10 Simple Video Editing Tips You Need to Master

If you're interested in video editing and want to become a successful Youtuber, plenty of free resources are available to aid you in the journey.

Whether you're doing it professionally or just to create viral video content, if you're working with video, video editing will be a major part of your career or hobby.

Here are ten simple tips that will help you master the art of video editing and create content that your viewers are sure to love.

Mastering Video Editing: 10 Simple Tips You Need To Know

1. Choose The Right Hardware

And if you're just getting started with video editing, plenty of free applications are available.

2. Maintain An Efficient Workflow

It's important to keep your projects organized from start to finish. If you don't, you could get overwhelmed easily, and before you know it, that piece of work will be sitting on your hard drive for weeks because it will be so much work to go back through all of your files.

Use a project management tool like Asana or Trello and divide up your projects into phases that represent real-world deliverables. These should include tasks such as storyboarding, shooting footage, editing, and finalizing.

This way, you can check off each phase as you complete it and see how far along in production you are at any given time.

3. Keep It Short And Sweet

Focusing on high-quality content will help you turn more viewers into subscribers.

The first thing that catches a viewer's attention is your video length; if it's short and sweet, they might stick around longer. Try looking at other videos in your niche, and see how long they last—the average seems to be between two and five minutes long.

You might want to consider keeping yours as close to three minutes as possible without rushing through your content.

4. Get Comfortable With Transitions

Using these transitions will give your videos more character and allow your audience to follow along with what you have going on in your movie. For best results, find a good Youtube editor online to make the process seamless and hassle-free.

5. Do Your Research

The best way to ensure that your audience will receive your video well is by doing some research. Look up top tutorials online and use them as a guide, looking at what techniques they're using, how they're teaching their concepts, and whether or not you agree with their style.

Figure out what you like and don't like, and then adapt it for your own purposes. Doing so will help you create videos that are similar in style but uniquely yours. 

6. Ask Yourself: What Am I Trying To Say?

If you aren't sure what you want viewers to learn, it will be harder for them to take away any actionable points or lessons from your content. 

So before you start writing, ask yourself: What do I want my audience to take away from watching my video? Then use those answers as guidance when you write your script.

7. Don't Be Afraid Of Special Effects Or Stock Footage

In today's video-driven world, it's easy to think that you have to be a professional video editor in order to make compelling videos.

It's true that some special effects are tricky and require some experience with certain tools. But if you understand your way around a storyboard and have basic editing skills, you can learn many different tricks of the trade online.

Some even provide stock footage for free that you can use for your projects.

8. Add Music (with permission!)

Royalty-free means that no one owns exclusive rights to its use.

For example, if you wanted to include a clip from Amazing Grace in your video, it would be illegal to do so without permission from whoever holds rights to that song. But if it was royalty-free (like most classical music), you could use it freely in your video as long as it wasn't obscene or offensive.

9. Use Subtitles

Just because you're fluent in two languages doesn't mean your viewers are.

Subtitles and closed-captioned titles do wonders for boosting video views. If you don't have access to a subtitle file, consider transcribing what's being said on screen as an alternative. If your videos are only in English, consider adding subtitles or captions (and if they aren't, add them).

It may seem like a small detail, but it can make a big difference in how many people actually watch your videos and engage with them.

10. Edit For A Story

When you watch a movie, do you notice that there's an arc of the story? That's video editing.

In video editing terms, a story is made up of visual beats—like when you cut from a wide shot to a close-up or follow someone walking down an alleyway. The more skilled and aware you are of these edits and how they tell a larger story in your production, the better editor you'll be.

The Bottom Line

If you're looking to master video editing, you can't just dive in headfirst. It takes time to learn the intricacies of video editing software and practice to get good at it.

Marketing of a video is important if you want to see yourself as a successful influencer or YouTuber one day. The above-mentioned ten simple video editing tips are designed to help you create better videos from the start so that you can spend less time editing and more time marketing your videos to your audience.

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