- In this video, we're talking about how you can speed up
your editing workflow in Final Cut Pro X.
Now this video is sponsored by Loupedeck,
which, Loupedeck is this control surface right here,
and I'm gonna talk about how I've integrated
this into my editing workflow, as we discuss
some topics on how you can speed up your editing process.
Alright guys, let's get into it.
(dramatic whirring)
So I've got eight different things
that's gonna really help speed up your editing workflow
in Final Cut, and I'm gonna show this
with a film that I'm working on right now.
So I went up to Canada, I shot a mountaineering film,
and I've been working a ton on this, but I've also been able
to cut it super fast for a few reasons,
because when it comes down to it, your time is money.
If you're taking way too much time
editing your content, then you can't produce more content.
If you want to build a business on YouTube
or if you want to build a business
as filmmaker or a creator, it's gonna help you
to be able to edit faster, because as you edit faster,
you can get through more projects,
which will turn into more money, et cetera, et cetera,
and also you're not gonna get frustrated
if you're constantly working on an edit
and you just can't get something right.
So guys, if you're new here to this channel,
my name is Jeven Dovey, I do filmmaking tutorials,
I do product reviews, YouTube training,
and I also like to go on adventures
and do some mountaineering films,
so make sure you hit that subscribe button,
turn on those bell notifications,
so you don't miss one of these tutorials.
Now, this film that I'm working on
is a mountaineering film that I did up in Canada,
and this film is all about climbing,
but more importantly this film is actually about
a few other things, so it's about climate change,
it's about storytelling, and how creators can use
storytelling to make a positive impact in this world,
which is something that I truly believe in.
Now, when I'm going through and editing this project,
there are so many moving parts to it,
because I have the footage that I've shot,
I've got music, I've got voiceover,
I've got effects, and it all kinda ties together,
and to be able to cut fast in a project like this,
it takes a few steps before you actually get started
with the edit, and even with the videos
that I create on this channel, my tutorials,
my reviews, where I have graphics and different things,
there are techniques that you can use
to speed this up so that you can knock out a video
in an hour or two, and not spend eight, ten hours
working on something that shouldn't take you that long.
Now I've integrated the Loupedeck into my editing workflow,
and what this is is it's a control surface.
So instead of just doing keystroke editing,
which is something I'll talk about in a minute,
it gives you a surface that has different dials,
different buttons, that will allow you
to do things in the edit with a single click
or just a turn of a dial, and this is super powerful
because having access to all of your tools
on a surface makes it super easy to edit,
and actually speeds up the workflow.
Now with the Loupedeck, it comes with
a preassigned layout for editing, for Final Cut Pro X,
however it's all about usability,
so you can assign all these buttons to do different things.
And there's four different layouts
to the Loupedeck control surface.
So when it's just on, you have one surface.
Now if you click the Fn button,
all the buttons can change and do something different.
Now if you go up to the top, you have a custom mode,
now you have an entire new layout,
and you click Fn again, and you have your fourth layout.
So the ability to map out anything that you want
and put it on one or two keystrokes makes this
a super powerful tool to speeding up your workflow.
Okay, so let's get into my eight tips
on how to speed up your editing workflow.
Tip number one is to learn your program inside and out.
Now this is essential, and this might seem obvious,
however a lot of people don't do this,
you just go right into editing,
you just kinda learn as you go, but honestly,
take a step back and learn the software.
This is what I did when I switched over to Final Cut.
Originally I was using Premiere, and so instead
of just going through and starting to cut,
I took a step back, and I got a tutorial series
and I sat down for an entire weekend
and only focused on learning the software inside and out.
This is going to be one of the biggest things
that's gonna speed up your editing workflow,
'cause if you know what you can do in the software,
then you're gonna be able to create better edits
and be able to just move faster overall.
Now my second tip is to learn keystrokes.
And so originally I started with just my keyboard.
I just learned different keystrokes,
and how I edit is basically one hand on my mouse,
and then one hand on my keyboard,
which is also now my Loupedeck.
And I use a flow, and you have to figure out your flow
which works best for you, but as I'm cutting,
I'm able to use, not only my keyboard
but now the control surface, to do everything
that I need to do to be able to cut faster.
And that's one of the most powerful things
about using a control surface and your keyboard.
And I use them together, and there's a reason for this.
I can map out all of the buttons on my Loupedeck
so that in a single click I can have something happen.
So if I wanna zoom, I just pull on one of these dials,
and I can zoom in and out of my timeline.
Now if I wanna go to the next cut point,
I can use my big control dial,
and it flips through all the cut points.
Now a couple other things with the Loupedeck,
what's really cool is you can edit
while your footage is still in full screen,
and then be able to color grade your footage
in real time just using the Loupedeck
and never have to take your eyes off the screen.
And this is something that you can't do
just using the keyboard.
And like I said earlier, because you can map this out
to have whatever you want on each of the keys,
I've basically built it to my editing workflow.
So I've set up different toggle buttons,
I've set up different controls
to each button and to each dial
that makes sense for my editing workflow,
so if I need to toggle the inspector,
or I wanna toggle my effects, I've mapped those
all up to the P buttons at the top.
As you figure out your workflow,
you can start thinking through
the different things that you do,
so if you're like, oh, I always toggle
my inspector back and forth, well great,
I'm gonna map that out to this button here.
You can either use Loupedeck as is,
or you can map it out, and it's easy to do that,
you just pull up the Loupedeck software,
and once you're in it, you see a complete layout
of your Loupedeck, you can click on a button,
and it pulls up all the different options
that you can have for that button,
so P2 I've set to toggle the inspector,
but if I wanted to say, put that to my delete marker,
I can add that right there, and then now,
the Loupedeck is set up to delete
a marker with that keystroke.
So I highly suggest finding a workflow
where you're not only just using a mouse,
because that is a very slow process of editing.
The third way to speed up your editing workflow
is to create presets, so with all the graphics you use,
the effects that you use, and the transitions that you use,
think through, what are something
that I use over and over and over?
And you can use these presets in a couple ways.
Now if you wanna dive more into actually embedding
these into your folders, what you can do
is go into motion, build out the effects there,
because all of these effects are built in motion,
and then you can create custom ones
that you use over and over and over.
Now another way that's less techy,
easier to do, is just create the effects
and create the graphics and everything
that you use over and over, and just build
a separate timeline with all of them in there,
and then you can go to that timeline,
copy it, and then paste the attributes
to the effect on your new timeline,
or copy and paste the title, bring it over,
change the text, and now you have
the graphic built, and you don't have to go through
and modify every little thing.
I use this technique all the time,
and I've started diving more and more
into motion and building out my effects
so that everything's just pre-built,
and then I can just drop it right on
and not have to worry about copy
and pasting and things like that.
Okay, my fourth tip is know your footage.
Now this is super important, and this is something
that will really speed up your workflow,
but a lot of people don't do this,
and if you just shot your content,
say you're shooting your own YouTube videos,
then you're probably gonna know what's in your footage.
But if you're cutting this down the road,
a few days later, and you didn't just freshly shoot,
you don't know everything that's in your footage.
So, I have it set up where I can visually see
all my clips, and then I have my viewing window large.
So as I go through this, I can just scrub
through the footage using my mouse,
or I could play the footage, double time, quadruple time,
and basically just scrubbing through
and looking at what is all here,
and if you're doing more with audio
you're obviously gonna play it
and hear what people are actually saying
so you know what's in this footage.
Doing this step before you actually edit
will make it easier to edit, and I know it seems
counterintuitive, because you're like, well,
if I'm not cutting, I'm just wasting time looking at stuff.
Knowing where all your footage is
and what you have makes it easier
when you're cutting, because as you cut
you'll be like, oh yeah, I have this clip,
or I know I have this.
Another step to this would be organizing your footage
into keyword buckets, so basically
you could go through and be like, okay,
these are all visual shots of a waterfall,
I've got a mountain range here,
I've got some cool visual footage,
and this is lower on the mountain,
this is before I get up and actually start climbing,
so I might create a keyword around this
that is hiking, or hiking to the glacier,
so that when I'm cutting that part of the film,
I know I could just go to that patch of footage
and see everything, and not have to go through
and hunt for things in all the footage.
Now you can get more detailed than this,
so I could say, closeups of ice climbing,
and that's all the footage that I have
that's closeups of ice climbing,
which for each person, depending on what you're working on,
and what access you need to your footage,
building out these keywords and building out
organization tactics will make it so that
you can just find stuff immediately rather than scrolling
through all your footage trying to find that one clip
that you remember that you shot.
It is a super helpful thing, and something
that I do all the time, I'm always organizing
my footage and watching my footage,
so that when I actually start cutting,
it's boom boom boom boom boom, done,
I don't have to think about where the footage is.
Now my next tip is to lay down
your first cut as soon as possible.
This doesn't matter how good this edit is,
just get it down, and this is one of those bottlenecks
that happens to people when you're editing,
is that you don't actually get to the end.
The first step is lay down the rough cut.
Just get it down on the timeline, there could be huge gaps,
there could be just footage missing,
you could put in just text that says add something here,
add something here, the key is, just get out
that initial first cut from beginning to end,
so you can kinda see the roadmap,
and you're like okay, this is what I wanna edit.
It's gonna completely change by the time you export
and have your final piece, but laying down
that initial cut with some voiceover and this and that
gives you a sense of the project as a whole.
So for this project in particular,
I have some stuff where I'm talking to camera,
I have some voiceover work, I have some music
that I was thinking of when I was shooting,
and I was like oh, I like this piece,
or I like this piece, so my first cut looks like this,
and I have a few bits where I'm talking to camera,
and you can see as I'm scrubbing through this,
and a few bits where I have some other people
talking to camera, and then you can see
on this bottom line down here, that is all my voiceover,
some other audio components, and also my music.
So I went through and just cut what I had,
and what I wanted to tell my story,
because the story was the most important thing
when it comes to a project like this.
I didn't get into the B roll, I don't start
digging into the B roll right away.
Maybe as I'm cutting this first cut,
I see things, and I think of things,
drop it in right away, but I'm not gonna sit there
and just waste my time tinkering with footage,
because the more that you tinker the longer it's gonna take
to get to the end of that first cut.
Just map it out, put everything down on your timeline,
put the voiceover work, put the bits
where you're talking to camera,
whatever style content that you're creating,
get it on the timeline, because that is your roadmap.
Now you look at it, you can see your entire timeline here,
and you can say, okay, I like the way that this is flowing,
or I'm missing something major.
And this is something that comes up all the time,
because when you're working in this kind of workflow,
and you actually put stuff on the timeline,
you're like oh, I get it, this project actually works,
or this project's not really working,
I need to re-shoot something, or I need to restructure this,
'cause the idea is that you're basically
building your building blocks.
You start at the very bottom, you figure out
all the blocks that you have.
Now you grab the ones that are most important,
you throw 'em up on the timeline.
Okay great, what do I got here?
A bunch of stuff, this makes my story.
Cool, is this what I want, or do I need to restructure this,
and then from there, you start building in the B roll,
you start building in more music, more sound effects,
all the other elements that make out the project
and really stylize the footage.
But you don't do that right away.
Start with the bare minimum, start with
just getting that story, beginning to end.
Okay, so my next tip is use music as a guide.
Music is super powerful in videos,
and so you wanna use your music
to help be the driving force, and this is just
an editing technique in general,
is use music to help drive the visuals.
And so a lot of times, I'll come up with ideas
of songs that I like, and instead of cutting the footage
and then laying the music on after,
I will go through the music and figure out the flow,
figure out how I want the footage to move.
So one of the things that I do that I think
is super helpful in speeding up
your editing workflow, is watch your music,
play the music out loud, and create markers.
So I'll show you a quick sample here
of a song that I used for this project
and how I could map out some B roll to it.
So first things first, I'm gonna play it out loud,
and I'm gonna listen for beats,
so I'm gonna listen for the timing
of when I would a edit to happen,
or the pace, and then I'm gonna start using
my markers to be like, okay, I want a cut here,
a cut here, a cut here, before I even start
thinking about the footage I'm using.
(dubstep music)
So I just made a bunch of markers,
and I've spaced 'em out a little differently,
I have one pace that happens, and then I speed it up
a little bit as the song goes on.
But use music to help guide how you wanna cut.
So lemme cut this real quick and show you how this flows.
(dubstep music)
Alright and you can see that was just
a quick edit that I did of some of the footage
from my climb, I was able to use the music
to help me pace the visuals, so that it creates
more visual interest, 'cause it matches up with the music.
So use your music to help guide your edit,
and just working with your music
before you actually start cutting B roll
will be a huge help in actually speeding up your workflow.
Now there's two more things that I wanna talk about,
and these are things that have just helped me personally
speed up my workflow, so sometimes when you're working
with footage, you're computer will start to lag.
And so I always suggest, if there's any issue
with playback, proxy your footage immediately.
The cool thing about Final Cut
is you can go in, you can select your footage,
you can go down to your transcode media,
create your proxy media, now all your footage
is converted into files that will render fast,
and move fast in the timeline.
And so if you're having any sort of issues with lag,
it's gonna be the most annoying thing in the world,
and it's gonna take you forever to deal with your edits.
So instead of sitting around clicking a button
and waiting for something to happen,
convert everything from the get go into proxy footage,
and then you'll be able to cut really fast.
And once everything's converted into proxy,
you go into the upper right hand corner,
you go to view, you click on proxy under the media,
so proxy everything, because it's a huge help
in speeding up, and I do a lot of multi cam stuff,
so anything multi cam I always proxy,
'cause it just saves headaches down the road.
Now my last tip, and I've kind touched on this
a little bit earlier, and that is stop tinkering.
Don't just always sit here and play
and try to do this one thing over and over and over,
move on, try to keep getting through your edit,
and come back to things, because when you come back
with fresh eyes, you'll start thinking
of different ways to cut something.
So if there's one piece in your edit
that you're struggling with, don't tinker,
come back to it, work on it, work on the rest
of your project, and kind of go back and forth
between hard spots and just getting the project finished,
'cause what will happen is you'll start getting
more creative the more that you're kinda moving around
your project, and if there is one thing
that you just can't get, sometimes
it's more beneficial to just move on and drop that,
and so you have to kinda weigh the cost benefit.
Is it worth it to sit here for 10 hours
working on this one effect, getting it just right?
Does it have an effect on your project as a whole?
'Cause that's the bigger picture,
what are you trying to do with your project,
what is your story, what is your delivery,
if it is something super technical
and something that you really need this one thing to work
then you're gonna have to spend the time,
but if it's something where you're adding
just a weird graphic into your video
that has nothing to do with that graphic and that effect,
then move on and do something else,
because that's not going to help you in the long run.
Alright guys, if you're really interested
in speeding up your workflow, I highly suggest
checking out a Loupedeck, this whole control surface
makes it super easy to map out
and just make the whole process easier.
I still use my keyboard, but the Loupedeck
has definitely enhanced my editing workflow.
Alright guys, that's it, I'll see you in the next one.