Many people know video editing is an essential step to creating a professional video but they lack the skills to do it. This is why it is important to learn as many tips as possible about video editing. You will see improvements in your skills as you put these tips into practice. The following are 7 video editing tips for beginners.
7 Video Editing Tips for Beginners
Cut Out Unnecessary Scenes
During video filming, you are bound to record some scenes that are unnecessary. You can cut out these scenes by using the trimming tool. To cut tight a video, you must make sure there is no gap in the dialogue sentences. For example, you can delete silence moments in the actors’ dialogues or delete the part that has less important dialogue lines. Most movies have a time length of 90 minutes so you should try to keep it to 100 minutes in the first cut. In the second cut, you can playback the video again and cut some more scenes to keep the movie length to 90 minutes.
Don’t Focus on Technical Aspects
You must not put too much emphasis on the technical aspects, for example, adding special side effects. These side effects will not help your video to tell the story. Instead, you should put more focus on editing the video in the way that it will bring the intended message to the audience. You must ask yourself what type of message you want to convey or what emotions you want to stir in the audience through the video. One technique is to include B-roll footage – B roll footage are bits and pieces of the scenes you actually film, for example, if you and your friends go scuba diving in a remote reef, you can include clips on how you and your friends get prepared for scuba diving, what types of fishes you see under the water, and returning to the boat.
Add Audio Soundtrack
You can also add an audio soundtrack that matches with the video theme. If the soundtrack is too long, you can cut it with the video trimming tool. You can also add in a sound effect such as animal sounds and ambient sounds to improve the feel of the video. Adding background music and sound effect can help to muffle the on-camera sounds. You must level the volume level of the sound effect, background music accordingly. They should not be louder than the voiceover. It is best to just set background music to a significantly lower volume if you are not sure it is louder than the narration.
Reduce a Video Resolution by Cropping
Cropping the video can reduce the video resolution and file size. When cropping, make sure all the important elements are within the cropping frame. Movavi Video Editor provides instruction on how to crop a video if you don’t know how to use the crop tool. After you click the crop button, the crop frame will appear and you can resize it by dragging the corner. After the frame is resized, you can press the Apply button to crop the video. By cropping the video, it will upload faster on YouTube. They also don’t take up a lot of spaces on your mobile devices.
Add Transitions that Sync with Music
If you want to add transitions, make sure it is in sync with the music. Transitions can show there is a change to another phase in the video. If you don’t know what transition to choose, just choose a transition that looks good for that particular scene. Simple transitions like crossfade, dissolve and zoom transitions will work.
Create an Animated Title Intro
You can use the animated title feature to create an intro for your video. The video editing software has a lot of animated title presets to choose from. To add the title, just drag a style to the clip and then double click on it to enter the text. Adding a title in the opening is not only good for introducing a video but it also allows you to give an introduction to different video series.
Add Slow Motion Effect
Besides, you can add slow motion to make the video more cinematic. Slow motion scenes can be achieved by filming the video at 120 fps with your camcorder. The effect can also be added through the video editor by first selecting the clip and then clicking the gearwheel button. Under the video tab, you can drag the speed slider to the left to make the video play slow. As a rule of thumb, you should avoid adding too much slow motion in the video as it will make your audience get tired of them.
Video editing can be intimidating, but once you start to get a feel for it, the video editing process will become second nature.