Social Media Sermon Clips - Premiere Pro Editing Walkthrough

This is the whole process I use for cutting sermon clips for social media in Premiere Pro.

I originally made it as a training video for our team. Enough other people asked for it that I put it up publicly.

Step 1: Cut

Pull down everything you need first. Footage, the Premiere project file, renders, thumbnails. I open the existing project file so everything for that sermon stays in one place.

On Resolve, same idea. Make the project file live in the same folder as the footage.

Step 2: Crop

Get your keyboard shortcuts set before you start. Mine are Q and W for ripple trims, S for ripple delete, X to add an edit. That handful does most of the work.

New sequence at 1080x1920 for vertical, drop the sermon footage in, cut it down to the section you're using.

Step 3: Captions

Switch to the captions workspace. Generate a transcript for the in and out points of your clip, then create captions from it.

My settings: max 22 characters, single line. Montserrat Black, centered vertically.

Then read through and fix them. Auto-transcription gets names and church words wrong constantly, and nothing undercuts a clip faster than a misspelled word sitting on screen in bold.

Step 4: Music

I pull tracks from Soundstripe. Import, then set the level so it sits under the sermon audio without competing with it.

I usually go with something with an emotional tone that matches what's being said. Music that fights the message is worse than no music.

Finishing it

A few things that make a clip feel less flat:

• Punch-ins on the lines that matter
• Relevant stock footage over the parts that don't need a talking head
• Auto Reframe to keep the subject centered, with manual fixes where it gets it wrong
• Color on key words in the captions so the important line stands out

Export

Set your in and out points and export with a custom reels preset.

Two things people forget: burn the captions in, and apply your LUT. Captions that aren't burned in won't show up on some platforms, and skipping the LUT means your clip looks flat next to everything else in the feed.

Related reading

• Organize Your Media Files: 3 Tips for Keeping Your Digital Files Organized
• How I Made a Custom Countdown Video in Premiere Pro and After Effects
• Budget Video Editing Computers for Church Media

Getting a good clip starts before the edit. Church Video Made Simple covers exposure, white balance, composition and audio, so your footage is worth cutting in the first place.