Need advice on finding/using the Adobe Documentation (e.g., Timeline)

[peternelson]

I'm a CC Premiere Pro newbie and I'm trying to get up to speed quickly.   I don't want to just learn "recipes" ("step1...step 2...step 3...") like they have on YouTube videos; I want to learn basic principles and correct terminology.    Right now I'm trying to understand how to navigate the Adobe documentation.   I specifically want to learn about the timeline.   I want to learn what each icon in the video and audio track headers does and what it's called so I can communicate with other users without saying, "that blue do-hicky in the upper left corner".

I thought this would be in the user guide so I went to Adobe Premiere Pro Help | Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide.  

The text "timeline" doesn't appear on that page and the "Topics" list seems weird and incomplete -  for example they have an "editing audio" topic but no "editing video" topic.   I clicked on some of the topics anyway but didn't see a Timeline entry.

There is also a "Search Adobe Support" text-entry field but it goes outside Premiere Pro -  when I typed "timeline" into it, it had zillions of links for the timeline in Adobe Animate and Adobe After Effects, and in earlier versions of Premiere Pro (e.g., CS6) and "how to" tutorials, and troubleshooting help, etc, but I didn't find a basic introduction to the Timeline in Premier Pro CC.

N.B. - I'm not asking someone here to give me a link to the Timeline documentation -  I'm looking for advice and strategies to find this kind of stuff on my own in Adobe's documentation.    Thanks in advance.

[Meg The Dog · Accepted solution]

I find it is more helpful to work off the pdf version than the html manual, the search is much better:

https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/premiere_pro_reference.pdf

See what you think.

MtD

[R Neil Haugen]

Meg gave you the best doc for the Program as-is.

Other resources that are immensely useful to get you going better faster are many of the tutorial series available through lynda-dot-com and the ebook by Jarle Leirpoll on his premierepro.net site, "The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro".

The book will get comments from some here that it's too advanced for noobs. I disagree if one seriously wants to get good fast. He's got the best first couple chapters on basic editing. Mastering keyboard shortcuts and which ones are something you should add NOW. Projects organization. Saving any moderately or more complex effect or process as a preset.

All the stuff you need to do before the time spent becomes decently fast and productive.

Neil