Adobe® Premiere® Pro 2.0

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Acquiring and Editing Audio

LESSON 11

Adding J-cuts and L-cuts: Lesson 11-3

Frequently you’ll want to start a video clip by having its sound play under the previous

video clip and then transition to its associated video.  is is a great way to let your

audience know that someone is about to say something or that a transition is coming.

 is is called a J-cut, so named because it looks vaguely like a ‘J’ on the sequence.

Conversely, another slick editing technique is to let audio tail o under the next video

clip.  is is an L-cut.

To do either of these cuts requires that you unlink the audio and video portions of a

linked A/V clip so you can edit them separately. A er they’ve been unlinked, you can

move that audio segment to another audio track and then extend or shorten the audio

portion to make the J- or L-cut.  ere are two unlinking methods—a right-click context

menu and a keyboard modi er. I’ll show you both.

1 Open the Lesson 11-3 Finish sequence and play it.

 is is how your J- and L-cuts will look and sound by the end of this mini-lesson. It has

the sound bite and cutaway clips used in Lesson 8.

Note: In this case the cutaway clips aren’t being used as cutaways.  ey’re B-roll—basic

video used to piece together a project.

 e cutaway video plays over the  rst few words of the sound bite audio and then the

cutaway video dissolves to the interview clip while the cutaway audio fades out—a J-cut.

 at process is reversed for the end of the sound bite—an L-cut.

2 Open the Lesson 11-3 Start sequence.

3 Right-click the second clip and select Unlink.

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO 2.0

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Classroom in a Book

4 Complete the Unlink process by clicking outside that clip in the Timeline to

deselect it.

Now when you click on either the audio or video portion of that clip, only that portion

is selected. You’ll re-link these clips, then use a keyboard modi er to temporarily

unlink them.

5 Shi +click on both of those unlinked clips to select them (if one is already

highlighted, there’s no need to Shi +click on it).

6 Right-click on one of them and select Link.

Now you’ll use the keyboard modi er unlinking method.

7 Alt+click on the audio portion of the second clip.  at unlinks it and selects it.

8 Drag that unlinked audio portion of the second clip straight down to the

Audio 2 track.

Note: As you move the audio portions of your clips in the sequence, take care that you don’t

slide them le or right when you drag them. Otherwise the audio and video will get out of

synch. Premiere Pro gives you a visual cue to help you line up your clips: if you see a black

line with a triangle, your clips are properly lined up. If that black line disappears, you have

moved out of synch. In that case, move the clip around a bit until the black line reappears.

9 Using the Rolling Edit Tool (N) to move the edit between the  rst and second video

clips (not the audio clips) to the right about one second, moving the horse and rider o

camera before showing the interview clip.

Use the Program Monitor and the Timeline pop-up timecode displays to help make the

edit. As I mentioned in Lesson 8, letting the interviewee get o screen before cutting to

the interview video makes for a more comfortable shi .