How to Add and Delete Tracks in the Timeline in Adobe Premiere Pro

Now, as we understand the Timeline Panel, let's first look at how you would add tracks just using simple Menu functions to an existing sequence. So here we have a sequence with one track of video and one track of audio.

If I right-click in this area here, this area is called the Track Header. If I right-click in the Track Header, I can choose to Add tracks, Delete tracks or Rename this track. If I choose Rename, it selects the name of the track, and I can recall this. We can just call it Track 1. Just click off of it to lock that in.

If I right-click again and choose Add Tracks, I get a dialog box that allows me to add video tracks, audio tracks, and audio sub-mix tracks. Now, I didn't talk about audio sub-mix in the last sequence dialog box that we reviewed, and there is a good reason for that. I think they are a little too advanced to dig into right now, because they are primarily used to route, and send, and mix audio tracks to build more advanced effect processing on existing audio mixes. We will focus on sub-mix tracks though in that Advanced Audio Techniques lesson.

So here if I want to add specific video tracks, I can add whatever number of tracks I want in this Add area. I can then choose where those tracks are added. So if you have a certain targeted track in your sequence, you can either add it before the first track in the sequence, after the targeted track in the sequence, or after the last track in the sequence.

So again, that's going to go down for before or upwards for after. So here we can just choose After Last Track, and just Add 1, and then if we want to add audio tracks, we can add any type of audio tracks in any of those same positions.

So here, if we wanted to add one mono track, just click Mono, and actually let's add two. So we will enter this value to 2, and then you are going to place this after, or let's actually say before first track. So now, what we have is 2 Mono audio tracks at the beginning of the sequence, and then our Stereo audio track will show up after that. I am going to go ahead and click OK, and now my sequence updates with that information. You will notice that by default, the first track is expanded. That's the default view that you have with the Track Header.

So now, I am going to twirl up Audio 3 and I have Track 1 which is Video 1 and Audio 1 which is our first audio track. Let's go over into our Project Panel, and go ahead and double-click on 13E_TK01.

Now, I've already docked my Source Monitor into the same pane as my Project Panel and I did that for a specific reason, because I wanted to have more space for my Timeline Panel, and because I wanted you to be able to see the effect controls. So here let's go ahead and just enter a value 20:00, so 2000. And then mark an In, press I, and then scrub just maybe to 27, doesn't need to be that long. Press the O key to mark out.

Now, what I want you to do is just click and drag this file down into the beginning of the sequence. What you will notice is the audio places itself on the first available stereo track because this clip does have stereo audio. Notice the video places itself directly onto the first track that you are dragging it to. If I pull the video up to Video 2, notice how the audio is still staying snapped into the current track it's in. So when you drag the audio in, the audio is going to snap to the first available track in its track type that it can be placed at.

From that point, you can then move the video clip to have it placed in whichever track you decide. If you want to change the audio track, you can do that later by placing the clip and then pulling the audio clip into a new track. So let's go back up to the Project Panel, with 13EG_TK01 selected, go to the Clip menu and choose Audio Options, Source Channel Mappings.

Now, what you are going to do in the Source Channel Mappings dialog, is click on Mono. What that's going to do is that's going to remap the Dual Stereo Channel as two separate mono files for that one video clip. Let me go ahead and click OK.

Then, you can go ahead and double-click on this file to open in the Source Monitor. What you are going to do is mark an In point on the clip, just about at 20 seconds. So you can enter 2000. That will put you at that point in time. Press the I key to mark an In point, then press 2800, press the Enter key, and mark O, that makes an Out point. Now, with an In and an Out selected, go ahead and grab the clip from the display area, and drag it just after the other clip in the sequence. When you release the clip, go ahead and press the Plus(+) key on your keyboard to zoom in now to the Timeline panel.