Adobe Premiere Elements 7 Classroom in a Book

26 LESSON 2 Getting Ready to Edit

Working with Project Preferences

For the most part, once you have the right project setting selected, you can jump in

and begin editing with Adobe Premiere Elements. However, at some point you may

want to adjust several program preferences that impact your editing experience.

Here are the preferences that will prove relevant to most video editors.

1 To open the General Preferences panel, choose Edit > Preferences > General.

 ere are multiple preferences in this panel; most important are the Video and

Audio Transition Default Durations and the Still Image Default Duration, the

latter of which controls the duration of all still images added to your project.

2 Click Auto Save to view Auto Save preferences.

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Note: Adjusting

these default durations

will impact only

edits made after

the adjustment. For

example, if you change

the Still Image Default

Duration to 120 frames,

Adobe Premiere

Elements will assign

this duration to all

still images added to

the project thereafter,

but won’t change the

duration of still images

already inserted into

the project.

ADOBE PREMIERE ELEMENTS 7 CLASSROOM IN A BOOK 27

Better saved than sorry

With Auto Save enabled, Adobe Premiere Elements automatically saves a copy

of your project at the specifi ed duration, which you can customize. You can also

change the number of separate projects that Adobe Premiere Elements

saves.

Adobe Premiere Elements saves all Auto Save fi les in a separate sub-folder, entitled

Adobe Premiere Elements Auto-Save, which is located in the folder containing your

current project fi le.

It’s good practice to

manually save your project periodically during editing to

preserve your work in the event of a power outage or other random crash. Should a

crash occur, you may be able to recover some of the

editing that you’ve done sub-

sequent to your last manual save by loading the most recent project automatically

saved by Adobe Premiere Elements.

You load these just like any other project: click File > Open Project, nav

igate to the

Adobe Premiere Elements Auto-Save folder, and choose the newest project fi le.

3 Click Scratch Disks to view the Scratch Disk preferences.  is preference

identifi es the folders used to store audio and video clips that Adobe Premiere

Elements creates while producing your project.  is includes clips captured from

your camcorder, video and audio previews, and media encoded for recording

onto DVD or Blu-ray Disc. By default, Adobe Premiere Elements stores this

content in the same folder as the project fi le. If you run short of disk space, you

can change the location of the scratch disk by clicking the Browse button next to

each category of content, and choosing a diff erent location on a separate disk.

4 Click User Interface. Drag the User Interface Brightness slider to the right to

make the interface brighter, and to the left to make it darker.  ese adjustments

can be useful when editing under varying lighting conditions, like in a dark or

extremely bright room.

5 Select the Use Windows Background Color checkbox to substitute the Windows

default background color for Adobe Premiere Elements’ background colors, and

click OK to close the Preferences panel.

 ese are the most critical preferences to consider before starting your fi rst project.

With these confi gured, let’s explore other options for customizing your workspace.