In this video we're covering ten steps that you need to do to become the most
efficient video editor ever!
Hey there I'm Mark Brown with Editors Keys and welcome to the Editors Keys
channel now if you're into filmmaking or editing consider subscribing to the
channel because that's what we're all about and if you've got any filmmaking
questions that probably is already a video that may answer that question so
have a little search after you've watched this video now in this video I'm
gonna give you ten tips that you should do to become the most efficient editor
ever as well as going over some of the mistakes that I see a lot of people make
so let's jump into step one okay so step one is organizing your files now I know
organizing files sounds pretty boring but I just want to show you a couple of
little steps that you can do to really make your whole editing process and
workflow much more efficient the best thing to do before you start to throw
your clips onto your timeline and start to edit is to make sure you have all of
your Clips organized this will speed up your workflow drastically so when you
import your clips onto your timeline make sure to create new bins you can do
this in Premiere and organize your clips into different folders such as b-roll
and studio footage
and then another tip to take your organization to the next level is to
color code the footage so then when you drag a clip onto your timeline you know
exactly what it is and where it comes from and then you'll have a view of
everything that you've used to do this simply highlight the clip then right
click and then click label and there you go okay now step two is to make sure you
have a plan now there's that famous saying if you fail to plan then you're
planning to fail and it couldn't be more true for video editing so let's get into
step two so it's all good before you go on a shoot saying you'll just try and
get as much footage as possible and then try and make something out of it but
next time before you shoot make a bullet-pointed list and decide on the
things that you'll want to shoot and then try and picture your edit in your
head before then think about whether or not you're actually going to use a shot
or not because when you bring that into the Edit you may have a ton of files
that you'll have to go through and you know what will happen you'll have a ton
of footage and most of it you will never use so you're just wasting your time
so make a plan and compose a vision and it will save you a ton of time in the
long run it will also cut down your shooting time and speed up your editing
to ask yourself what do you want your audience to feel to think and to learn
or take away after watching your video now step 3 is to make sure you have
enough footage how many times have you filmed something and just realized you
haven't got enough footage to actually fill up the project or you just haven't
even got enough on the ends at each clip so let's get into the half step now this
tip is along the same lines as the last one and it's a really simple tip to make
sure that you have enough footage to work with if you're filming there's
nothing worse than going back to the edit and realizing you didn't film
enough stuff to act we tell a good story a good editor is a
person that tells a good story through choices of shots and sounds and the
techniques that you can mix between this so make sure you can tell a story with
what you have and plan before you go out and shoot I'd also recommend shooting
for longer so you have an extra few seconds at the start and at the end of
clips to play with especially if you're thinking of doing any speed ramping or
slow motion step four is keyboard shortcuts you want to learn the keyboard
shortcuts so this one is vital and it's what editors Keys is built around use
keyboard shortcuts and take the time to learn as many as you can you know even
with just knowing a few simple ones like play fast forward but wind cut you can
save a ton of time it will make your edit more consistent and it will help
you become more comfortable with editing now of course we have to mention our
Adobe Premiere keyboards and covers but before we do that you can actually view
some of the shortcuts by coming up to the top here click Premiere Pro click
keyboard shortcuts and then this will show you every shortcut in Adobe
Premiere Pro and you can actually also edit or change your own here too
now the best way of editing is of course to grab an editors keys keyboard and you
can purchase a Mac or PC dedicated keyboard or a keyboard skin cover that
fits over your own Mac and they all give you all of the shortcuts and color
coding and the covers start from under $30 so if you want to check those out as
a link in the description below and we'll take you straight to the site now
step 5 is to think about your music you know there's actually been a study that
most people could handle fairly bad visuals but if the audio is gone you
really get some bad listener fatigue so you really want to think about the audio
within your video so when making vlogs product films and promotional videos
music plays a really important role and when the music doesn't fit right with
your edit this can really ruin a video so a good tip I'd say is to think about
your music before you edit and actually try and imagine it whilst
you're shooting is it going to be a fast-paced edit with loads of cuts and
effects or is it going to be very slow calm and relaxing finding the perfect
song is key to creating an edit that leaves an impression with your audience
we recommend you check out epidemic sounds or art lists as these two sites
offer fairly cheap subscriptions and the music is great because you won't get any
copyright issues when you upload to sites like YouTube now if you want to
check either of those sites out we've put a link in the description below and
both of those sites have kindly give us a discount for you and an extended trial
so feel free to try both out and let us know in the comments which you prefer
now the next step is to not overthink your edit now this one is really
important because we see this one a lot and it's when you actually over edit and
we've seen this a lot on YouTube and you probably have to where you just see tons
of transitions tons of graphics tons of cuts tons of kind of special things
flying in everywhere and this can be super distracting and one of the sort of
more common things we're seeing on YouTube is jump cuts too many jump cuts
now a jump cut is essentially where you try and cut out every single space gap
or breadth within your footage and you will of course seen this we're gonna try
and do it with our footage now but you actually want to leave this in it's very
natural for people to make a mistake or have a second to pause and think if you
cut all of these out the jump cutting can be really distracting because
obviously the person's head will jump all over the place as they move around
so just calm your edit down and you'll have some much nicer footage at the end
of it step number seven is to backup while you're editing there's another
keyboard shortcut for that and that is command + S this is for saving your edit
now another good technique is to keep backup saves of your edit whilst you're
in progress so every 20 minutes or so just save it as a new file just in case
you end up losing files or the original edit you're working on gets corrupted
and this recently happened to us and we had to start all over again now this
thing will happen every now and again and
can be a nightmare so do this to save your backups and save your time next
step 8 is to take your time with your edit and go step by step so a big
mistake that I've seen editors do halfway through their edit is that they
start things like the color grading or adding effects and transitions before
the Edit is even finished this will slow you down
and slow the software and rendering time down which can cause problems when you
edit back in your timeline make sure you have a story down first and all of your
clips make sense before you get into color grading and adding effects doing
it this way helps keep your focus on the most important aspects first making sure
your storytelling is the best it can be then when your story is ready you can
start to focus on the grading and effects to improve it further it's kind
of like putting the cherry on the cake step 9 is to always make sure you
transfer your footage how many times have you accidentally deleted a clip
from an SD card because you haven't transferred that footage now a lot of
people will already be doing this anyway but you want to mention it again for
beginners who are starting off now you may not have thought about this as an
important thing to do but it really is make sure when you take your SD card put
it into your computer and make sure these files are first transferred into a
separate folder on an external hard drive first before you begin your edit
and open up your editing software if you edit straight off the SD card and then
you realize you need to use that card for another shoe and your edit is not
yet complete it will become a complete mess plus editing from an SD card or a
computer's hard drive will also slow down your rendering time finally step 10
now this one is super important if you're starting out in your career or
even starting out on your new tube journey and this is to not be a
perfectionist our friend Sean Canela think media always says Punch
perfectionism in the face now it's more than likely your edit is already
perfectly fine so you don't want to be spending too much time on a single scene
or sequence as this will ruin your workflow completely
it's okay to finally stop refining cutting adding more clips fine-tuning
and you know spending way too much time doing this you could actually end up
ruining the edit and losing sight of what the video a story is all about this
is an issue that I'm sure every editor has from time to time and it's really
hard to get past that wall but knowing when to stop and taking a break can
actually help your edit be the best it can be
and you know sometimes perfectionism can actually stop us putting videos out in
the first place so don't be a perfectionist so there we go they are
our top ten tips and mistakes that you should avoid when creating your video
projects now let us know if those tips helped you did we leave anything out
could we put anything into another video let us know in the comment section below
because I promise we do get back to every single video so thanks so much for
watching and make sure you hit that notification bell and subscribe and
we'll see you in the next video