Before shooting any footage, filmmakers usually create a storyboard—a series of sketches that depicts each shot in the finished program. Planning each shot in a storyboard can save you enormous amounts of time, money, and energy in production. In postproduction, you can use a similar storyboarding technique to plan a rough cut and instantly assemble it into a sequence, again saving time and energy.

In Adobe® Premiere® Pro, setting the Project window to icon view allows you to arrange clips in a storyboard fashion. If you want, you can open the clips in the source view to set In and Out points as well. Once your storyboard is complete, use the Automate to Sequence command to assemble the selected clips into a sequence. Premiere Pro can even add the default video and audio transitions between clips.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do storyboard editing using the Automate to Sequence command in Premiere Pro.

Get started

To add clips using the Automate to Sequence command:

1. In the Project window, do one of the following:

• Sort the clips in the order you want them to appear in the sequence (from left to right and top to bottom in icon view, or from top to bottom in list view) and select them (Figure 1).

  

  

  Figure 1: With the Project window set to icon view, arrange the clips as on a storyboard and select the ones you want to add to the sequence.

• Select the clips in the order you want them to appear in the sequence.

2. In the Project window, click the Automate to Sequence button (Figure 2). An Automate to Sequence dialog box appears.

   

   Figure 2: Click the Automate to Sequence button.

3. Choose an option from the Ordering drop-down menu (Figure 3):

   

   Figure 3: If you’ve arranged the clips in storyboard fashion, select Sort Order from the Sort Order drop-down menu.

   Sort Order: Arranges clips in the order in which they are sorted in the Project window.

   Selection Order: Arranges clips in the order in which they are selected in the Project window.

4. Specify how the clips are added to the program by making a choice from the Placement drop-down menu (Figure 4):

   

   Figure 4: In most cases, you’ll choose Sequentially from the Placement drop-down menu.

   Sequentially: Adds the clips in the timeline one after the other.

   At Unnumbered Markers: Adds the clips in the timeline at unnumbered program markers.

5. Specify the editing method used to add each clip to the sequence by choosing an option in the Method drop-down menu (Figure 5):

   

   Figure 5: In the Method drop-down menu, choose whether to add the clips using insert or overlay edits. Then specify the other options you want.

   Insert Edit: Adds the selected clips to the sequence beginning at the current time, using insert edits.

   Overlay Edit: Adds the selected clips to the sequence beginning at the current time, using overlay edits.

6. Make a choice from the Clip Overlap drop-down menu to specify the length of transitions between clips and the time unit:

   Frames: Interprets the value you enter as frames, at the frame rate you set in the project settings.

   Seconds: Interprets the value you enter as seconds. If you want only cuts between clips, with no overlap, enter 0.

7. In the Transitions area of the dialog box, select the options you want:

   Apply Default Audio Transition: Applies the default transition between audio clips if you specified a positive value for Clip Overlap in step 6.

   Apply Default Video Transition: Applies the default transition between video clips if you specified a positive value for Clip Overlap in step 6.

8. In the Ignore Options area of the dialog box, select the options you want:

   Ignore Audio: Excludes audio from being added to the sequence.

   Ignore Video: Excludes video from being added to the program.

9. Click OK. The selected clips are added to the sequence beginning at the sequence’s current time according to the options you specified (Figure 6).

   

   Figure 6: The selected clips are added to the sequence at the sequence’s current time according to the options you specified.

Tip

Automate to Sequence ignores target tracks and always adds clips to video track 1 and audio track 1 (unless they are locked). But, as usual, if the audio clips don’t match the audio 1 track’s channel type (mono, stereo, or 5.1), they will be added to the next compatible track, or a compatible track will be created automatically.