Video editing

General information about video editing

The first thing you do when you have selected your clips and they are ready to be put together is to clean up everything that should not be included. This applies to, for example, disturbing sounds, images with elements that should not be included, sudden events in the image such as a car driving into the frame during a scenic shot or an interview where someone walks behind the interviewee and disrupts the image composition.

In a recorded lecture, you may not want to include when the lecturer clears his throat and turns on the recording, but cut it out.

There are lots of examples of material that you do not want to include in the final result of the editing. It is best if before you start you have a clear goal or vision of how you want the result to be and strive to achieve it.

Editing

It is important that the clips harmonize and do not feel like they do not belong together. The best editing is when you do not notice transitions between the clips. This can be difficult to achieve sometimes when you have several completely different clips that need to be fitted before and after a clip. It is important to get a feeling that the clips belong together. It is also important to try to get the color in the different clips to harmonize, that it looks like they come from the same color chart and color shade.

For example, if you have three clips with a person putting a pair of gloves on a table and then picking them up again, you have to think about getting a flow in the film.

Clip 1: putting the gloves down,
clip 2: Close-up of gloves on table,
clip 3: picking up the gloves.

When it comes to recorded lectures, you may encounter so-called "jump cuts". This means that you put together 2 clips where the lecturer is sitting or standing in almost the same place but a retake has caused the lecturer to move a little. If you put these 2 clips together, it will be perceived as choppy. A solution could be to use transitions, where you fade in clip 2 with clip 1 over a certain time and then the transition is perceived as smoother. You can also use this for sound, so-called Crossfade.

Sound is important.

Something that is often done is to fade in the sound at the beginning of the film and fade out at the end. If the film begins with speech, you gradually increase the sound from 0 to 100 over time (fade in). The same thing with the end, that you do not remove the sound abruptly but gently lower the volume until the sound is completely gone (fade out). There are of course many exceptions to this rule when you want to create an effect where the sound is interrupted if you are thrown into a new scene with a different sound.

Many times sound is recorded with too low a volume. In many video editing programs, you can raise the volume so that the highest peaks of the sound come up to the so-called broadcast level, i.e. -6 db. Look at the sound meter in your program and try to get it between -6db and -3db if it is the main sound, for example speech.

When recording a lecture, it is important that you hear what is being said clearly and the sound level must not be too low.

Results

It is a good idea to export the film in HD quality, i.e. 1920 * 1080 pixels and the sound to 44khz 16 bits. Another tip is to check your film and watch and listen carefully so that you are really satisfied before you go ahead and publish.