Controller for macbook pro. Final cut pro is the best video editing software for windows 7 / 8 / 10 / XP. Download final cut pro free by simply clicking the download button. Corel VideoStudio has all the characteristics of the other top-of-the-line products on this list, including 360-degree VR and 4k support, but it also has the distinction of being the first piece of consumer video editing software to offer motion tracking—which, if you’re not already familiar, is a feature that allows you to track specific.
You’ve filmed a movie or shot a music video, and now it’s time for the other half of the battle: the post-processing stage. As with filming, this step requires a good mix of both creativity and technical knowledge. And in this article, we aim to help make the video editing process much easier and more productive by providing a few helpful tips, techniques, and “life hacks” for you below.
Tips for Video Editing
While these tips don’t exactly teach you how to make edits to your video clips, they can help cut your editing time in half and help you produce better results in the end.
Choose the Right Software
The first step in improving your video editing process is to choose the right software for you and your work. They normally offer everything you need to perform standard video edits, but you may prefer one over others for their usability, digital interface, and features. The key here is to choose what works for you and your editing style instead of just the latest, most advanced video editing program out there.
Top favorites include After Effects, Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, and DaVinci Resolve, which offers a free and comprehensive Lite version. You may also want to try Lightworks, Autodesk Smoke, and Sony Vegas, if you’re looking to try other less-popular yet highly capable alternatives.
Use a Fast Computer
No, we’re not about to pit PCs against MACs in this section. You can choose whatever computer brand or model you want, as long as it’s fast enough for you to store huge files and allows you to focus more on your editing work without having to worry about slow rendering.
It definitely helps to invest in a faster storage drive (SSD) that will allow you to access your files and software faster, as well as speed up your rendering, loading, and export times. Other things you can do to significantly shorten your editing times is to increase your computer’s memory (RAM) to at least 8GB if you’re going to be doing professional or commercial work, and get the recommended video card and processor for your editing software.
Edit for a Story
One of the most important takeaways from this article is to remember your creative goal: to tell a great story. Go beyond the basics—cutting away extraneous footage and correcting the order of your clips—and take the opportunity to make your film aesthetically-pleasing and dramatically compelling so as to evoke the right emotions and effectively impart your intended message. Use your practical and technical knowledge in achieving this instead of just adding a bunch of effects to impress your viewers.
You can simply follow the storyboard used during filming, but there may be times when the director—or you, if you have the liberty to call the shots—will decide to make on-the-spot changes to the predetermined flow, scene transitions, effects, and other editing elements for the sake of improving the story.
Maintain an Efficient Workflow
Even with a super-fast computer system and editing software, you’ll also need to be systematic and organized in order to become a more efficient editor. One way to improve your workflow is to organize your projects and files in folders that you can use again and again. Create homes for your projects, footage, audio files, images, and graphics, in which you can also create more subsections and folders.
Final Pro Cut Video Editing
Another way that you can work faster is to use external hard drives for storing your footage, so you can free up more computer memory. We recommend that you choose hard drives that can be connected via USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt to enable faster file transfers. Also consider allocating your RAM to be able to use more of it for editing and getting a gaming mouse that allows you to set specific editing functions for its buttons.
Utilize Keyboard Shortcuts
Speaking of buttons, keep in mind that most editing programs allow you to use keyboard shortcuts to perform a range of in-app editing functions. Feel free to review, memorize, and customize the different set of shortcuts for software programs like Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Media Composer, and DaVinci Resolve.
If you have a little more money to spend, the easier option would be to purchase an editing keyboard (or at least a replaceable editing keyboard cover) that already has keyboard shortcut icons in them. These are usually software-specific so you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues with your editing software.
Learn Important Terms
The video editing industry will require you to communicate with other video editors or clients, which means you’ll have to learn a lot of lingo. To those who haven’t heard of them, some of the terms used in video editing can be impossible to figure out without any research, which is why you’ll want to learn them early on. Basic concepts include the following:
- Jump Cuts – Cutting out portions to skip boring or predictable moments and preserve visual interest.
- J Cut – Audio precedes the video.
- L Cut – Video precedes the audio.
- Montage – Sequence of clips showing the passage of time, usually for a transformation or character development.
- Cutting on Action – Cutting when the subject is moving instead of after each movement to create a more interesting and fluid scene.
- Match Cut/Match Action – Cutting together two visually similar shots or scenes
- Cutaways – Adding transition pieces that don’t include the main subject or action to show the surrounding environment and set the mood, add meaning to the scene, or aid dramatic tension.
These are just a few, as there are certainly many other cuts and terms to learn. All you need to do is take the time to read and do your own research.
Color Correct Your Clips
Color is a major design element that can be manipulated to highlight certain subjects, evoke specific emotions, and set the mood or atmosphere of your scene. Fortunately, today’s video editing programs give us a lot of color editing options that used to be only possible with photos.
Most editors do two things: color correction, to make sure that the colors of your footage are consistent in each scenes, and color grading, to give your film a different look. Both are essential when you want most of your scenes to look as realistic as possible, or to differentiate certain scenes from others, such as when you use presets like sepia and monochrome on “flashback” scenes.
Select Good Music
Don’t just focus on the visuals; it should only be as good as your music. If you’re creating a drama film, for instance, you’ll want just the right song or instrumentals to make key moments (where you want to trigger certain emotions from your audience) more effective. Cheerful comedies can be a little forgiving, but it can also be easy to overdo it with upbeat songs. It can be difficult if you’re doing it on your own, so having a musical scorer can help take the guesswork out of it.
But before you even think of using just any music, remember that the safest option is to get music from a royalty free music provider. You may be able to find free music, but the best audio usually comes at a price. If you’re doing a professional project, music is usually included in the production budget.
Add Text and Graphics
Depending on your film type, you may have to include more text aside from the title, opening/closing billboards (for broadcasting), and film credits. You’ll usually want to keep it simple, with a clean and white sans-serif font that doesn’t grab too much attention. Have them dissolve in and out, and see how it works for your film.
But if you need to add flashy graphics, you can create them using your editing software. Adobe After Effects is a popular choice for creating some of the best motion graphics. If you’ve yet to learn how to make your own by hand, you can always get impressive ready-made After Effects templates from RocketStock.
Export Web Versions
Once your video is done and ready to be exported, the natural tendency of most editors is to export it at the largest video resolution possible. This is definitely the way to go if it’s going to be played in cinemas and ultra HD screens, but in today’s generation where video projects are usually marketed online, you should also export smaller, high-quality versions.
When exporting for the web, the goal is to create a file that maintains its high quality without making it too heavy for upload and online viewing. If you’re unsure about the export settings to use, don’t worry. Sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo all have recommended export settings:
Export Settings | Youtube | Vimeo | |
Maximum Resolution | 2160p (4K) | 1080p (HD) | 720p |
Recommended Codec | H.264 | H.264 | H.264 |
Audio Codec | AAC-LC (up to 96kHz) | AAC-LC (up to 48kHz) | N/A |
Bit Rate | HD 8mbps at 24fps, 4K 45mbps at 23fps | 20mbps | N/A |
Supported Frame Rates | 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60 | 24, 25, 30 | < 30fps |
Cover image via Ip camera viewer software.
These essential cuts will help any editor transform their footage into a gripping, solid narrative.
If your goal is to master the art of editing, you’re going to need to know the essential cuts to use when editing a film or video. Let’s go through eight of these and look at some examples of each. For said examples, we’ll be using excerpts from various films — but keep in mind that you can use these same cuts in any editing session, be it narrative, documentary, commercial, industrial, or even animation.
1. The Standard
The hard cut is the basic type of cut in editing. This type of cut is utilized when you want to cut from clip to clip without any type of transition, or where you cut from the end of one clip to the beginning of another. The only down side of the hard cut is that (out of all the cuts we’ll talk about) this one gives the least amount of visual meaning. To give you a quick overview of the history of cutting, here is a great video from Filmmaker IQ.
Video from Filmmaker IQ
2. Jump Cut
The jump cut is a technique which allows the editor to jump forward in time. We see an early version of this technique in Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin, where the battleship fires a mortar round and we watch the destruction as various angles jump cut from one to another. In this very early version of the jump cut, contemporary audiences were introduced to a new way of time passage in film. It obviously gained traction and is one of the most used types of cuts today next to the hard cut.
Video from ChaniaArt
Another great place to use jump cuts is during an interview, especially if you film the interview with multiple cameras. This allows you to jump from one angle to the other without it being jarring for the audience. In order to really grasp this type of editing technique, here is a fantastic resource from Vimeo Video School on the Understanding of Jump Cuts.
Video from Riley Hooper
3. L Cut & J Cut
First, let’s talk about the L Cut. This editing technique is used not only by narrative filmmakers, but is also a favorite of documentary filmmakers and commercial videographers. What L Cut means is that you are hearing the audio from the previous shot, even though we’ve moved on to another shot. So, the audience is is looking at clip B but still hearing audio from clip A. How to find downloads on macbook pro.
Here is a great example of an L Cut from David Fincher’sFight Club where Tyler recites the rules as various characters ready themselves to fight. What is happening here is that the audience is introduced to the voice, and then we are given visual information on the environment where the voice is located. This technique will keep your film or video flowing naturally, while also giving your audience much needed spacial information.
Video feom Movieclips
Again, this type of editing technique is used to help lead audiences along in the narrative by giving them spacial information and audio. L Cuts are also used to contextualize a conversation or give it deeper meaning, as was done in Skyfall during the museum scene with Q and 007. As they are talking, we cut to the painting of the old warship on the wall while Q continues to talk, eexplaining what they are looking at while also correlating 007s career to the warship in the painting.
Video from Sony Pictures Entertainment
A J Cut is essentially the opposite of the L Cut. Here we hear the audio before we see the video. So, the audience is is looking at clip A but still hearing audio from clip B. This type of cut is used quite often in all forms of filmmaking and videography, but you can see it quite often in content featuring an interview.
Vimeo Video School has once again put together a great resource for users that want to gain a real understanding of what L and J Cuts are. Just like with L Cuts, you can give your audience additional visual information to go along with the dialogue that is being fed to the audience. As was with the video below, this allows your audience to gain a better understanding of the environment the character exists in.
Video from Etsy
4. Cutting on Action
The technique of cutting on action is a huge component of, well, action films. Of course, this type of cut can be used on less-explosive action as well. The basic idea of cutting for action is that the editorcuts from one shot to another and matches the action of the shots. Editing is all about motivation. Each time you cut to a new shot you need to ask yourself: why? In the words of Videomaker:
Don’t be tempted to wait for a pause and then cut, unless you have a good reason.
Your film will develop a better ‘flow’ if you cut on action instead of waiting for pauses. One of the best examples of motivated cutting is The Matrix. Watch the following clip closely and specifically look for instances of cutting on action. Almost every cut happens mid-action. This results in a much smoother transition and a more tense action scene.
Video from Movieclips
First Cut Video Editing Software
One of the best modern examples of cutting on action is the Watchtower of Turkey by Leonardo Dalessandri. The video is a great example of not only cutting on action but also using motivated edits to seamlessly transition between scenes.
Video from Leonardo Dalessandri
5. Cutaways
Cutaways take the audience away from the main action or subject. These are used primarily as transition pieces to give the audience a view of what is happening outside of the main character’s environment. This also goes a long way in helping you emphasize specific details of the mise-en-scène and allowing you to add meaning to them. You can see this clearly in this scene from the The Quick and the Dead where Sam Raimi cuts away from the gunfighters to the clock on the tower, which aids the dramatic tension.
Video from Welcome to the Wild West, son
Another way to use cutaways is during dialogue sequences. A great example of this is during a scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where Rooney believes he is talking to Ferris, only to be met with the realization that he is on another line.
Video from Lena E
6. Cross-Cut
The technique of the cross-cut, also known as parallel editing, is where you cut between two different scenes that are happening at the same time in different spaces. When done effectively you can tell two simultaneous stories at once and the information being given to the audience will make complete sense.
In the last 10 years, probably no filmmaker has loved using the cross-cut technique more than Christopher Nolan. He’s used this technique on several films and always uses it effectively to connect the various stories lines in each film. In his 2010 film Inception, Nolan utilizes the cross-cut technique to aid the audience in keeping up with the various levels of the dream state. In fact, it often feels like the entire film is just one long series of cross-cuts. For an example of this cut, let’s watch the now famous zero gravity fight scene and watch how it connects to the crew in the van in a previous dream level.
Video from Aniruddh Kumar
Utilizing this type of cut, you’ll need to be careful in how you structure your multiple story lines. If not done correctly, you’ll just confuse the audience more. When using the cross-cut technique, I’ve always found it extremely helpful to get a separate pair of eyes on the edit. It may make complete sense to you as the editor, but it may go right over the audiences’ head. For other examples of this type of cut, all you need to do is look to other work by Nolan. He successfully uses this technique in Memento, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar.
7. Montage
Montage is another technique that has been around for a long time, but isn’t used as much as the previous cuts. The idea behind the montage is to use rapid cuts of imagery to help convey the passing of time or to help aid the context of the narrative. There are many different forms of montage, but one of our favorites is the rhythmic montage in��The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. During the three-way standoff, director Sergio Leone uses quick montage cuts to give the audience the facial reactions of all three characters. This works perfectly to heighten the tension of the moment.
Video from Movieclips
As we said, montage is also used quite often to help get the audience through a passage of time. There are great examples of this throughout film history, but one of our favorites is its usage during the original Karate Kid. Editor John G. Avildsen uses the montage to quickly get us through the karate tournament showing the main characters progress, as well as the progress of those he will eventually face.
Video from TheChefDeadManInc
8. Match Cuts
The match cut is the technique of matching the movement or space of two opposite environments together. This technique has been used for many years. It’s most effective when you need to move the narrative along, but you need to find a way to connect them together seamlessly. There are two particular films that do this extremely well, and they are two of the most lauded films in history. The first film that we’ll look at is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and how Stanley Kubrick found a way to move from the ‘Dawn of Man sequence’ to the ‘Space Station sequence’ in the span of a second without continuity issues. He did this by showing the primitive man throwing the bone up into the air and then replacing it with a spaceship floating through space. This was extremely effective and allowed the audience to move from one scene to another easily.
Video from Lee M
The second example comes from Lawrence of Arabia. After being introduced to Lawrence, director David Lean and editor Ann V. Coates needed a way to move from the space of the government offices to the deserts of Arabia. In this case they used the blowing out of the match to jump us forward in time to the rising sun of the desert. This cut works because we have the extinguishing of one light and the rise of another. Again, this keeps the flow and pace of the narrative going without disorientation to the audience.
Video from Movieclips
Was this information helpful to you? Are there any other types of editing cuts you would like to learn about? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.