Premiere Rush is a video editing program for both desktop computers and mobile devices that allows for quick production of professional-looking videos. It makes use of a simplified interface to allow for easy editing of video sequences. Completed projects can easily be shared from Premiere Rush to social media sites such as Facebook or YouTube. Additionally, Premiere Rush projects can be opened and edited using Premiere Pro if desired, making it possible to perform more advanced edits to your Premiere Rush projects.
NOTE: These materials focus on the desktop version of Premiere Rush - if you're interested in learning more about the mobile versions, view either the Premiere Rush for Android or Premiere Rush for iOS documentation.
Premiere Rush vs. Premiere Pro: Which should you use?
When approaching a video project, you might be wondering whether you should use Premiere Rush or Premiere Pro to create your video. After all, both edit video and offer the ability to export a completed project. However, while both programs allow you to edit video, they're very different in their approach to video editing.
To determine which program is right for your project, you'll first want to think about the video you're creating and your editing needs. Premiere Pro offers a wide range of features, effects, and tools that may not be needed for all video development projects, while Premiere Rush offers a smaller tool set and simplified options for adjusting recorded video and audio. The following sections provide some guidance as to when you might want to use one program over the other.
You should use Premiere Pro if...
- you're creating a complex project that needs advanced file organization options
- you need the ability to fine-tune video and audio clips
- you need the ability to work with a wide range of video and audio file formats
- you're creating or editing longer videos, like a recorded lecture or other videos longer than 5 minutes
You should use Premiere Rush if...
- you're creating a short video that only needs basic edits, such as a video blog or for a class assignment
- you're working with more popular video and audio file formats, such as .mp3 audio files and .mp4 video files
- you're making a video destined for social media sites, such as Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram
Now that we have an idea of what projects Premiere Rush is suited for, let's see how to install it and familiarize ourselves with its interface.
Downloading and installing Premiere Rush
Premiere Rush is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of applications and is installed using the Adobe Creative Cloud app. If you don't already have Premiere Rush or Adobe Creative Cloud installed on your computer, follow the instructions outlined on this page to install the app.
Exploring the Premiere Rush interface
Before we start work on a video project, let's get acquainted with the Premiere Rush interface. The following video will introduce you to the basic interface elements of Premiere Rush.
Description of the video:
[music] Premiere Rush is Adobe’s video editing program aimed at creating short videos that can easily be shared on social media or uploaded to a web site. In this video, I’ll be introducing you to the Premiere Rush interface. As a heads-up, while there are both mobile and desktop versions of Premiere Rush, this video focuses only on the desktop version. When you first open up Premiere Rush, the Home screen is displayed, and will show you thumbnails of any projects you’ve previously worked on. You can also create a new video project from this view. To create a new project, near the upper left side of the Premiere Rush interface, click on the Create a New Project button. For today’s demonstration, I won’t create a new project – instead I’ll open an existing one by clicking on a project’s thumbnail in the Your Projects list. Specifically, I'll be opening Cat Facts Updated. After clicking a project’s thumbnail, the selected project opens and you’re brought to the Edit workspace. There are a number of tools available for creating and editing videos - let’s explore them now. At the top left corner of the screen, we have the home button and the workspace switcher tabs. The home button will take us back to the Home screen, and clicking on either Edit or Share will switch us between the Edit and Share workspaces. We’ll be looking at the Edit workspace in this video - the Share workspace is explored in a separate video, “Exporting a completed project in Premiere Rush.” Just below the Home button is the Add Media button - from here, we can add new media files, record a voiceover, add music, or add graphics to a project. Media files we’ve added to a project can be viewed by clicking the Project panel button, which is underneath the Add Media button. The button looks like a little filing box. When you click on the Project panel button, the Project panel will expand and you can see all the files that are part of your project. On the lower left side of the screen, we have the editing tools. The editing tools allow us to split, duplicate, or delete a clip on the timeline. The Timeline itself runs across the bottom of the screen, and contains the various clips that make up our project. Depending on how complex a project is, there may be multiple tracks visible in the timeline. These tracks hold clips, and allow us to layer video and audio clips over each other. Above the timeline is the Preview monitor. This is where we can preview our video as it comes together. The controls for the Preview monitor are just underneath the video preview. The timecode is also visible underneath the left corner of the Preview monitor, and shows us exactly what frame we’re viewing in our video. On the right side of the screen is the panel dock, which contains a collection of different panels that will help us accomplish a variety of editing tasks, such as adjusting the color of a clip, adding transitions, refining audio, and more. Panels can be opened by clicking on the appropriate button - for example, clicking on the Audio button will open the Audio panel. Now that we’re a little more familiar with the Premiere Rush interface, we’re ready to create a video. [music]
A note about working with projects in Premiere Rush
Working with a project in Premiere Rush might be a little different than what you're used to when working with projects in other video editing applications, or with files in general. When creating a new project in Premiere Rush, a database is created that contains information about the project and where files are located on your computer. However, this database is only accessible by Premiere Rush and Premiere Pro, and isn't accessible to program users in order to make a copy of a project or edit a project on another computer.
Because of how Premiere Rush saves projects, a Premiere Rush project is only editable on the computer you initially created it on — you can't copy it to another computer to continue working on it, or edit a Premiere Rush project created on a mobile device on a traditional computer. You'll want to keep this in mind if you typically edit content on multiple devices.
If you need easier access to project files so you can back them up and store them elsewhere, you can open a Premiere Rush project in Premiere Pro, then save the project as a Premiere Pro project. However, Premiere Pro projects aren't compatible with Premiere Rush, so you'll want to be sure you're done editing the project in Premiere Rush before opening it in Premiere Pro.
For more information about working with Premiere Rush projects in Premiere Pro, view the Adobe Help documentation on editing Premiere Rush videos in Premiere Pro.
