Welcome to the second video in our HitFilm Basics Masterclass. In this tutorial,
we're going to show you how to begin editing your videos. So things like
trimming and adding video to the timeline, going over the editing tools,
and if you missed the last tutorial on how to actually download HitFilm Express,
you can find that in the card on-screen. Let's go ahead and dive right into
HitFilm Express, I've got a new project here and I've imported some media, which
we covered at the end of the last episode. These are just clips from our
Day in the Life episode where we vlogged our workday here at FXhome.
Up in the top left, you have the trimmer here. Now the trimmer does not
represent what you're gonna actually output, it's just a way to see what the
clip looks like before you actually put it on the timeline. If you want to see a
different clip inside of the trimmer just click on it in the Media Panel.
Let's take this example here. The trimmer works based on what you call in and out
points. This is basically telling HitFilm at which point you want to start the
video, and at which point you want to end it. So if I scrub through here until I'm
a little bit closer, let's say I want to start the clip at this point, what I'll
do is come over and select the Set In Point button. The orange section of the
timeline represents which part of the clip is going to be played. Now I'll skip
through and decide where I want to end it, and then I'll click the Set Out Point
button. You can also use the I and O keys, which are keyboard shortcuts. Now that
I've got my In and Out Point selected, I can click and drag the video down into
the timeline. You might get this message that says the editor settings differ
from the clip you're adding. This is up to you to determine what you want your
settings to be, over here in the media panel I can see that my clip is 1920 x
1080 at 29.97 frames per second. This is a good standard, so I'll go ahead and
select Yes to change my project to fit those settings. This viewer section
represents how the final video will look. Down here in the timeline you have a
little zoom bar if you need to see things in greater detail, and, depending
on how your settings default, you may or may not see previews in the timeline
here. You can change that by coming up to this hamburger icon for Track Options,
select that, and then change the video size to something different.
If you still don't see any thumbnails, go back to the menu and select Preview Mode
and change it from None to one of the other options. I'm gonna go ahead and
skip forward a bit to fill in the timeline some more. Now we've got a
little edit going with multiple clips playing one after another. Let's take a
look at the tools you can use to edit your footage. They can be found over here
on the left. The one you'll probably use most is the Selection Tool, which is the
default. This is useful for moving Clips around, and you can also, if you hover
your mouse on the edge of one, change the In and Out points by dragging. You can
click and drag an empty space to highlight multiple clips and then move
them all at the same time. The next icon is for the drag tool, this is useful if
you want to pan around the timeline without actually moving anything. Next up is
the Slice Tool, this is how you make a cut in your footage,
so I'll just position it over this clip here, and you can see that it snaps to
where the timeline indicator is. Click once to make a cut and then, if I change
back to the Selection Tool, I can then move this clip somewhere else. A useful
option, if you right-click in a gap and then you select Ripple Delete Gap, it'll
move everything to the right of the timeline to fill that space. Next we have
the Slip Tool, this tool lets you move the In and Out Points of the clip but
not actually move the clip itself. Here we have the first one here, and you can
see that it ends at about two seconds and 14 frames. I can tell that by this
number here. If I want to adjust the In and Out Points, I can select the Slip
Tool, and then click and drag inside the clip itself. And you can see that the
Viewer is updating to show me what those new In and Out Points will be. So if I
continue to drag, I'll eventually get a new clip there,
and now this is the clip that's playing instead, but nothing else on the timeline
has been affected. The Slide Tool allows you to move a clip but maintain it's In
and Out Points but then compensates the surrounding clips to fill the gaps. So if
I use the Slide Tool on this clip here, I can move it over to the left, and the
clip on the left and right will trim automatically to fill the gap. Then we
have the Ripple Edit Tool which is useful for adjusting the In and Out
Points of a single clip. If I adjust this clip here, you can see that it pushes all
of the other ones to the right, and if I move it to the left, it brings all of
those clips in-line. then we have the Roll Edit Tool which lets you adjust the
In and Out Points of two clips, and automatically fills in the gaps as well.
Finally, we have the Rate Stretch Tool which lets you speed up or slow down
clips. This one does not automatically fill the gaps. This is a quick way to
speed up or slow down your footage. If you're interested in making your workflow
faster, you might want to check out the keyboard shortcuts. All of these
tools have their own shortcuts, but you can customize them in the File > Options
menu. Here we have a list of some categories and all of the corresponding
shortcuts. You can clear or reset them, or customize them yourself. You can perform
a J or L cut by holding down the Alt key and clicking and dragging one area on
the timeline. In this example here, I'm trimming the video of one clip, but not
the audio. I can then fill in the gap for the other video using the same technique
and this means that the audio from one clip will play before the actual video
shows. This is useful for hiding cuts inside of your footage and making the
transitions more smooth.
HitFilm Express has a number of built-in transitions that are very easy to apply. If you come over here to
the Effects Panel and then scroll down to Transitions: Video, you can see some
folders and transitions here. We have a couple transitions for motion, some for
dissolves. As an example, I'll just drag on the Additive Dissolve and place it in
this area between the two clips. There's the transition and if you want
to adjust the duration of it, you can click and drag, similar to adjusting
clips, and make it either smaller or larger.
If you want to adjust one side of the transition, hold down the Shift key and
click and drag. Now let's take a quick look at the controls panel which is
probably one of the most important panels in HitFilm. Let's say we have this
clip here and I want to zoom in on Oli's face halfway through. To start, I'll come
over here and select the Slice Tool and then make a cut where I want it to
transition. So let's say right here, then I'll come back to the Selection Tool and
select this second piece of the clip. Now come over to the Controls Panel. The
Controls Panel depends on which clip you have active at that moment, so if I click
on this one here, that video will become active instead. It's important to make
sure that you've clicked on the right clip before you start adjusting the
controls. Down here in the Transform properties, you can see a couple of
things that you can adjust, like the Position, so I can move it left, right, up,
or down. I could also use the control handle, here. Remember that the viewer is
what the final output would be so if I were to export this right now, it would
have a black line on the left and bottom, which probably isn't ideal. Let's go
ahead and reset that by right-clicking and selecting Reset. We can also adjust
the scale, so we can make it bigger or smaller, and in this case I actually do
want to make it bigger so I'll go ahead and leave that, and then adjust the
Position to focus on his face. If I wanted, I could also rotate it or adjust
the opacity, which is how transparent it is. There's also a line on the timeline
itself to adjust the Opacity, for a quicker result.
Now if I play it back, you'll see the regular clip, and then it cuts to a
close-up of Oli's face. The Controls Panel is basically where you want to go
if you want to adjust any parameter of the video or effect that you've applied.
A new project in HitFilm will start with one video track and one audio track. You
can see that here on the left, you can add as many as you like by
right-clicking and selecting Insert Track. This will put a new video track up
above, and then I could, for example, put this one here. If I wanted to maybe keep
the more organized or split it up so that it's easier to see. You have two
icons on each track. The first is an eye to hide it from view, and the second is a
lock icon. Once the lock is applied, you can't make any changes so you can't move
anything, you can't trim it, it's locked. So now we've taken a look at the ins and
outs of editing video inside HitFilm. In the next tutorial, we'll show you how to
add text inside the software. Click the card on-screen to be taken there right now.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you all in the next video.