If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? There’s a reason video remains one of the most eye-catching ways to connect with audiences around the world. It allows a mixture of all the artistic mediums and can hit viewers with maximum impact.
If you’re making content on your own, you’ll need to master the art of editing. Editing is perhaps the most important part of the content creation process. That being said, there can be a steep learning curve to learning this skill.
Reading through a few essential editing tips can help you get your bearings and move through your edits much easier. What are some editing tips and tricks you should know? Read on.
Choose the Right Software
If you’re brand new to the world of editing, it’s time to first set up the environment you’re going to be doing your work in. That will mean picking the right kind of program.
There are all sorts of video editing programs out there, and more and more continue to pop up on the market each year. Each come with their own benefits, learning curves, price ranges, and needs.
You’ll need to look through them and decide, based on what you’re trying to create and your resources, which will be right for you.
There are more professional options such as Avid, DaVinci, and Adobe Premiere. These programs are used as the industry standard, and much of the movies and television you watch are edited in these programs.
They can do so many things: you can combine video, add graphics, play with effects, and output to any format you could dream of.
However, these programs are also more complicated to use. If you’re looking to make a very simple video, using iMovie or something similar might be easier.
Make Lots of Copies
Editing is a trial and error practice. You’re not going to get everything right in your edit on the very first try. As such, it’s important to keep a workflow that allows you to try many things, and go back to previous versions when you’re new ideas don’t work.
It’s a good idea to keep an organized folder within your edit program where you can continually duplicate your editing sequence. This will allow you to go back to a previous version of your edit each time you make a major change.
This can save you loads of time and frustration.
Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
Editing is a time-intensive practice, so anything you can do to help make the process run a bit faster can be advantageous. One of the easiest ways to speed up the editing process is by learning some of the keyboard shortcuts.
Professional edit systems can almost be run entirely off the keyboard, meaning there’s almost nothing you can’t do with a quick keystroke. Getting familiar with the shortcuts for the features that you use the most can save lots of time.
The more efficient you are, the quicker you’ll end up with a final product you can be proud of!
Editing Tips and Tricks
If you’re learning to make edits on your computer, you’ll want to get familiar with how the video editing process works. The above editing tips can help you master this art form and create great content.
Need more video advice and info? Keep scrolling our blog for more.
