10 Video Editing Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Video editing sometimes requires a lot of time and work. A poorly executed video is worse than not making one at all. In addition to perfecting video quality, it’s also important that it flows smoothly from scene to scene. These 10 video editing tricks will help you do just that! 

To be a video creator, you need to know a lot of tips and tricks. For example, good editing is just as important as what happens on location. 

Video Editing Tips and Tricks

However, editing is not easy: there are many things you need to learn before it becomes a profession for you and you need to gather all the information, tips and tricks to improve your results. Video editing is the process of selecting and combining raw footage into a finished video presentation.

1. Get the right software for you

The first video editing tip on the list is, without a doubt, getting the right tools. 

There is a large number of editing software on the market and it is not always easy to know which one to use. 

  • The most popular applications among professionals include Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve, and they are wonderful programs that make spectacular video editing, but these programs are complex, with very high learning curves that require a lot of time.
  • Adobe and Apple offer simplified versions of their professional software ( Premiere Elements and iMovie , respectively), two great tools, although they have important limitations with respect to the previous tools mentioned.
  • There are also many other options suitable for newcomers to this world of video editing, software like Filmora and Pinnacle Studio are excellent to get started and to carry out high-quality work, as they offer many templates to be able to work with them without getting complicated. a lot, with a very professional finish.

If you want to download any of these programs, all of them have a free trial so you can try them for a while and thus decide which is your favorite software. It’s worth trying a few different software options before settling on one that’s right for you.

2. The order of the files

Make sure you always organize your videos and all your media in folders. This will make our job easier when it comes to assembling all our scenes or sequences.

It’s important to organize your footage so it’s easy to find later when you start editing.

When you’re shooting a video, it can be difficult to remember what’s in each shot. That’s why it’s so important to organize your footage. You can do this by labeling them with the “shot number” or “scene number.”

You should also have a folder for images, audio, music, everything well organized so that when you mount your videos you know where you got each resource from.

3. Create a draft or script

It is always advisable to create a draft or script with all the shots you want to take before doing any editing work. The script is very important, without it you will go aimlessly.

I assure you that having a script will save you time and clarity of ideas.

4. Create a color palette for your project

When putting together a video in our editor, it is very important to guarantee consistency throughout its assembly. It is interesting that we have a clear color palette throughout our project, both in titles and in the production itself.

5. Transitions

Transitions are used to create the illusion of continuity between two unrelated scenes or two different parts of a scene. You can use transitions creatively, or you can use a transition to join one part of the story to another part.

A transition is used when you want to show the passage of time or a change in action, for example a door opening or closing.

6. Audio effects

Include audio effects in your footage. Audio effects are made to alter the sound of a track.

There are a variety of options for different types of audio effects, including fades, fades, volume adjustments, or sound effects such as futuristic, gaming, or city sounds.

7. Balance your audio

If your music makes it difficult to hear when someone is speaking, it is doing more harm than good . There are countless tutorials on the internet that add music to their explanations but the volume of the music is too loud or it does not match the theme of the topic. tutorial that makes it impossible to follow that explanation.

Another common mistake is putting together different clips that include vocals but at noticeably different volumes. It is always necessary to carefully balance the audios.

To do this, first balance the voice in your video, then mute any other audio and review your video by adjusting the volume of the voice clips so that they are as close to each other as possible. Then, fit other audio elements (sounds of any type) around the speech.

If your software has audio keyframing or fading, you can use this to lower the volume of music when someone is speaking and raise it elsewhere. It is also interesting to take into account the audio fade at the beginning and end of the video so that the audio appears or disappears smoothly.

8. Adjust color settings

This part is also very important, adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation or color temperature settings is essential for your video to have that professional touch.

There are two color editing processes: color correction and color grading.

  • Color correction is used to correct any errors in the colors of a video, while color grading is used to give the photo a more stylized and cinematic look.
  • Color grading or digital color grading can be used to make creative decisions about color temperature, exposure, and saturation of video clips. You can use these changes to set the tone of your video production.

9. Remove unwanted parts of your video by cutting them

On many occasions in a video you may need to cut parts and delete them, for example, when there is a pause or we go blank for a moment because in reality those parts do not contribute anything to the final result of our video.

10. Export

Once our editing is finished we want to share our perfect video with the world, but there is a problem. We need to export the video to a format that works for what we are trying to do.

There are several formats that we can choose from, and each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is very important to export each video we make to its corresponding format.

For example:

  • Square format (1:1 ) with 1080×1080 resolution, can be found on some social networks such as LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook.
  • Horizontal format (16:9 ) with 1920×1080 resolution, this is a well-known resolution for almost all social networks and blogs, for example YouTube or Vimeo.
  • Stories format (9:16 ) with 1080×1920 resolution, you can find this format on social networks such as Instagram and TikTok.

Here are some video editing tips to help you. You can learn how to choose the best software for your needs, improve the pace or clarity of your videos, and make the music work together with the images, so that your videos look very professional, even if you are a beginner.

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