INQUIRY POST 3: VIDEO EDITING
After all the prep work, we’re finally onto the editing process. I recommend using a laptop or computer as I find them more user-friendly and easier to work on, but you can use your phone if you don’t have one. If you do use a laptop, you have to download the files from your recording device, which is easy enough. If you used your phone to record, you can airdrop them to your laptop or use google drive. If you used a camera with an SD card, you can just pop it into your computer. If your computer doesn’t have one, you’ll probably have to get an SD card reader; this is what I had to do. Once they’re on your computer, I recommend making a file and putting them all together just to make them organized and easy to use.
I was originally going to use Davinci Resolve as its free and offers professional-grade editing, colour correction, effects, and audio tools, without watermarks and has no limits on project length or resolution. But after researching a bit about beginner editing, with both my editor friend and YouTube videos recommended that I should start on a simpler program, which makes sense as the more advanced software has a steeper learning curve.
The software I ended up using is iMovie, I’m sure you could use CapCut as well, as they’re both fairly straightforward to use and are beginner friendly. iMovie has a surprising number of tools and no time limit, it’s pretty much perfect for what I was trying to do. I learned the software through the help of my friend and just messing around with it, here’s a tutorial if you don’t feel like wasting a bunch of time.
After moving my video files to iMovie (you can just drag them from the folder to iMovie), I picked the song I wanted to use. I had a few in mine during the filming process but ended up choosing one I discovered after called Autumn Drive by Bryson Tiller. It had the type of bass, rhythm, and overall energy I wanted to go for with the edit. I used certain cues within the music like beats, claps, and lines to cut the videos into short clips (1-3 seconds) to match the transitions with the song. I used mp3 converter to convert the song from a YouTube video into an mp3 file so that I could use it as an audio file in iMovie (you can drag the mp3 just like the videos).
My order of operations for editing was:
- Insert the music first do use as a template
- Arrange the videos in the order I wanted them to play
- Split the clips and shortened them
- Adjusted the speed of the clips and matched them to the music
- Split the audio and applied effects
- Colour matched the videos
This is the order that I recommend as once the clips are matched to the music, any change in duration or beginning of the music will subsequently affect all clips and make them off beat. I spent a lot of time adjusting the length of cuts because I kept changing where the audio would begin, so make sure you have a definitive start that you’re happy with, so you don’t have the same problem.
Here is a screenshot with some highlighted info:
The hardest part is starting but once you get moving you don’t want to stop