Content is an incredibly important part of our work-life today. Irrespective of which field you get into, churning out a good quality of content is paramount. With quality comes the diverse formats of content posted on various platforms. While for some brands and businesses’, graphics and texts work, for some – videos have proved to be extremely effective. If you’re going to do video editing tasks by yourself then keep reading otherwise you can also hire someone and outsource the work to Sortlist https://www.sortlist.com/blog/outsource-video-editing/
When it comes to making and editing videos, a little help with tips takes your content a long way. There are a lot of techniques that are involved, and it takes good understanding to implement them. Putting in all the footage you shoot along with clips, images, and text can be tedious, but the result is always very effective.
Therefore the one skill that you need to upgrade if you are interested in producing video content is to know how to edit them tactfully for maximum impact. Therefore to know the basics of doing the same – here are a few tips of video editing that will prove to be extremely helpful for beginners:
1) Import your footage
This is the basic and the first and foremost step you need to abide by. Import your video content to whichever software you use to edit your video. If you are doing it on your computer or laptop, you can use a USB port to transfer your footage and start working on it. Without the footage, the term editing does not seem applicable. Therefore make sure you shoot in a device from which the content can be easily transferred to the concerned device at the time of editing.
2) Organise your footage content
Being organized is going to make your video editing process a lot easier. Therefore start with having a folder where you have every shot, audio file, and video file listed categorically based on the order in which you plan to place them while editing. Have them sorted by day, date, time, or even a convenient video title if you want.
If you have less footage to edit, dragging and dropping the files might work. However, either way – to avoid confusion and crashing of your software – it is best to have the clips organized before you proceed with editing.
3) Analyze and review your footage well
Once the organizing of the clips is done, next comes reviewing and deciding which footage to be used and which not to be used. Most often, it is recommended that there is no harm in shooting additional footage – but when it comes to editing, you should know which clips will work and which won’t.
Therefore, analyzing the clips plays a very important role. Sometimes there might be instances where there are some glitches or disturbances in certain shots which cannot be used. Analyzing and reviewing beforehand helps in segregating them. Many good platforms of an online video editor today even have the feature of highlighting the usable clips, which also comes in very handy.
4) Trimming and arranging footage
This is the most fun part of editing a video. Once you have dragged and dropped all the footage to a timeline that can be edited – you get to shorten or extend your video. You get to play around with the time you feel suitable for your content and make the cuts accordingly.
Always be sure of the narrative that you are following or the story that you are trying to say through your video. It is only then that you will know the exact time frames of the video footage you need to finally curate a proper one.
5) Polish your transitions
Putting all your footage in the right order is just the initial stage of your video editing process. The most interesting and technical bit comes in when you have to put in transitions or smoothen the changes from one clip to another.
Therefore, transitions are very important. Do not get disheartened by how many times you will probably have to make changes to your editing process because it’s very common. Some of the best video editing software, such as InVideo, helps in these processes. It might look disturbing or unrelated to the viewers if the transition is not smooth.
6) Always implement feedback
A creative and technical process always requires the implementation of feedback. Video editing requires constant back and forth and exchange of ideas which helps in improving the quality of the video being edited. Consult workers and other fellow video editors who would have had prior experience in this field. Their feedback might exponentially improve the quality of work that you are doing.
7) Embellishing your video content
The highlight of any video content is how aesthetic it looks. This is where the use of video editors heightens as you can add your desired special effects to make the video as aesthetically pleasing as you can.
At the end of the day, the goal is to keep your viewers hooked. Learn more about effects like color correction, filtering, special effects, transition effects, and graphics. The preferences or what your particular video requires might be different, but the technique remains the same.
8) Adding Text
Certain videos are edited so nicely that you hardly feel you need any text to be incorporated. But you must focus on how professional a text makes a video look. Even if it is as simple as adding a title text or some introductory taglines, it is always better to make your video more wholesome by adding some text and giving a little outline of where your video content is headed to.
You need not make it text-heavy, but having relevant text does have a nice impact on viewers as they feel more guided and informed about what they are watching.
9) Share it for the world to see!
The final step is to export your video to whichever platforms you want – be it social media or to mail it to someone so that people can start watching it. All your hard work is appreciated once people see the efforts you have put in to edit your video as a flawless one. That can only be known once you export your file and share it for the rest of the world to see.
Video editing might seem intimidating at first, especially for beginners, but these tips are sure to give you the confidence you need to start with the basics and ace it. Have a look at these tips to make sure you know the steps you need to follow as a beginner and then slowly become a great video editor!
