How to Master Clip Effects in Premiere Pro

In this lesson on How to Master Clip Effects in Premiere Pro from David Bode’s FREE Premiere Pro Tutorial Course, you will learn how to apply effects to your source clips to save you time and energy.

What Is a Source Clip?

Source clips (previously known as master clips) are objects in the Project panel other than sequences, multi-camera source sequences, and bins. Examples of source clips include merge clips, sub-clips, and synthetic clips, such as adjustment layers and colour mats. A source clip is usually cut up during editing and used in the timeline sequence. All the clips created from the source clip can be referred to as sequence clips or child clips.

What Is a Source Clip Effect?

Sometimes, you need to apply an effect to every sequence clip in your timeline. Adobe has come up with a great solution for this called Source Clip Effects. When you apply an effect to a source clip, the effect automatically ripples down to all of the sequence clips created from that source clip.

Finding the Source Clip From the Timeline

To open the source clip from the timeline, select any sequence clip that is derived from the source clip in the timeline, and then press F on the keyboard. That opens up the source clip in the Source Monitor.

Now, if you double-click on the clip in the timeline, it’ll come up on the source monitor, but that doesn’t mean it’s the source clip, which can be a bit confusing. In order to view the source clip, you have to select the clip and press F.

Applying an Effect to the Source Clip

Let’s say you wanted to apply colour correction to all the clips in your sequence. You could copy and paste the effect to multiple clips, but the problem with that is that if you went back and made an adjustment to one of them, then you would have to delete all of the other effects, and then recopy and paste it over all of these instances of this clip. Quite tedious, right? There’s a much easier way to do it that affects not only the clips in this sequence but also the clips in any sequence derived from the source clip.

Grab the effect from the Effects panel and drag the effect to the Project panel, Source Monitor, or Effect Controls panel when the source clip is displayed.

Now, when you make your colour corrections using the Three-Way Colour Corrector in Effects Control, that effect is applied anytime this source clip is used in a sequence in your project. Source Clip Effects are a really powerful tool for applying colour correction and other effects to clips that you use multiple times throughout your sequence, or that you use in multiple sequences. So it’s a really handy feature to have.