Start Adobe Premiere Pro, and open Lesson 06-01.prproj. Click OK to convert the CS5 project to CS5.5 format, and if necessary, locate any missing files in the Lessons/Assets folder where you stored the files copied from the Lessons DVD.

Drag the three video clips from the Project panel to the Video 1 track, in the order shown below. If necessary, press the backslash key (\) to expand the view to show all the clips on one screen.

You’ll now create some handles for the transitions you’ll apply. Select the Ripple Edit tool (or press B on your keyboard), and drag the end of the first clip to the left to shorten it by about 30 seconds (note the time in the pop-up menu).

Use the Ripple Edit tool to drag the beginning of the second clip to the right about 30 seconds into the clip.

Create handles at the end of the second clip and beginning of the third clip in the same way. Use the Ripple Edit tool to drag the end of the second clips 20 seconds to the left, and drag the beginning of the third clip 20 seconds to the right.

Select the Selection tool (or Press V on your keyboard).

To make the transitions you are about to apply easier to see, zoom in closer to the Timeline. Put the current-time indicator at the edit point between clip 1 and clip 2 on the Timeline, and then press the equal sign (=) four times or so until you’re fairly close.

Click the Effects tab to open the Effect panel. (In the default workspace, the Effects panel is in the same frame as the Media Browser panel, beneath the Project panel.)

Click the Accelerated Effects button to display only effects that are GPU accelerated in the panel.

Drag the scroll bar on the right to view the Dissolve transitions.

Drag the Additive Dissolve transition onto the edit boundary between the first two clips on Sequence 1.

Drag the current-time indicator a few seconds before the transition, and press the spacebar to preview the transition. Note that you don’t have to render the sequence before you can see the results of the changes, and note how the Additive Dissolve transition produces a short burst of white before the second clip comes into view.

Drag the new Film Dissolve transition on top of the Additive Dissolve transition. Adobe Premiere Pro replaces the Additive Dissolve transition with the Film Dissolve.

Drag the current-time indicator a few seconds before the transition, and press the spacebar to preview the transition. Note, again, how you can preview the transition at the full frame rate without any rendering and how the transition uses linear color blending without the burst of white seen with Additive Dissolve.

These are two of the many newly GPU-accelerated features included with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. Others include Interpret Footage options that allow you to correct for mismatched media by compensating for differences in frame rates, field order, alpha channels, pull-down order, and pixel aspect ratio; Speed-Change operations such as Time Remapping, Speed Change, and Backwards that produce high-quality slow- or fast-motion or reversed footage; and Field Order options for adjusting field order, interlacing, deinterlacing, and removing flicker.