Have you ever watched a video or listened to a podcast and it was obvious they just
didn’t edit it?
Like you can hear all of the noises and see all of
the mistakes.
Editing your course videos is an important step in providing a great experience for your
students.
In this video I’ll teach you how to edit your videos with the simple and free video
editing app, iMovie.
Let’s get into it.
Hello creators!
I’m Ben Toalson from Podia where we empower creators like you to make a living doing what
you love.
iMovie is a great video editing tool if you’re just starting out and comes free with iPhone,
iPad, and mac devices.
Today’s video is going to focus on editing in this app on a mac, but if you have windows,
there are a couple of iMovie alternatives you can use.
Movavi is free to download as a trial and, like iMovie, features a simple user interface.
After the trial period you can purchase the basic version for about $39.
You can find it at movavi.com
Hitfilm Express is 100% free.
No trial period, they just give it to you. and is comparable to more powerful programs
like final cut pro and premier pro.
You can download Hitfilm at fxhome.com/hitfilm-express
Now let’s get into iMovie.
First you want to find or download iMovie.
It comes pre-installed on most devices, and to check for it you can either type command-spacebar
and type imovie, or you can navigate to your applications folder in finder and search for
it there.
If you plan to use iMovie quite a bit, I recommend moving it to your dock.
If you don’t have it, you can download it at apple.com/imovie or from the app store.
When you first open iMovie, click on the big plus sign above “Create new” and select
“movie.”
I’m going to give you a quick tour of what you’ll see on the next screen.
Here we have three basic sections… media libraries, where you can navigate and add
various types of media, a preview monitor, where you can see a preview of your video,
and the timeline, where you’ll be editing your video.
In this video we won’t get into each of the individual features and tools, but only
touch on what we need for editing and saving your lesson video.
Adding your footage To add your footage you can either click the
“Import media” button and find your file, or you can drag your file into the timeline
from the finder window.
If you’ve used the “import media” button, just be sure to drag your clip down into the
timeline.
I’m going to use a clip from one of our Podia videos as an example.
Before moving on to the next step, you’ll want to click “settings” at the upper-right
of the timeline and make sure “Show waveforms” is checked.
You can zoom in and out of your timeline with command plus or minus.
Zooming in will make it easier to make cuts and zooming out will make it easier to navigate
to different sections of your video.
Editing your footage The first thing we’ll do is right click
the clip in your timeline and select “Add Cross Dissolve.”
This will add a fade transition to the beginning and end of your video.
The previous video in this series covered recording your lesson slides, and I encouraged
you to clap whenever you made a mistake so it would be easy to find during the editing
process.
If you’ve done that, you should be able to see a spike in your audio waveform and
can navigate to those points in your clip.
To edit out your mistake, click the point on the clip just after the clap and type Command
+ B.
This will split the clip.
Now bring the cursor the the edge of the clip to the right of the split and you should see
a vertical line with an arrow pointing away on either side.
If you click, you can drag the end of that clip to just before the beginning of the bad
take the remaining clips will automatically join together and make a jump cut, that is
a jump from one clip to the next with no transition.
If you haven’t used the clap method, or if you just want to watch through the whole
thing and edit as you go, you can follow the same process.
You may want to do this anyway so you can remove unwanted pauses or excessive dead air.
Final review and saving your video Once you’re done editing, you can watch
your video from the beginning by hitting the backslash key.
Watch through to make sure you haven’t missed any edits.
If it looks good, it’s time to save your video.
Click the the export icon at the top right of your screen and select “file” or go
to File, share and select file.
From here you can edit the title, add a video description and even add tags.
You should title your video with the name of your lesson.
For the other settings, I recommend the following.
Resolution: 1080p, unless your course is meant to be viewed on a larger screen, then you
might want to export it in 4K.
For quality choose “high quality” and for compression, choose “better quality”
then click “Next.”
Now you’ll choose where to save your video file.
If you don’t see your folder, click the down arrow so you can navigate to the module
folder that corresponds with your lesson and click save.
You’ll see a circle appear in the upper right of your screen that will show you the
progress of your video.
iMovie will notify you once your video is finished rendering.
And you're done.
At least with this video.
In the future, we’ll do a more in-depth look at the various tools and features in
iMovie, but this should at least help you get started.
The next and final video in this series will walk you through how to publish and sell your
online course.
I want to hear from you.
What video editing software do you prefer and why?
Let me know in the comments.
If you found this video helpful, and you want more content like this subscribe and hit the
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.