Welcome to another Premiere Pro video tutorial produced by San Diego video production company, BizVid Communications. Today I am going to show you how to insert a timecode window into a video project. At BizVid, we use timecode when sending a review version of a project to a client. This allows the client to make precise edit notes by referencing the exact point in the project where they would like changes made or titles added, etc.
As you can see, I already have the clips in the timeline and I could assign timecode to each clip but for todays example, I’m going to run the code across the whole project. So the first thing I will do is right click in the Project window scroll to “New Item” then to “Transparent Video” and click. This brings up a “Video Settings” window which will default to the project settings so click “OK.”
Now, from the “Project Window” and will click and drag the “Transparent Video” onto the top layer so that the timecode sits on top of everything else then extend to for the duration of the sequence. And because it is transparent video, there is nothing to see. Next is to put the timecode onto the transparent video.
So, I go to effects and in type in the Search window, “Timecode” and Premiere Pro finds it for me. Next I click and drag the effect onto the Transparent video track and you can see that it appears over here. Next, I go to the “Effects Controls” where I’ll find the Timecode settings. You can see there is a little indicator here….that’s for “fields” and since my project is “progressive” I will turn ioff the field symbol by unchecking.
Okay…now I want to make the background a little darker so that the code will be more visible over lighter clips. That’s easy…in “Effects Controls” I’ll change the opacity from 40% to 100%. Next, I want to change the size of the window to something smaller. Again, in “Effects Controls” I’ll change size from the default 15% to 10%.
Next, I want to move it from the bottom of the screen to the top right, so I will click the little box next to the word, “Timecode” which will allow me to click and drag the code window to any position I want. Okay, next is to get the timecode to match the actual runtime of the project.
As you can see, timecode says…..while the runtime says…….So, in the “Effects Panel” you see that the code is set to “Media” and we need to switch that to “Re-Generate” and now the two match and we are ready to export to our client for their comments. So that’s how you add a timecode window to your project.
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