the isolated bin if you close it by clicking the down arrow you see; that is representing that it is open. 

Second Step to Organization: Color Labels 

Color labels serve relatively the same helpful purpose as bins- you can change the color of whatever files you desire. You can change them according to the bin they're in, what kind of file they are, whether or not you've already used it, or sequentially when you need it if you go far enough to create your own personal color code. The possibilities are boundless. 

Here you can see my files are all organized into respective bins, however the colors do not correspond in any specific way or order. I want to color code my files by what they are- basically reinforcing the organization I implemented with the bins.

First, right-click on the file you want to change the label color of. Among the options, 'Label' will be a potential change. When you hover, it provides your color options. Click on the one you want to make the label that color. 

Here you can see the files are separated by color as well, making them easier to glance at and identify or differentiate  quickly and efficiently. 

Third Step to Organization: Renaming 

When browsing your files in the project panel, it can be hard to distinguish what the video's content are, or whether the audio you're looking at is the intro or the outro. This is due to the fact that when audio or video is imported, it only has its initial raw file name- which provides no specificity whatsoever. Renaming your files makes it so that you are using the correct content when it is necessary; and can find it easily. 

 First you right-click on your file that you want to rename. Here I am renaming my audio to 'Intro' and 'Outro' so I don't use the incorrect one- and don't have to listen before using it to make sure it's the correct one. Among the options, you will see 'Rename'. 

Once you click on this, the name will be highlighted and you will be allowed to retype whatever you want to rename it. 

Final Step: Be Organized 

Here you can clearly see by comparing the before and after results side to side, organizing is not something that should be ignored when using Premiere Pro to create video projects. The renamed, relabelled and bin-using project panel clearly demonstrates what my files are, how I need to use them, and how to find them. Before, everything was a mere guess and hope for the best. Hopefully you will put these tips to good use!