It takes so much time and experience to become a great video editor, but you'll be editing like a pro in no time with practice and dedication. Here are some of the essential tips and methods to become a professional video editor.

The Right Applications

Choosing the correct editing program is similar to selecting the right vehicle. These will both get you from point A to point B, but you can choose one over the others based on your tastes and desires. It all often boils down to Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut. There are tons of reasons why these softwares rank the highest in the video editing industry.

The Best Computer

While having a better computer would not always make you a great video editor, having a faster computer will encourage you to spend more time on the story you're trying to say rather than on your computer rendering. Every editor has an opinion on which machine is better for editing, but it all comes down to personal choice. Here are few pointers for optimizing and selecting the best device for video editing.

One of the most critical investments you can make for video editing is a quick hard drive. The first is that a faster hard drive would allow your machine to access your footage and applications more quickly. It results in quicker rendering, loading, and export times. In most cases, an SSD can cost almost twice as much as a conventional hard disk, but it is well worth it.

Increased RAM nearly always results in quicker editing rates. It is why most modern NLEs recommend at least 4GB of RAM — but if you're serious about video editing, you'll need even more. It will be challenging to find a capable editor with less than 8GB of RAM. The more RAM you get, the healthier.

A video card is a gadget that outputs vivid images to your computer's monitors. You can imagine how critical a sound video card is for editing. Most big video editing applications have recommended graphics cards, so before you purchase one, check out the recommended cards for your NLE of choice.

A faster CPU can result in faster render times, so it's all a matter of balance. If you have a decent processor but skimp on the hard disk, RAM, or video card, your machine would be sluggish. You can't go wrong with an i7, but your favorite NLE may prescribe a particular processor, much like video cards. Check out their website before making a purchase.

When it comes to video editing, the Mac vs. PC debate is entirely ridiculous. Both platforms are excellent choices, and feature films have been cut on both Macs and PCs. However, one of the most critical factors that may lead you to choose a PC over a Mac is cost. A PC would typically be cheaper than a Mac pound for pound, so if you're more relaxed with a Mac, go for the Mac. The best option is to build your machine. If you don't have the time, an out-of-the-box computer will still deliver outstanding performance.

The Story

If you recall a little more from this post, remember that you are a storyteller as an editor! Editing requires far more than just cutting video. It's a chance to take the fans on tour. A more profound tale is being told when you are editing a complicated dramatic film or merely putting together a business recording.

Video editing is an enterprise, not just a hobby or a career. And, as in any industry, there is a lot of vocabulary to master. In practice, you don't need to master all of the words on this list to become a better video editor. Still, a basic understanding of the concepts can help you interact more effectively with other video editors or clients. Here are a few fundamental principles to understand:

The Jump Cuts

A jump cut is a kind of amount that helps the editor to remove sections of time. A skip cut will maintain visual suspense without requiring the viewer to see soft fluff. Consider a man raising an egg over a house, followed by a shot of a splattered egg on a pavement. And if you didn't see the egg fall, you can feel what happened in between. The following scene from The Royal Tenenbaums is an excellent example of a skip cut.

The J & L Cuts

J and L Cuts are a must-have technique for connecting two scenes. A J or L cut is an audio or video overlap into the next stage in a nutshell. They get their names from the form they make in your editing timeline.

A J cut is one in which you hear the audio before showing the visual. For, e.g., if you hear a train horn and then cut to a training video, this is referred to as a J Cut.

On the other hand, an L-Cut is when you see the recording before hearing the audio. Consider an L Cut as a documentary in which a man describes ice cream and then cuts to a recording of someone scooping ice cream while he continues to talk. You'll undoubtedly get the words J and L Cut mixed up a lot, but the critical thing to note is the definitions. J and L cuts will give your scene a lot of visual appeals.

The Montage

A montage is a series of shows that portrays the passing of time. Although you may be familiar with a montage concept, it is vital to note that a montage is a valuable tool that will help your plot advance. The Rocky training series, in which Rocky prepares for his big fight and winds up running up the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the most prominent example. The scene not only passed the time, but it also established Rocky's character so that we could see his inner transformation.

The Match Cut

An editor can use match action to cut from one physically identical scene to another. Usually, you must plan match acts ahead of time, but you can produce a very captivating sequence by merely cutting together two close shots when performed correctly. The most famous match action scene is the one-shot from 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a bone is sliced with a similarly shaped spacecraft.

The Action

Cutting on action is a tactic used to make a scene more exciting. The idea is simple: cut in the middle of an operation to make it less jarring and more visually attractive. It is valid with nearly every scene. If you missed when your target is running rather than finishing the action, the location would be even more fluid. Consider how tedious the scene would be if we had to wait for each action to be finished.

The Color

The method of bringing your footage to a color baseline is known as color correction. No matter how good your video looks on set, you'll almost always need to do some simple post-processing to make it look consistent. Primary color correction results are integrated into all of the big NLEs, making it simpler than ever to do basic color correction. However, if you are given a heavily compressed codec, modifying colors can be limited. Keep this in mind when you film your footage on set. RAW and ProRes file formats would be simpler to manipulate than h.264 and AVC-HD.

Color grading is the stylizing video method to match a particular color 'look.' Although there is an infinite number of possible forms to color grade, the procedure can only be divided into two categories of grading: grading with presets and grading by hand.

The Graphics

It's time to add graphics to your video after editing it, added sound, and color graded it. Although excellent motion graphic work is easy to spot when you see it, decent graphics are shockingly challenging to make on your own. It's best to keep things easy.

Although you can learn how to clip together videos in an afternoon, learning the craft of video editing can take years. Fortunately for us, hundreds, if not thousands, of free tools are available online to assist you in being the best video editor you can be.