Premiere Pro Templates
(Applies for both macOS & Windows)
Find the Premiere edit template that comes with the download and double-click it. You will see that Premiere Pro opens up with the blank template.
Note: These templates are made to be empty so that you can drag and drop your materials into place.
Go to the Project panel and look for a set of folders named Edit Placeholder, Titles, and Logo. In this example, the Edit Placeholders is the root folder, and contains Image, Logo, Music and Text folders. Please note that not all templates will use this exact wording, but it will be very similar.
Start by opening the Media 01 Edit Placeholders > Image folder; inside, you will find media sequences, each numbered to correspond with their placement in the order that they will appear in the final export video sequence.
It is easiest to start with the Media 01 placeholder sequence, and move through the list sequentially. Double-click on the first Media 01 placeholder sequence to open it in the timeline.
Please note: Template sequence names may differ per template - e.g. Media 01, Media Placeholder 01, Scene 01 etc.
Drag your chosen media from the project browser to the timeline.
Select the clip in the timeline and trim the ends to show only the portion of your clip that you want to show.
If required, edit the Scale, Position, and Rotation settings to reframe your media.
Go through each of the media compositions adding your video clips and/or photos to each. You can close the sequence in the timeline once you’re happy with how your footage plays.
When all of the media placeholders are done, click the Text drop-down. Here again, the Text Placeholder compositions are numbered in the order that they will appear in the video.
Open up Text 1 by double-clicking.
In the timeline, select the Title layer, then double click on the media viewer to edit your text. Type a new title. You can make any adjustments needed to the font from the Effects Controls window, as long as the text is selected.
Go through each title comp, editing the text as you go.
The final step is adding your logo to the Logo Placeholder comp. As you might have guessed, this is done in precisely the same way as the titles and media.
Note: Remember, you will need a high-quality .png file with a transparent background for your Logo asset.
After Effects Templates
(Applies for both macOS & Windows)
Step 1: Add Images & Videos
The first place you should look is in the Project window.
Drop down the Media folder where you should see a variety of compositions labelled Media 1, Media 2, Media 3, etc. These are the placeholders for each picture in the order that they appear.
So if we skim forward here we can see the first spot where a picture is supposed to be. If it’s the first place, then Media 1 is the slot where we know the picture will show up here. So how do you actually add in your own media?
Import your own media by going to your Project window. And you can either double-click or right-click and go to Import > File.
From here you can find on your computer all the different pictures or videos you want to include in your project.
Tip: We would suggest having a folder ahead of time where you’ve compiled everything together so that you simply have to find that folder and then select everything at once to import.
Then click Open and your files will be available inside of After Effects.
Here we can see that if we click on one of these clips we can get a sense of which picture or video it is. Find which picture you want to appear first, and then you can add it one of 2 ways:
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- Drag it right onto the composition for Sc01 media 01.
- Double-click on Sc01 media 01 and drag it down here into the composition.
Note: Composition names may differ slightly (e.g. Media, Scene, Placeholder..)
If your picture is too large, easily decrease the size by holding Shift + dragging the corners. The perspective of the picture won’t change at all.
If you want to move your picture, hold Shift to move it up without it moving at all from side to side.
Go back to the main composition to see how the project is looking. It will either be the composition here to the far left, but if you’re not sure, you can always go to the Final folder and double-click the full composition.
Note: Some templates may offer multiple resolution options for the Render or Final Comp, such as 1080p or 4k, but both will reflect the same preview result.
Quickly go through that same process with a couple more pieces of content. It is that fast and easy to add them. And here’s another great part, if you want to add a video, the process is just the same!
Step 2: Add & Edit Text
Now your project has both photos and videos, but the text doesn’t say what we want it to say. Well, that process works very much the same as media.
- Drop down the Text folder. Each composition is in the order that each piece of text comes into frame. So if we go back to the beginning, the first piece of text should be Text 1.
Note: There may be other sub-text compositions next to this (e.g. 01. Text A, 01. Text B), also, these composition names may slightly differ (e.g. Title, Text, Lower Third etc.)
1. Double-click to change that piece of text and title it Motion Array.
2. Double-click on the text here, or on the layer here to highlight your text to type out your title or content. You can make further edits, such as a new font and increasing the size.
Now if we go back to the main composition, we can see that our text immediately takes form!
Step 3: Adjust Color
How do we control some of the other elements of our project like the color?
- Select the [Controls] or [Color Controls], or similarly named layer in the Final/Render composition (or dedicated Color Controls Composition). We can see here that we only have one layer, but when we select it, there’s a lot of different parameters we can address from the Effect Controls window (toggle the Effect Controls window with F3 if you don’t already see it open).
Now depending on your template, you may have either more or fewer options to play around with. But a good place to start with each of them is to look at the name, and then do a test to see what it impacts. Go to CC opacity, for example, and then adjust the value to “0.00”:
You will notice that the Color Correction has now gone from 50% to 0% opacity:
Final Cut Pro Templates
(Final Cut Pro is only available for macOS systems)
If you’ve downloaded a generator template for Final Cut Pro, let’s show you how to use it so you can get the most out of it.
So once you’ve successfully installed a generator template, it should be located in your Generators section. If you don’t see it there - please follow the steps here to learn how to correctly install a Final Cut Pro Template. And you can click and drag it onto your timeline to begin using it. But once you do, you’ll notice the edit should be exactly like you expected, but it’s missing any sort of video clips.
The great thing about generators is that it’s incredibly easy to add in your own clips to the Placeholder sections of the template. Click on the template clip in your timeline, and then navigate up at the top to click the Generator Inspector button. Now you should have a variety of parameters that you can control. Yours might look a little different, but at the top of ours we have some binary on/off boxes for things like the dots and shape elements found within our template, as well as some more complex ones that follow, but what we want to focus on is the section where we can drop in our own media to populate the template.
Part 1: How to Populate the Template
It’s a really simple process. We can see that Media 1 has a slot indicating where we can place in our footage. This slot is known as an Image Well. And every clip is labelled in order from Media 1, Media 2, 3, and so on in the same order will appear in the template. So the very first clip in the template will show up when we place it in the Media 1 Image Well. Simply click the Image Well and you should see the panel now divide. We can simply click on the clip that we want to place in this slot of our template. And when we click on it, we can see it fill in the template on the right hand side. But this is just a preview, and won’t take effect until we actually hit apply. Now that we’ve hit apply, we can see we’ve successfully placed down our clip into our template.
But there’s one small problem, our video clip is zoomed in too much. Thankfully solving this process is simple, just go down to Media 1 where you placed in the clip, and select Scale, and reduce it until it fits properly. And for me that exact amount is 29%. If you find you’re having trouble making fine adjustments, you can also highlight the number and hit either the up or down arrows to increase or decrease these numbers. There’s also the option to change the X and Y positions, but I’m going to leave mine alone.
Now you can go through this process for all your media sections, and you should start to see your template take shape. Great! We’ve already made our edit look really awesome with just a few clicks.
Part 2: How to Edit Text
One thing we can see next is that we have pieces of our edit where text just says Text 1, or Text 2, etc. In some of these places I’d like it to say something else and at other times I’d actually like to remove the text entirely. So to do this, let’s scroll down even further to see all the pieces of text that we can adjust.
You should see text boxes, and the text that’s written down will match the order it appears in your template. So Text 1 is in the first box, which appears first in the template. And all we have to do to change it is simply click and edit what this text says, and it shows up immediately in our template. And if I want to remove a piece of text entirely, just delete all of it to leave a blank space. And if you wanted to change the font of that text, simply highlight it, and adjust to your liking. Change the scale and position like we did in our footage, and you’ve got a template that’s customized to your liking.
So by now, you should feel as if you’ve personalized your template to truly make it your own. And you can start to explore all the options of your template that might be entirely unique to it. Like adding a prism effect, changing the brightness, etc.
Part 3: How to Edit Clip Length
But there is one last piece we need to cover. And that’s to do with the length of your clips that you want to place into your template. If you have a template where the length of the intended place it’s supposed to be is actually longer than the clip you’d like to use, then the clip will simply remain as a still frame to compensate for this. In order to get around this, you could do a couple things. You could either duplicate the clip and then if you wanted to avoid a jump cut you could reverse the second clip. And you could also slow it down to gain the desired length of the clip you were hoping for or speed ramp it for stylistic reasons.
In any of these cases, you’re going to want to instead of placing this clip into the template first, place it on the timeline first. Then make your adjustments, like duplicating or adjusting speed, and then highlight it and create a compound clip from it. Name it something that you’d like and place it with the rest of your clips. Now you can delete this compound clip from your timeline, and it’s still in your library. So now let’s go back to the image well and click it, then go to our library and select our new compound clip to place into our template.
Lastly, if you wanted to cut up a generator in order to do something like adding your own media in between, you’ll need to make sure to make this generator a compound clip on its own. If you don’t you’ll end up simply time stretching the generator and making it play at a different speed instead of just cutting at the place you intended. So just highlight your generator, right-click, and create a compound clip from it. Now when you make a cut it will act like a normal piece of footage that you can adjust to your liking.
And that’s just been a brief tutorial showing you how to use our generator templates for Final Cut Pro. We hope you found this tutorial helpful, and we look forward to seeing all the amazing videos you use our templates to create.
Troubleshooting Drop Zone Issues
There are a couple tricks that are helpful to learn when using drop zones. If your source video clip is not as long as the title or generator clip, it will freeze on its last frame for the remainder of the clip.
You can avoid this by creating a compound clip with your desired source media inside (right click on the clip to bring up the context menu).
Inside the compound clip, copy & paste the same video clip over so it fills the timeline. Then use the compound clip for your drop zone’s source media, instead of the original.
Another tricky issue that can pop up is making sure the best portion of your source clip plays in the drop zone. When choosing your source media, make sure the playhead is positioned in a spot where you can clearly see the drop zone preview in the Viewer (see step 2: A red line will appear when scrubbing over the thumbnail - this is the playhead - this will be the Drop Zone starting point. Select the start of the clip if you want the Drop Zone to start there).
Whatever point you click the source video clip, that will be the starting point at the very beginning of your title or transition. Sometimes it just takes a few attempts to make sure everything lines up correctly.
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