… for Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Tip #273: Organize Clips by Color

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Colors allow organizing clips by color.

Hidden in plain sight in the Project panel is a very cool organizational tool – colors! Not only can we organize clips by bins and file names, but also by color. For example, color all talking heads magenta, while B-roll shots are blue and reaction shots orange. Or change colors by scene.

While the obvious benefit of using colors is that it provides another way of organizing clips, a hidden benefit is that those colors follow the clips into the Timeline, allowing you to see at a glance where all your talking heads, for example, are located.

Here’s how this works.

• In the Project panel, switch to List view.
• Select all the clips you want to assign to a specific color.
• Right-click on a color chip and select Label.
• Choose the color you want to apply to the selected clips.

Click the top of the color column, indicated by the red arrow, to group and sort colors; click a second time and the order is reversed.