Hey there, in this course I'm going to show you the perks of using headphones when you are Audio Editing, and also some of the problems that happen when you are trying to connect headphones, and they won't connect. The same for kind of external speakers as well. Let's jump in now and see what Premiere Pro has to say for itself. 

All right, using headphones is super important when you're working with audio. Just listening to your-- through kind of computer speakers, you'll get most of the audio, but there'll be just lots of little things that you can only pick up when you've got your headphones on. It can be any ones, that's fine. Over-ear ones or On-ear headphones, it doesn't really matter. It's all about just getting really close to the audio, so that you can start to hear all the weird stuff, like all the lip noises and the, I don't know, the sounds from inside your mouth, you don't want to hear them, but you want to make sure you get rid of them as well before you send your kind of video out. 

Now what kind of headphones do you need? It doesn't matter. Headphones are-- in my personal opinion, have come to a point where actually even cheap headphones are pretty good these days, but if you need justification to spend $300 on a set of really sweet headphones, you totally have my permission. I did it, it doesn't make my audio editing any better, but, I feel good, and they look good. Anyway, let's talk about the problems you can have, with headphones when you plug them in. 

The first one is, when you plug them in they probably didn't work. The music's still probably coming out, through the actual speakers of your computer. You notice that if you-- anything else on your computer, if you plug your headphones on, it switches it to it automatically. Premiere Pro is a little bit more deliberate. It's not meant to kind of toggle between things plugged in. It wants to be very specific, where you get your audio from when you're editing. It doesn't change, so where do you do change it? 

So I've plugged in my headphones, and they definitely don't work, if I hit 'Play' now, it's playing through my computer speakers. So to make it go through my headphones, go to 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', and go to 'Audio Hardware'. If you're on a PC, go to 'Edit', and down here will be 'Preferences', then go to 'Audio Hardware'. So you need to tell. You need to say, look, my input, not worried about at the moment, but my default output is going to be my external headphones. It's going to say, "Hey, changing this mapping is serious business." It's not that serious, but, it's just warning you that it's going to stay like this forever. I'm going to say, "Yes, please," so it's going to go to my external headphones. 

You can see these other things that are plugged into my machine, but that's what I'm going to get it go to. Now if I click 'OK', and hit 'Play', there you go, you can't hear it, but it's playing through my headphones now, and not my speakers. The trouble is, if I disconnect my headphones, just unplug them from my computer, now if I hit 'Play', ah, invalid audio output, which is handy, because previous versions didn't even have that, it didn't say anything, it just said-- which it didn't play. That was terrible. 

Now I'm going to click this little icon here, just to have a look at it. It says this, no valid output. Can you see, it's very literal, it says, once you pick that I'm only going to try that, and I'm going to have big problems if you don't. So what you need to do is, if you unplug it and you want to go back, you have to go back in here. So you, not working, I'm going to go back through my MacBook Pro. Yes, please; click 'OK', and it's working again. 

Now you don't have to use speakers, you can use your computer speakers, that's fine. If you want to get even more hard core, you want to be super serious, go to your sweet keyboard, and you want to get some, they call them Studio Monitor speakers. You'll see them on Video Editor's desks, when often they're working by themselves because they're very loud, and they look like this; where are they? They're kind of like small set of speakers, very expensive, generally, but just really good sound quality, and they'll use those to test their audio, because you can get a lot bigger range than headphones can, but you've got to decide whether that works for you. If you're video editing while the kids are sleeping, Studio Monitor speakers are probably not going to work for you. I don't use Studio Monitor speakers, because I'm not an audiophile, like, I can totally see why people would, but I just use headphones. 

Now the other thing I want to share with you about Premiere Pro, is you can change hardware stuff in here, and occasionally other things will stop working. Like if I go and mess with this audio hardware, and I mix around with it, I've had problems with Skype and Zoom, and other things, not knowing where my microphone was, especially microphones. If I go and change it from my microphone to, that's the one that I'm using right now, one of these other ones, I find that they can have problems. So you just need to make sure you come back in here, and put it to whatever you want it to use. 

So Premiere Pro can take control of other programs as well. This might be my own hoodoo, but I feel like it does sometimes. Not even sure how or why, whether it's just a bug with mine. Anyway, those are headphones, just be very specific about them, going to audio hardware, pick them, I'm going to go back to my speakers, and where are they? I've unplugged them, I'll plug it back in and use those. All right, I'll see you in the next video.