7 Essential Video Editing Tips Every Beginner Should Know

We’re living in an age when a vast amount of content is available at our fingertips, and they are constantly competing for our attention. Gone are the days of long, rambling articles that required time and effort to extract the required information. Today, we have information served to us in the form of short and crisp videos. It’s no wonder that video editors are in such high demand in 2021.

However, which software should you learn if you wish to kick-start your video editing journey? Are tools like Adobe Premiere Pro or InVideo all you need to become a master video editor? Most people are confused by the wide variety of options available to them.

Don’t worry. We have your back. We have compiled seven essential video editing tips that every beginner should know:

7 Essential Video Editing Tips For Beginners

Here are the 7 essential video editing tips for beginners which help them to master the art of video editing.

1. Learn the art of storytelling

The best way to convey information to your audience is by telling a story that resonates with them, be it movies, documentaries, advertisements, or TikTok and Instagram videos. Your audience is hardwired to respond to stories. Your job as a video editor is to tell a familiar tale extraordinarily.

Give your audience something that intrigues them in every segment of your video, and then lead them to the next. Most importantly, respect the time your audience gives you.

2. Choosing a video editing software

This is where most beginner video editors get stuck. There is a wide range of editing tools available in the market. Each has a unique learning graph. Which one should you learn?

The answer is simple—whichever makes your job simpler. If you’re an absolute beginner, start with simplistic video editing tools. Take It has all the tools you need to edit videos on a minimalistic and user-friendly interface, so you can create what you need in less than ten minutes.

As you grow better as an editor, you may switch to higher-end applications like Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, or Invideo. Remember these tools have loads of functionalities, most of which you will never use.

Instead, you take a solution-based approach. Research what each tool specializes in. For instance, if you want to edit several clips to make your video, If you’re going to manipulate a particular video clip, After Effects may be a better option. For any application, focus on what you can extract from it rather than what it can deliver.

3. Always have a flowchart

Before you get down to edit your final video, make sure you have the following things in place:

• Have a storyline. Please note the critical things you want to convey in the video and a rough idea of implementing them.
• Always have more footage than you need. Only a tiny percentage of your footage will align with your storyline.
• Divide your video into timestamps, your timestamps into smaller timestamps. For each timestamp, try different footages until you achieve a logical flow for your story.

4. Choice of complementary material

By complementary material, we mean everything that is not raw footage. It includes stock footage, background music, animations, and video transitions—everything you use to enrich your video. While choosing stock footage, take note of the following:

• Know the conventions of your niche. You don’t want a rock music clip in the background of a video about meditation.
• Be updated with the trends. Following trends while they last will help you stay relevant to your audience and garner a massive reach. You must keep track of what your favorite YouTubers or competitors are doing.
• You may use websites like Storyblocks that provide a library of stock material for varied purposes. Invest in stock material if you have to. We vouch that it will be worth it.

5. Organizing your work

The most significant advantage of organizing your work is using your past work as a template for today’s project. Here are a few simple ways to do it:

• For every new project, create a new folder. Keep all the files you use for the project there.
• Have backups for all your project folders to secure your data against hardware failure.
• Create notes for each project so that you may refer to them later and understand your work. It will also help you track your learning graph.

6. Develop ways to Save time

It’s crucial to be efficient with your execution if you want to be a video editor. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Familiarize yourself with the software you use. YouTube tutorials can be of great help. You must not waste ten minutes searching for a text effect you need for a five-second clip.
• Use shortcuts. Most applications allow you to set custom shortcuts as well.
• Create presets or templates for yourself.

7. Always strive for honest feedback

Remember that your purpose is to grow as a video editor. When you edit your first video, you will most likely think it’s flawless. It will be difficult for you to point out flaws in your work.

Therefore, you must expose your work to new people for criticism. It would help if you had people you could trust with honest feedback. Also, never get so attached to your work that you cannot accept criticism.

Conlusion

To sum up, everything that has been stated so for we can say that video editing is one of the highest-paid skills in 2024, and rightfully so. In today’s world, some form of video editing is most likely to find you, be it in a professional space or simply for your Instagram feed. While it may seem intimidating, there is a method to the madness. We hope we’ve helped you decode it.