How to Add Clip to Start of Timeline in Premiere Pro

Some of the links in this article are "affiliate links", a link with a special tracking code. This means if you click on an affiliate link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. The price of the item is the same whether it is an affiliate link or not. Regardless, we only recommend products or services we believe will add value to our readers. By using the affiliate links, you are helping support Edit Video Faster, and I genuinely appreciate your support.

This tutorial teaches you how to add a clip to the start or beginning of a timeline in Premiere Pro. You’re going to be using an Insert Edit to edit your clip (video, audio, image, etc.) into your sequence. Here’s how:

Using an Insert Edit to Add Clip to Timeline in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro has a number of different types of edit tools to add clips into your sequence, whether that’s at the start of your timeline or anywhere in between. We will be using an Insert Edit to add a clip to the start of our Premiere Pro timeline in this tutorial.

There are a variety of ways to do this. I’m going to show you three methods.

Preparing Clip and Timeline

First, let’s go over to our Timeline panel. Make sure your playhead is at the start timeline. You can do this easily by tapping the Home key on your keyboard.

Now find the clip that you want to add to the beginning of your timeline and load it into the Source Monitor by double-clicking it in the Project panel or dragging and dropping it into the Source Monitor. Set your in and out points using the “i” and “o” keys.

Circle back to the timeline and insure that your tracks are patched correctly. Watch this quick video if you don’t understand that last sentence.

Doing the Actual Insert Edit in PPro

And now you are prepared to do your Insert Edit which will move everything down the timeline and put your clip at the start of it. Like I mentioned, there’s a few ways to do this.

In the Source Monitor you can click the Insert Edit icon.

Are you need to video editing? If so, get some of my free video editing guides!

Insert Edit icon in Premiere Pro Source Monitor in order to add clip to start of timeline
Click the Insert Edit icon to add the clip to your timeline

You can also use the keyboard shortcut — the comma (,) key.

Lastly, if you hold down the Command (Cmd) key if you’re on a Mac or Control (Ctrl) key if you’re on a Windows computer, you can click and drag the clip over from the Project panel to the Timeline panel. You’ll see these little sideways triangles which I think look like those old school cartoon teeth. Then let go of your mouse and your clip has been added to the your sequence.

Insert Edit "teeth" in Premiere Pro Timeline showing where clip will be added
Hold Cmd/Ctrl and drag clip to your timeline to Insert Edit it

If you’ve now gone through this tutorial and you still need help, please leave a comment and I’ll do what I can to help troubleshoot it. But if you can add a clip to the start of a timeline in Premiere Pro, I hope you stick around and check out some of the other Premiere Pro tutorials on my website or consider signing up to get notified about new blog posts and happenings around EVF.

– Josh

🎧 Do you need stock music? Check out my friends at Soundstripe. They have the best selection, pricing, and licensing out there. For 10% off a subscription use the code “EVF” at checkout.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.