Is there anything more frustrating than loading your footage into Adobe Premiere Pro, only to find your work distorted, plagued by unwanted letterboxing, or part of a sequence that is either much too large or much too small?
All of the above can usually be solved through your sequence settings. Once you’ve gotten a handle on the lingo, it’ll be easy to find exactly what you need.
Sequence Settings and Sequence Presets in Premiere Pro
Adobe provides you with many sequence presets that complement a number of standards and types of source material. Some of them cater to technology that is outdated, but that may still need to be accounted for in a creative or archival context.
Some commonly-used presets include:
- AVCHD
- Digital SLR
- DV-NTSC
- DV-PAL
- HDV
- Mobile & Devices
Sequence settings should not be confused with project settings. Sequence settings concern only what happens in the timeline and during playback.
Working With a New Project or Sequence
When you first start your project off, where is the best place to begin? Ordinarily, your sequence presets should reflect the type of project that you’ve gotten yourself into or the type of source material that you’re working with. You can make these arrangements either preemptively or after your footage has already been imported.
In the second case, you can try dragging a clip into an existing sequence in order to get a lay of the land.
Premiere’s Clip Mismatch Warning will appear if the clip does not match your default sequence settings. You will be asked if you would like this sequence to conform to the properties of your footage. Hit Always Ask if this checkpoint is helpful to you on a regular basis.
For most video projects, this will be a safe place to begin. For more advanced projects, however, your needs may vary. Sequence presets are Adobe’s way of compartmentalizing these specifications so that they can be used quickly and freely throughout your project pipeline.
After a sequence has already been created, Premiere will prevent you from changing some attributes, such as your timebase settings. Your timebase settings determine the rate at which the footage will be played back to you within the program—locking these settings ensures that no technical hiccups interrupt your workflow.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to already know what you need before selecting a preset. You will be asked to choose one any time that you create a new sequence.
Choosing a Sequence Preset
Let’s say that you’re starting a new project. Open up Premiere and create one. After you’ve done so, right-click into a bin and select Sequence under New Item.
The screen that follows will present you with many sequence presets, ready to go. You can modify any of their attributes by selecting one and clicking over to the Settings tab.
The options before you may feel staggering at first, but once you’ve broken them down, you’ll know exactly what you need in place.
Navigating the Sequence Presets Menu
Under the Settings tab, you’ll see something called Editing Mode first. This field will first reflect the umbrella category housing the sequence preset that you chose—in this case, DV NTSC.
Editing Mode determines the way that the footage is processed and presented within Premiere. It has nothing to do with your final output, but, in a general sense, should match your native specifications closely.
Included here are the display format and the aforementioned timebase settings. Choosing Custom as your Editing Mode frees you to mix and match attributes when none of Premiere’s existing presets provide the entirety of what you need.
Below Editing Mode, in the Video section, you’ll see a whole mess of other options:
- Frame Size: The height and the width of your sequence will correspond to the preset that you have selected; you can adjust these values by changing your editing mode to Custom.
- Pixel Aspect Ratio: The original NTSC standard of compensation for pixel distortion is a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9091 and 1.2121 for widescreen exhibition. If you’ve shot your project with an anamorphic lens, you will find the appropriate pixel aspect ratio required to decode it here. Choose Square Pixels only if you’re working with analog material or media created with a computer.
- Fields: Here, you will be able to choose your preferred field order, if at all necessary. Progressive footage will call for the No Fields option.
- Display Format: The timecode format of your sequence should match the way in which the footage was acquired. This ensures that the correct timecode will be generated for each frame throughout the entirety of the sequence.
- Audio Sample Rate: This determines how data-rich your audio playback quality will be.
- Display Format: The timecode of the audio will be expressed in terms of either audio samples or milliseconds.
Under the Audio section, you’ll find a few options that you are, at first, unable to change. These video preview settings correspond to the overarching sequence preset that you chose previously.
As mentioned before, anything here can be adjusted by changing your Editing Mode to Custom. Let’s go over your options.
- Preview File Format: Some types of preview file formats are more demanding on your system than others. If playback resolution is not vital to your needs, dialing things back here may improve your working experience. This option can accommodate a number of circumstances, such as a computer that performs poorly and can’t handle playback at full scale, for example.
- Codec: Much like when a video file is rendered out of Premiere, similar files must be created in order to allow the program to play the footage back to you as you work. Here, you may designate the codec that these temporary playback files will be rendered under.
- Width and Height: The spatial dimensions of each preview file.
- Maximum Bit Depth: A handy feature that automatically maximizes the quality of each video preview.
- Maximum Render Quality: When a clip is scaled down or under the influence of one or more effects, having this option enabled ensures that as little detail is lost in translation as possible.
Under the Tracks tab, you will be able to choose the master audio track’s channel type.
If you’ve shot a VR project, you will find all of your projection settings under the VR Video tab.
How to Modify Sequence Presets in Premiere
At the bottom of the Settings tab, you will see a button labeled Save Preset.
After making all of the necessary changes to one of Premiere’s existing preset bases, click it, name your new preset, and add a description if desired.
After that, you will find your new preset amongst the rest; another button below gives you the option to remove it as well. Your custom preset will be right there waiting for you every time that you need it from now on.
Lay the Foundation With the Right Sequence Settings
The veteran filmmakers out there will likely agree: the most annoying part of the process is getting everything set up at the beginning. The good news, however, is that once you’ve done your due diligence, there is nowhere to go but forward.
There are many ways to set yourself up for success in the future. The best way to optimize your workflow? You shouldn’t be asking us that question. Nobody knows what you need more intimately than you do.