Arranging clips in the Sceneline

Learn to quickly arrange your clips into a movie in Premiere Elements working in the Sceneline.

The timeline in Quick mode is called Sceneline. The Sceneline provides a stage to quickly arrange your clips into a movie. It displays images and video clips as individual thumbnails. Use the Sceneline to trim a video or combine video clips, photos, titles, music, and more into a unique production. You can also add captions, transitions, and special effects to your media.

The Sceneline has two AV tracks and one Audio track. Videos or images can be added to the AV tracks, and text created on V1 clips will, by default, go to the V2 layer. Only Audio files should be added to the Audio track of the Sceneline. 

Suitable menu options on the Sceneline items:

• Separate Audio: Use to separate the audio from the video clip on the V1 track.
• Expand Audio: Use to expand the audio from the video clip on the V1 track.
• Duplicate: Use to duplicate the selected clip.
• Clear: Use to delete the selected clip(s).

To access this menu, select any clip or audio track and right-click. The menu will appear in the drop-down menu.

You can expand or collapse tracks to display or hide track controls. You can choose from several display options to control how video and audio clips appear on a track.

The left or Right Panel tools, Quick tools, track tools, and program monitor work together with Sceneline items. Sceneline items can be switched to Advanced mode without any issue.

Some of the key features accessible through the Sceneline are as follows:

• Freeze frame: Freezes a specific frame from the media in your Sceneline and saves it as a picture. For more information about freeze frames, see Freeze and hold frames.
• Render: Renders the layers and effects on the media in your Sceneline to create a smooth playback.
• Delete/Clear: You can delete the media from Program Monitor and the Timeline.
• Auto Reframe: Automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of your video to fit different screen sizes and social media formats, such as square, vertical, or widescreen.
  
• Rotate Right: Rotates the clip to right in the Program Monitor.
• Program monitor settings:
  • Playback Resolution: Sets the quality as Automatic, Highest, Medium, or Lowest.
  • Select Zoom Level: Changes the size of the program monitor according to one of the available percentage options.
• Toggle full screen: Plays your media in full screen mode.
• Add transition: Adds transition effects before or after your media, or in between two media. Click each icon to add an effect from the Transitions panel. For more infomation, see Apply transitions in the Sceneline.
• More options (add title or media):
  • Add Title: Click to add a motion title from the Titles panel. Drag a title from the pre-defined options and drop it in the sceneline to start creating your movie.
  • Add Media: Click to add media to the sceneline through the following options:
    • Files and folders: Adds media from your computer’s hard drive or other storage devices.
    • Elements Organizer: Adds media from albums in Elements Organizer.

For information about customizing your media in the Sceneline, see Customize your media.

Add clips

Drag clips directly to the Quick view sceneline from Windows Explorer (Finder in Mac OS). You can also use the Add Media panel to add clips to the Quick view sceneline from various sources.

After adding clips, use the Quick view sceneline to rearrange them. You can insert a clip before another, after another, or even split it before inserting.

Place a clip

Insert a clip before another

The new clip appears over the one on which you dropped it.

Insert a clip after another

The new clip appears to the right of the selected clip, and subsequent clips shift to the right.

Move a clip

Zoom in or out

When you zoom in on the Sceneline, it is magnified around the current‑time indicator, letting you examine smaller increments of media. You can also zoom in as you add a clip, magnifying the location around the pointer rather than the current‑time indicator. This technique lets you see the exact placement of the insertion point before you release the mouse.

In contrast, zooming out displays more of the Sceneline, giving you a visual summary of the movie.

Clear a clip

Quick Tools

A set of Quick Tools is now available in the Quick View Room. This tool panel can be moved and docked. The following tools are available to this panel.

• Selection Tool: This allows you to select any item on the screen.
• Rate Stretch Tool: It increases or decreases the speed of the clip.
• Scissor Tool: It splits the chosen clip into two clips.
• Text Tool: To add Texts or Title.

Customize your media

You can do the following to customize your media in the Sceneline:

Add Title

You can add a Title to your media (video clip or image).

Add transition

You can edit your videos using various Tools such as Time Remapping, Color Correction and Grading, Pan and Zoom, Color Match, Candid Moments, Smart Trim and Freeze frame. To learn more about these Tools, see Tools.

Add Music score

A music score here refers to an audio track you can apply to a video in the timeline. It includes an intro, a body, and an extro. The music played in a score dynamically fits the length of the video track.

Soundbooth scores are like music pieces that adapt themselves to user-specified parameters, such as a video's length, by intelligently rearranging the musical structure and altering the mix to match a desired intensity.  

To add a music score to your video clip, follow these steps:

Edit a clip

You can edit a clip's (video or image) Adjustments by selecting the clip and navigating to Edit > Adjustments.

What can you do with Adjustments?

You can modify basic color corrections and gamma adjustments, and if the clip contains audio, the panel will also display Audio Adjustment settings such as Volume, Balance, Treble, and Bass.

Adjustment panel parameters

The Adjustment panel has the given parameters that you can adjust in a clip:

Color Corrections

Color

The white balance in a video represents the lighting conditions during filming. Adjusting the white balance can significantly enhance the overall color of your video.

To adjust the white balance in your clip, modify the Temperature and Tint properties. You can use the eyedropper tool to select a white or neutral-colored area in the footage, which will automatically adjust the white balance. Alternatively, you can manually fine-tune the temperature and tint values using the slider controls until you achieve the desired color balance.

Fine-tune the white balance using a color temperature scale. Slide to the left for cooler tones, and to the right for warmer hues.

Adjust the white balance to correct for green or magenta tints. Move the slider to the left (negative values) to add a green tint, and to the right (positive values) to add a magenta tint.

Adjusts the saturation of all colors in the video uniformly. Drag the slider to the left to reduce saturation, and to the right to enhance it.

Light

Sets the brightness of the video clip. Move the Exposure slider to the right to increase tonal values and expands highlights. Move the slider to the left to decrease tonal values and expands shadows. Adjust the slider until the video looks good with the desired brightness.

Increases or decreases contrast. Adjusting the contrast mainly affects the midtones of color in your video. When you increase contrast, the middle-to-dark areas become darker. Similarly, decreasing the contrast makes the middle-to-light areas lighter.

Adjusts bright areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken highlights. Drag to the right to brighten highlights while minimizing clipping.

Adjusts dark areas. Drag the slider to the left to darken shadows while minimizing clipping. Drag to the right to brighten shadows and recover shadow details.

Adjusts black clipping. Drag the slider to the left to increase black clipping, making more shadows pure black. Drag to the right to reduce shadow clipping.

Gamma Corrections

Adjusts the midtones of your video. It helps to balance the image's luminance by modifying the gamma curve, which affects how light and dark areas are displayed.

Volume

Allows you to control the loudness of your audio clips and tracks.

Balance

Adjusts the distribution of audio between the left and right channels in a stereo mix. This adjustment ensures that the audio is evenly distributed across the stereo field, preventing one side from being too loud or quiet compared to the other.

Treble

Adjusts the higher frequency range of sound, typically between 3 kHz and 12 kHz. Adjusting the treble emphasizes or reduces these high frequencies, affecting the clarity and brightness of the audio.

Bass

Adjusts the lower sound frequency range, typically between 20 Hz and 250 Hz. By emphasizing or reducing these low frequencies, bass adjustment affects the depth and warmth of the audio.

Apply Video Effects

You can edit your videos using tools such as time remapping, color correction and grading, pan and zoom, color match, candid moments, and smart trim and freeze frame.

Candid Moments

A video usually has various candid moments. This tool helps you mark and extract all your favorite moments in a video as a single collated or individual clip. You can use the clips of favorite moments that I've attached for editing or sharing.

For more information, see Mark and extract your candid moments.

Color Match

Color Match is used to ensure consistent color tones across different photos, videos, and parts of the images and videos. It helps blend clips together seamlessly by matching the color and lighting between the target videos and images.

For more information, see Color Match.

Freeze Frame

Grab a single frame from a video clip to use as a still image in your current movie or save it as a still on your hard drive for use elsewhere. For example, you can use a still in your clip to show a character starting an action but then stopping mid-action, frozen on the screen.

For more information, see Freeze Frame.

Color Correction and Grading

Color Correction and Grading are used to color-correct the clips with adjustments, LUTs, and curves. These tools allow you to adjust your sequences' color, contrast, and light in new and innovative ways.

For more information, see Color Correction and Grading.

Pan & Zoom

You can create video-like effects from images or movie clips using the pan and zoom tool in Adobe Premiere Elements. The effect works best for movie clips with minimal movement of objects.

When working with the pan and zoom tool, you select objects and the order in which they are panned and zoomed. Premiere Elements provides customization options, using which you can apply the effect according to your requirements.

For more information, see Pan and zoom to create video-like effect.

Smart Trim

Smart trimming enables you to trim the low-quality sections of a video file. Smart trim can be done manually and automatically. You can trim clips from the Quick view timeline or the Advanced view timeline.

For more information, see Smart trimming.

Time Remapping

Add a slow or fast motion effect to your videos for that wow factor. For more information, see Time remapping.