Welcome to another BizVid Communications video tutorial.  Today I’m going to show you how to create a slide show in Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5 which is applicable to other versions as well.  You will learn how to build the show complete with music, transitions and other special effects that will keep the viewer entertained.   So let’s get started.  The first item of business is to open Premiere Pro, get it assigned to a folder and create the project.  For this tutorial I am going to scroll to the HDV pre-set and to create the project in 720p /30frames.  Since TV’s are 16:9 aspect ratio, this slide show will fit nicely within that format.  Here you can see pixel height at 1280 and width at 720.   Now to open the project and the first thing I want to do is set some preferences.  So I position my mouse on the word “Edit” and click to open the drop down so that I can scroll down to select preference and across to “General.”

Now, I’ve determined that I want each of my slides to be up on the screen for four seconds.  To do that, I have to tell Premiere Pro at what length it should import my slides into the project.  Here you can see that the default is 150 frames or, 5 seconds.  There are 30 frames per second so I need to change the “Still Image Default Duration” to 4 times 30 or, 120 frames.  Now when I import my slides, each will be four seconds long and that’ll save me the time of having to change each one individually.  The only other default setting we will change is the transition that I will want to use between each slide.  But, I’m going to save that choice until I can look at a couple of them to see what works best.

Next, I’ll  bring in the slides that I’m going to use in this project.  So I position my mouse on “file” and click then scroll down to “import” and click.  There are shortcuts to this that you can learn later.  Once the slide folder is found, I can import the entire folder at once saving me from doing each slide individually.  So, I’ll select the folder and then position my mouse on the words “Import Folder” and click.  It’s that simple.

Next, I’ll bring in the music I’m going to use and a background I’m going to use.  Okay….let’s begin the actual build on the timeline. First I want this slide show to fade up from black so I need to bring in some black video.  I position my mouse on the “New Item” icon and click.  The “New Black” video window appears with the default aspect ratio of the project already selected.  Click “okay” to put it in the “Assets Pane.”  Next, I’ll click and drag it to the beginning of the timeline.  Following the black video will be my title.  So I’ll grab the background slide….put it on the timeline….then place my mouse on the word “file” then new, then title.  This opens the title window.  I’ll create my title…. once I have it vertical center and horizontal center I click the “X” and the title will automatically be saved.

I’’ll click and drag that to the timeline over the background slide….time it to 5-seconds by right clicking and changing the time to five seconds.  Now I’ll bring the slides into the timeline, not one at a time but all at once and, at the length of four seconds each.  If you recall, I set my preference to 4 seconds so that part is done.  Next, I need to select the video track that I want the slides to be placed on.  Make sure the other video tracks are turned off or locked.  Now, I highlight the slides folder…. so that the “Automate to Sequence” icon appears at the bottom of the Assets Pane and once it does, I click and, like magic, every one of my slides populates the timeline.

But, I have an issue.  These slides came in larger than the project itself.  So to correct that, I select all of the slides, right click on one of them and click “Scale to frame size.”  This will resize each slide to fit the window.  Now, as I scroll across you can see that these pictures do not fit the 16:9 aspect ratio.  So to give the slide show visual appeal, I click and drag my background to give a prettier look to the project.  However, I still am not satisfied so I’m going to dress these slides up a little.  First, I will pick a transition that I like.  Let’s test a couple……..here’s the one I like, “Center Peel.”  It needs to be the default transition and I can make it so by right clicking and choosing “set selected as default transition.”   Now, when I when I populate the timeline with the transition between slides, it will be “Center Peel”.  So let me do that.  First, I need to select the entire timeline….on a PC it’s Control A, then go to the Menu Bar and select the “Sequence” drop down to find “Apply default transition to selection” and since my selection is the entire timeline, when I click, the transitions will appear between each slide….like this.

I still want to do more to give this project a better look.  To build the look I like, I’ll work with one slide.  I know I want the edges to be rough and not symmetrical as they are now.  So I go to the Effects pallet and type in “rough.”  This takes me right to the effect I want.  Next I’ll drag and drop that effect onto the first slide…….do some adjusting…..and now I have a better look.  Next, I want a ‘drop shadow” so I type in “Drop” to find that effect then drag and drop that into the first slide……do some adjusting and now I am satisfied.  I’m happy with this and want the other slides to take on the same look.   I need to copy and paste the attributes of the first slide into the rest of them.  I right click on the first slide then click “copy.”

Next, I select the other slides by clicking and dragging around them and once done, I can pick any of them to right click, then “paste attributes.”   And as you can see, they’ve all taken on the character of the first slide.  My final element to help make this show more entertaining, is to drop in some music.   So, I find my music then drag and drop onto audio 1  and I’m done.  Next, render…….and play.  So that’s the long a short of this video tutorial.  Be sure to check out our other tutorials on our BizVid Communications YouTube or through our blog at http://www.BizVidCommunications.com/blog.  Thank you.