Matchframe Editing School

The important technical aspects required to become a top-class editor.

Editing

The road to becoming a top-class video editor isn’t easy, but practice and patience will get you there in no time. The following tips and Video Editing techniques can help you improve your confidence as an editor, ensuring you get that next job.

1. Make Sure You Choose the Right Software.

Picking the software is something that solely depends on your workflow and preferences. The features and interface have nothing to do with your editing skills. Although the software has changed extensively since the old version, the layout of the programs has remained the same. The choice is yours.

The world’s most popular video editing software is Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, etc.

2. Keyboard Shortcuts

You can quickly tell the difference between a professional and a beginner video editor based on how much they use the keyboard. In the industry, editors who have been around a while know that squeezing a few seconds here and there adds up. Keyboard shortcuts are the time Savior of the video editing process.

When editing, using a cheat sheet is one of the most effective ways to learn keyboard shortcuts as a beginner.

3. Learn the Film Editing Terms and Techniques

To become a professional editor, you need to learn some basic film editing terms and techniques to deal with industry people. This does not mean you have to know everything, just the lingo to communicate more effectively.

Here are a few essential concepts you’ll need to understand:

8 Essential cuts

A number of cuts were used while editing, including visible cuts and invisible cuts where they were necessary. Understanding these concepts will help you to become a better editor.

4. Music changes everything

In a scene, the sound is just as important as the visuals. It wouldn’t have life without sound. To give life to the scene by Keeping sound levels consistent throughout each scene/shot, using ambient background noise to avoid silence, and using J or L cuts to make the scene more interesting. Poor sound can ruin an otherwise remarkable production.

With movies like Jaws, Star Wars, or Grease, the experience you get with added soundtracks seems real, and people seem to enjoy it. If you keep an ear and eye for music in video editing, you’ll become an even better editor.

5. Tips for Fast Editing

The faster you edit, the more time you get to spend on your creative endeavors. Organizing and labeling shots is a crucial part of editing because you got to spend hours and hours on a project. To reduce that time, you need to create an organizational structure that you can use again and again for each project.

One of the most popular ways to organize footage is to use the following folder structure:

  • Footage
  • Project Files
  • Titles/Animations
  • Audio
  • Images

You will be able to edit faster and consume less time by organizing the footage.

Remember that project organization is all about keeping your resources together in one place. Use what makes sense for you!

6. Learn basics

It is easy to turn your video content into something that is highly presentable using software such as After Effects and Davinci Resolve. Learning its basics will help you to create awesome motion graphics, VFX work, and color correction, and it is also a lot of fun to learn.

This is the next logical step for you if you’re serious about video editing. You’ll need motion graphics at some point. It’s better not to avoid the inevitable.