Below is a screen shot from Adobe Premiere Elements.

(1) The Media Panel or Bin

This area is where all of your video clips, still images, and audio go.

(2) The Monitor Panel
note - some applications have one monitor and you need to switch between watching/editing a clip or the movie timeline.

This is where you see your video. On top you can see that you can change this from clip to timeline. When you double click a clip in the Media Panel, it automatically loads in this window. Below the viewing window you will see the timeline of the clip. The blue marker is called the play head and it moves along as the video plays. Below the clip timeline you will find the player controls: play, rewind, forward. Below this there are too icons on the left that have a marker (a line) with an arrow. These allow you to mark the in-point and out-point of a clip to be used in the movie. For example, say your clip is 3 minutes long but has some parts at the start and end that you don’t want to use. You can move the play head to the start of the part that you want to keep and click the in-point icon, then move the end the segment and click the out-point icon. You will see just part of the timeline highlighted. This is the part that will be used in your movie. To the right of the in/out point markers is the scrubber that allows you to move forward or backwards through the clip.

(3) The Movie Timeline

This is the timeline of your entire movie. It can hold several video and audio tracks. To put a clip into your movie, drag it from the Monitor (2) down to the timeline. If you do this with a clip that has audio and video, you will see both parts now in the timeline. In this case, the audio and video are “linked” - meaning if you delete or move one the same thing happens to the other. If you are using movies from archive.org where you don’t want the audio, you can right click on the clip in the timeline and choose “unlink audio/video”. After you do that you can click on the audio track and delete it without removing the video. To add more clips to your movie, just keep dragging them into the timeline. You can change the order that they play in by dragging the clips. You can add your own soundtrack by right clicking to the left of the timeline and choosing “add tracks”. On the top of the Timeline panel you will see some icons. From left to right they are:

• The selection tool - to use when you want to select a clip.
• The razor tool - this allows you to cut a clip into two parts by clicking on it.
• The time display - this will give you a read out of the time.
• The split clip tool - this is like the razor, except that you can first move the play head to the part that you want to cut, then use this tool to make it happen.
• The magnifying glasses - for zooming out and in on the timeline.

(4) Effects and Transitions

This panel is used to add audio and video effects and transitions to your clips. To add an effect, choose it from the list and then drag it on top of the clip in the time line. Go easy on effects - add them if they help to make your point better. The same goes for transitions. There are many in the list but the most useful (and professional) are “Cross Dissolve” which fades one clip into another and “Dip to Black” which can fade a clip from or to black. The most used transition in real world productions is… none at all! That is, just going from one scene to another. The next most used is the fade.

(5) Properties

This panel will show the properties of a selected clip. Click on a clip in the timeline and you will see that “Motion” and “Opacity” show up. More on these later. If you add an effect or transition to a clip additional settings for that effect will show up here so that you can fine tune it.

(6) How To / History panel

This panel has two tabs. The “How To” tab can be used to look up come common tasks. The “History” tab can be used to see what you have done and to backtrack to a previous point if needed.