Videos play a pivotal role in making your brand popular amongst followers on social media. They are an important part of any marketing strategy. Whether you are filming a movie, a short promotional music video, or anything else, a video appears appreciable only if it has been cut and edited perfectly. This requires a perfect mix of creativity and technical knowledge and a good video editor with multiple features and in-built processes.
Here are some simple tips which can help you edit and create a productive and fantabulous video.
Watch All the Footage Before You Jump to Editing
Before you start putting in all the pieces together, you need to carefully watch each footage in detail and see what best you can pick up. This will help you get a feel of all your work before you find the parts of the clips you like the most and start noting their time code on a doc or sticky notes. This way, you can make a montage, which will make things much easier when you finally get down to editing your work.
Watch Video Editing Tutorials
One of the best ways to improve your video content is by watching video editing tutorials, readily available for free on Youtube, blogs, and various educational websites. You can look for specific tasks to achieve certain looks by targeting the software version of the program in use. There are options to adjust functionality and menu settings from version to version.
Choosing the Right Software
Half your battle is won if you choose the right tool to edit videos. They come with standard video edits and the right tools. However, you must primarily look for its usability, features, and digital interface while making your choice. The mantra is to choose the one that works for you and compliments your editing style instead of simply going in for the latest versions.
Speed up the Process
The present era is fast-running. The concentration span of people has been reduced, but people are also always busy with a heavy social-media engagement. Under such given scenarios, one needs to keep their videos short, crisp and engaging. If you have created a half-an-hour video, you should be able to edit and cut it into 30 seconds of work to maintain its flow and continuity.
Cut on Action
Always cut midway through action to make edits look smoother, instead of doing so when things are static. This will prevent the image from looking jarred, and the movement would make up for slight errors by distracting the viewer’s eyes.
Cutaway From Speakers
When understanding the tips and tricks on editing a video without errors, one important aspect is knowing when to cut. The best way to improve pace is to cut away to other visuals while the speech is continuing.
Learn to Use Color
There are two color editing processes: color correction and color grading. Colour correction lets you adjust your clips while maintaining the basic consistency. When shots are taken in two different lighting conditions or from two different cameras, it can jar the effect when placed on a single film/scene adjacent to each other. However, this can be taken care of by adjusting its brightness, contrast, and white balance.
On the other hand, color grading imparts a particular look to a scene. For this, you can use certain high-grade editing applications with grading interfaces.
Cut to Music
One of the best ways to boost up the energy of your video is to set it with the right soundtrack. This calls for synchronizing the editing with the beat of the music to avoid jarring cuts. The best way to do this is to tap your fingers on the desk or keyboard shortcuts while playing the track. The ideal points to cut the video are the points where you tap. Alternatively, your audio waveform can also help you figure out the peaks where you need to cut.
Add Texts and Graphics
There are films with video content that require adding more text besides the title, the opening and closing billboards, and the film credits. Keep it simple, with a clean white font that does not grab too much attention and gets dissolved in and out very smoothly. However, if the requirement is flashy graphics, your editing software can do the needful.
Balance the Music
Your background music should never overpower the speech being said in a certain scene. This would jeopardize the entire purpose of creating the video. The audio needs to be balanced very carefully and at similar volumes. There are several ways of adjusting audio elements around the speech, like auto keyframing that lowers the volume of the music when someone is speaking.
Always Use the Story First
Adding special effects to impress your views would never work unless you have a rock-solid, impressive, aesthetically pleasing, and dramatically compelling story. They would distract the film from its main point. It is most important to use your practical and technical expertise to keep the story in mind and focus on enhancing its effects at every juncture in the video.
Follow the 321 Rule
Video editors should always follow the 321 thumb rule. This means they should store and keep three copies of whatever they create in two different places, and one out of those two places should be physically apart from the other locations.
Export Web Versions
The most common practice is to export the video, once ready, to the largest video resolution possible. If the video is played on the big HD screens and cinemas, this is good going. However, the present generation markets and exports videos mostly online on social media sites.
This requires that you export smaller, high-quality versions that enable easier playback. Make sure the file is not too heavy for uploading and online viewing, and resize your file accordingly, as per the requirement.
Final Take
Creating videos is no rocket science, provided you have the apt knowledge and the correct tools to support them. There are multiple online video editors available to help you smoothly with your video creation and editing process. Also, the above tips and tricks can make you groom your editing skills over time and ensure a smooth sailing process for you every time you create and edit a video.