Premiere Pro is a nonlinear editor (NLE). Unlike older videotape editing systems where you generally need to lay down edits consecutively and contiguously, Premiere Pro lets you place, replace, trim and move clips anywhere you want in your final edited video.
On videotape systems, if you decide to insert a sound bite in the middle of a story already edited on tape, you need to insert that sound bite over your existing edits and re-edit everything after it. Or you can make a dub (copy) of the story segment after the new edit point and re-record that part after adding the sound bite (causing generation quality loss in the process).
With Premiere Pro and other NLEs you can make changes by simply clicking and dragging clips or segments around within your final video. You can edit video segments separately and tie them together later. You can even edit the closing sequence first.
Premiere Pro lets you do things non-sequentially.
NLEs have another huge benefit over videotape-editing systems: immediate access to your video clips. No longer do you need to endlessly fast forward or rewind through tons of tape to find that one elusive-but-essential shot. With Premiere Pro, it's a mouse click away.
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