premiere

Below the Project Window is the Timeline, where you assemble your video and audio clips into a sequence to create a movie.

Click image for larger version.

This is where you drag your video clips and lay them in the order you want them to play in. This is also where you drag your audio clips (if separate from video clips). You also add titles and transitions here.

When you add a video clip to the Timeline, put it into the Video 1A track. Audio attached to the clip will be laid into into Audio 1.

There's a space between Video 1A and Video 1B. That's where your transitions go. See Video 2? That's where titles go.

Video Tracks are stacked. Whatever's on top blocks out what's underneath. So, titles in Video 2 block out part of the picture (the stuff behind the letters) in Video 1. You can have 97 layers of titles and special effects over Video 1A and 1B, if you want.

Audio Tracks are blended. So whatever you have in your audio tracks (up to 99 total) will all be played together.

Audio and video captured together will be synced and kept together. The audio of a clip moved into Video 1 is in Audio 1. The audio of a clip moved into Video 2 is in Audio 2.

To keep audio, but turn off video, click on the eyeball. To keep the video, but turn off the audio, click on the speaker.

The buttons to the right of the eyeballs and the speakers can be clicked on to lock a track, which means you will not be able to edit or change it.

To zoom in and out of your edit, click on the time box in the lower left - you can zoom in so that the timeline displays the clip one frame at a time (sometimes useful for editing audio), or zoom waaaaayyyyy out to 8 minutes (useful for very long video projects).

Just above the top video track is the playhead, a tiny green triangle and vertical line you can click on and drag to the left or right to move or scrub through your sequence of clips.

In the bottom, left corner of the Timeline, a series of small buttons a few of which will make your life easier:

You can use this icon to unlock, or unsync the video and audio from each other. Select the tracks you want unlocked, and then click on the unlock button.

This button will set your playhead to snap to the nearest marker point if you release it. Thus if you release your playhead about a third of a way into a clip, it would snap to the beginning of the clip. If your playhead was near the end of the clip and you released it, it would snap to the end of the clip.

Monitor

The screen in the upper right is the Monitor, which will display whatever clip or frame is selected in the Timeline below. It also will play a clip in the Timeline, or an entire sequence of clips in the Timeline.

Just below the clip in the Monitor is the playhead, a short vertical line in the white horizontal box that you can click on and drag to the left or right to move or scrub through a clip in the Timeline.

Beneath the playhead are Play, Stop, Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind, Loop, Forward 1 Frame and Reverse 1 Frame buttons that you can use to play or move through a clip or through a sequence of clips.

The duration of your sequence and the time code where the playhead is parked are located to either side of the buttons.

You also can play a clip in the Monitor by pressing the spacebar on your computer. Just be sure the clip is selected in the Monitor. To stop playing the clip, just press the spacebar again.