you don't have to be good at video editing in order to look legit on video and grow your
audience online with youtube but if not knowing how to edit your videos is what's holding you back
from creating content we need to get you started so in this video i'm gonna show you how to teach
yourself to edit videos in just one hour including the time that it takes to watch this video
now editing videos for youtube is something that i love to do myself and i love to teach other people
how to do it here on my channel and in my paid program like social video pro but i often run into
this big roadblock from clients and customers and random people who message me on the internet
and they say meredith i'm not using the same video editing software as you do i have to use final cut
pro do i have to use premiere pro and the answer is no you really don't have to use anything that
i'm using use what you have and follow the steps in this video to teach yourself how to edit videos
using whatever software you're using whether it's final cut
premiere pro premiere rush filmora camtasia screenflow lumafusion imovie davinci resolve but
you can figure this out as long as you follow the steps in this video so here's what you're going to
do you're going to record two clips either on your phone or with a camera whatever you have handy and
you might be thinking oh i already have footage that i want to edit i just need to edit what i
already have i hear you that's why you're watching this video but i promise just follow the steps in
this video and then you'll be able to edit your footage really quick and easy because you'll know
exactly what so you're going to keep your camera rolling throughout this entire clip you're going
to hit record and then you're going to record this clip that i'm going to tell you to record and then
you will stop recording so what you're going to do is you're going to look at the camera make sure
you're looking directly at the lens of your camera and not at yourself on the screen that's important
that takes some practice but you're going to record into the camera you're going to
say my name is and then insert your name and then you're going to snap three times
for the camera yes i know it sounds weird like i said follow me here you're gonna snap three times
and then you're going to again look at the camera and say on this channel i talk about
blank whatever it is that you talk about and then you're gonna pause and snap
again three times for the camera and then for the third time you're going to say
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog it's a weird sentence i know but it's a sentence that
has every single letter of the alphabet so it's a good one to practice and after you say that
again you're gonna snap three times for the camera and then you're gonna stop recording so if you
mess up your words when you are recording just stop and start again just stop and start again
you're going to make your three snaps after a good take after the words come out of your mouth the
way that you intended for them to come out of your mouth and it sounds good that's when you're going
to snap three times for the camera so here's what this looks like my name is meredith marsh
on my channel i create content about creating and editing videos
the quick round fox jumps over the lazy dog if it takes you 17 takes to get the words to
come out of your mouth correctly seriously that happens to me all the time that's totally normal
that's why you're making the three stamps and i'll show you why that's important when we get
to the actual video editor in fact the worse you do at recording your quick project right now the
more you're going to learn about video editing and in turn the faster you're going to be at creating
videos from beginning to so now you have your single clip done it's in your camera or on your
phone now you're going to use the same phone or camera whatever you're using and record something
around you that hopefully has something to do with your channel if not you can literally just record
your desk so for about five or ten seconds you're just going to record a little bit of footage it
could be of anything other than you and what you're creating here is called b-roll so this is
video content that you can use in your videos over top of your talking head your a-roll we'll
talk more about that in just a minute so next you need to import your clips to your video editing
software now remember i said it doesn't matter what software you're using all of the steps that
i'm going to show you are the same so if you get lost or you don't know how to start a new project
or add clips to the software you're using just google it after this video is and i'm using final
cut for this at the moment if you want a dedicated tutorial on final cut let me know in the comments
and i'll try to make it happen now if your files aren't already on your timeline you're going to
drag them or add them to your timeline and once you've done that i'm just going to zoom in a
little bit you're going to see your clip down here and you can also see that you have your
audio and you can see those little wiggly things down there at the bottom those are the waveforms
and you want to look for the three spikes that you made after you had a good take when you recorded
your clip those three spikes are where the good takes are all you have to do is look for the
wiggly wave forms that are happening before the three spikes and you know that's where you said
something good instead of scrubbing through this entire clip trying to find exactly where
the good parts are what do i need to keep what do i need to get rid of you can laser focus in
on those three spikes because you did your snaps and make this really quick for yourself so the
simplest thing to do here to teach yourself how to edit your videos is to look for those three spikes
right here and you're going to make a cut i'm going to just hit the command b and i
know that right before here you can see where i was talking you can also see my mouth moving
right there and you know that's where i'm going to be talking so all this stuff was me messing up
so right here we're going to clip that and then i'm going to delete this whole part before that
i don't even have to watch it because i know it wasn't good because i know where my three
snaps are and then i'm going to come find the next three snaps which are right here
i can see i'm talking right here so we're gonna clip that and take that whole section clip that
trim that cut that whatever however you wanna call it i guess technically it's considered a cut and
then our next three snaps were there yeah we're good with that and then here's our three snaps
so same at the end i can just take that and then i messed up here so it's like right there is going
to be our good take and everything before it is not good so those three things that i had you
say your name what you're talking about on your channel and then the quick brown fox from silver
lazy dog those are our three um sections of our clip right here we have a really great rough
draft but we need to fine tune it just a little bit so what we're gonna do is i'm gonna zoom in
here and we're gonna basically go frame by frame i use the left and right arrows on my keyboard
to figure out where i stopped talking which is like right there and
so before my hand comes up to snap so we're going to trim it all the way there and then
on my channel like we're going to come right to where the waveforms are starting here when i start
talking okay moving on to the next one here so again we're gonna i'm not even listening
to this i'm just looking at my lips move and then stop and it looks like right
there something like that same thing here this is a really bad angle okay um
and then at the very end we want to get rid of any frame that doesn't really matter you might
think that one second or two seconds of awkward silence isn't that awkward but it's really it's
kind of deafening it's really really awkward and it can mean the difference between your video
looking kind of amateurish and a little bit more pro and i want to show you another thing to make
it look a little more pro as well because if you remember we shot that b-roll and i told you we
would do something with it but first what about background music i get my background music from
epidemic sound and you can use whatever background music that you choose here but you want to
make sure that when you import it into your project just like you did with your video clips
and then bring it down to your timeline that you drop the volume of that background music quite a
bit you're gonna have to use your headphones really listen and make sure that your video
isn't going to cause the viewer to strain to hear what you want to say what you are trying to say
in your video so bring that background music down you're going to have to play with it just a little
bit now for that b-roll clip that i had you shoot so we're going to take this we're going to drag
it down and we're going to put it on top of that a-roll that rough draft that we just created where
we were talking to the camera and in this case it's this clip is a lot longer than it needs to be
i don't want it to be covering my face the whole entire time so what you want to do with your
b-roll is use that to show what you're talking about in the a-roll so if i'm talking about my
desk and then i'm showing my b-roll of me talking about my and you can use your b-roll to cover up
those jump cuts if they're a little bit jarring just to smooth them out a little
bit this is going to make your video look a lot more smooth and a little bit more professional
my name is meredith marsh on my channel i create content about creating and editing videos
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog so those are the basics of teaching yourself
how to edit your videos that are going to work for you no matter what type of videos
that you're creating and there are a couple of more moderately advanced techniques like using
l cuts and j cuts and overlapping your audio just a little bit to really smooth out those cuts and
adding in background music that fades in and fades out plus lower thirds like your
name and subscribe button and i cover that and so much more in my youtube editing for
beginners course called social video pro which i'll link to down in the description