How to Create a Template Project in Premiere Pro

Setting up a Template in Premiere Pro has saved me hundreds of hours of editing. It’s not that hard to do, a little bit of work up front will save you a lot of time and energy down the road.  If you are editing a lot of food videos, I highly recommend setting one of these up. Watch the video to see how to do this, or keep reading below.

To get started you’ll want to open up a new project. Alternatively, if you already have a project you’ve edited a video in that matches the style you’re going for, you could open that up and start from there.

We’re going to first set up our bins. I’ve covered how to set up bins in another blog post, so be sure to head there if you want more information on that.

You’ll want a bin for every category of assets you’ll be using such as graphics, titles, voice over, music, etc.

After that we can import any assets we might be using frequently in our projects such as an animated end card, logo, or music.

I like to create a few commonly used sequences, so I’m going to click on the Sequences bin, then go to File —> New —> Sequence. You’ll want to choose ARRI 1080p in whatever frame rate you normally shoot your footage in and give the sequence a name.

I can then click once on that sequence in the project window and go to Edit —> Duplicate to copy it. I chose to give it the same name with “Square” on the end. I then click on it and go to Sequence —> Sequence Settings and adjust the settings to 1080 x 1080 to make it square.

I also created a copy in the size I like to use for tall video pins. You can create sequences for whatever size you normally use.

We now have three sequences set up. I’m going to go into my 16:9 sequence and pull in my logo that I like to use at the end of videos. We don’t need to pull it into the other sequences yet.

The biggest part of setting up a template project is the titles. This is what will allow you to save the most time in editing future projects.

I’ve already shown you the two ways to set up titles in Premiere Pro, but for this template we’re going to use Legacy Titles. You can click on the Titles bin in the project window, then go to File —> New —> Legacy Title. 

You’re going to do this for all your most commonly used ingredients. For this example I started with olive oil.

Once the legacy title editor pops up, make sure you have the title tool selected. If you don’t already have a style saved for the type of titles you’ll be creating you can go ahead and do that now.

To do this, type your ingredient in the window, then highlight it. From there you’ll choose whatever font and size you’d like, and adjust it’s position to where you want it.

You might not need your titles in the same position for every video you make, but try to figure out which position you’ll use most so you can adjust them at this point instead of moving them every time you start a new project.

Once I get it exactly how I want it, I’m going to look for the little hamburger menu and choose New Style. You can move that style wherever you’d like so it’s easy to find.

Go back and do that for all your most commonly used ingredients. When you name your title you can press COMMAND + A to highlight it, and COMMAND + C to copy it. 

Then when you get into your legacy title editor, choose the title tool, select your style, click inside the window, and press COMMAND + V to paste the title in there. Adjust the position as needed. This can save you a little bit of time in typing the ingredient over again.

If you don’t feel like taking the time to add your most commonly used ingredients to the titles, another option is to add them each time you create a new video. 

To do this, open your template project and add the titles for the ingredients in the recipe you’ll be making. Save the template project, make a copy, and continue with editing your recipe video. If you do this each time you edit a new video, eventually you’ll have your most commonly used ingredients in there and won’t need to add titles very often to the template.

Be sure to make a copy of your template project for each new video you edit by going to File —> Save a Copy. Alternatively, you could import your footage into the footage bin and then choose File—> Save As. I find this second way riskier, as I have on several occasions forgotten to save as a new project.

You want to make sure you’re not editing directly in your template project unless you’re adding titles or other assets that you’ll need. Doing so would just make more work for you in deleting sequences and footage from your template when it comes time to start a new project.

I usually do my initial editing in the 16:9 sequence, then copy and paste the finished sequence into the other sequences and adjusting as needed. That’s why we don’t need to add any elements to these sequences in the template, because they’ll be brought in with the rest of the video once the project is finished.

That’s it! Setting up template projects has saved me a ton of time in editing recipe videos and I think it’ll help you too. 

Let me know if you have any questions, or head over to the Facebook group to start a conversation there!