10 editing questions beginners always ask (answered by a pro)

The ten questions in question

Check out the video version below, or read on for the questions and answers!

1: What editing software should I use?

The number one question I get asked and what I see in various places across the internet that new editors are lurking is what software should they be using?! The answer is incredibly simple: Whatever you have access to and you feel most comfortable in. The software is a tool for the job, not the job.

If you have no idea where to start and you’re coming in completely fresh then check out DaVinci Resolve, it’s by far the best free option you have. It might take a minute or two to get up and running in it but if you’re serious about editing then learning in a program like Resolve is going to be key to a long fruitful career in the craft. It’s totally fine to start off in something like CapCut, however you will grow out of it if you get serious about editing, and then you’ll have to find something like resolve to move up to and that means learning two programs instead of one.

So start in something professional, learn the basic tools and the basic workflow of editing and go from there. If you have access to adobe through work or have the cash to splash on a subscription and want to work across after effects, Photoshop etc then jump into premiere pro. There’s lots to be said about staying in one ecosystem. That’s not to say you can’t work between Davinci Resolve and after effects for example, that’s pretty much exactly what I do.

Where did I start? Premiere Pro, CS6 when I was 14 and before YouTube existed. I brute forced my way through learning the basics in a program that was not geared to beginners but it meant that by the time I roughly knew what I was doing, that I knew my way around a professional piece of software. So when I entered the workforce, I could already tick the box of X number of years experience in Premiere.

Moving on.

2: How do I make my edits look more professional?

I’m going to answer a visual question by suggesting that you focus on audio. If you’re controlling the audio ie shooting video and recording audio yourself then you want to make sure you’re getting that audio right!

People will forgive a piece of content that looks like it’s been shot on a potato so long as they can hear the audio and can follow the story.

If you shoot it on an Arri Alexa LF with some dope anamorphic lenses and a veteran gaffer but record the dialogue on the scratch mics of the camera then it’ll basically be unwatchable. And if you’re not controlling the recording and are just purely in the edit, then knowing your way around the audio editing and polishing tools is super valuable. We’ll actually get to that a little later on in this video.

• On the audio front, make sure the audio is the best you can make it and the visuals will fall into place.
• On the visual front, confident cuts. Know when to give things some breathing room, know when to let your characters linger on screen, but also know when to cut them off and move on.

Ultimately editing is a set of tools employed to help tell the story so to be a great editor, be one with the story and know your audience. You can use as many fancy transitions as you want but if it’s not in service of the story, well, what’s the point?

3: How long should my video be?

How long should your video be? How long is a piece of string?

For real though, the video should be as long as the story needs it to be. If we’re talking long form, in the sense of YouTube, then that story could be 3 minutes, 8 minutes, 22 minutes, an hour. It doesn’t matter how long it is. Does the run time give you the space to tell the story the way you want to tell it and in the most efficient and effective way for your audience to understand it?

Of course there is some best practice when it comes to apps like TikTok and Instagram in terms of hard limits on short form content but for the majority of online content I’m always of the opinion that the video should be as long as the story needs to be and not a moment longer. If you watch your final cut through, as you should be doing, and find your attention waning for even a moment – then it’s too long. Make the cut. If you’re bored of a part of your video then so too will your audience be. On that…

4: How do I cut faster without losing important stuff? How do you know what to cut?

Well that intuition comes with time. If you haven’t already, go and check out my Beginners Guide to Video Editing course. In that I take you through my approach for importing your rushes, making selects then crafting a story from those selects. You’ll see that this is essentially a process of watching everything you have, then cutting it down, then watching that cut, then cutting it down some more, then watching it again, cutting it again and basically you rinse and repeat that process until you’re done.

Like I said in the last segment: if you’re bored at any time during a review of your cut then get rid of that bit of the video. Also really think about what is important for the story and for the platform.

5: What’s the best way to edit TikTok/Youtube shorts?

Jumping off of the “how do you know what to cut” question: when it comes to short form content, honestly, cut 90% of what you think needs to be in the video.

You’ve got roughly 2 seconds to hook someone into your concept, vs maybe about 20 seconds on YouTube. If it’s not important, get rid of it. Even if it sort of breaks the story….short form content is not really about telling stories in the traditional sense anymore. They’re snippets, segments, shots vs scenes. They don’t need wider context. They don’t need introductions. Start at the point and go from there. Don’t start at the beginning and get to the point.

6: How do I add text or captions that look good?

Well looking good is subjective, but adding text and captions is super easy. Pretty much any professional editing software these days will have at least some form of basic text editing and animation feature set – not to mention what you can achieve in After Effects with a proper motion graphics approach.

But a great way to start out in creating high quality motion graphics for your videos is to begin with templates from Envato. There’s millions of super high quality templates, we’re talking like studio quality created by motion design professionals, and they’re ready for download right now. You can bring them into your projects, customize them to your needs and then bam, you’ve got yourself a full set of motion graphics to complement your high quality, super punchy edit that you’ve created!

And in general, a rule of thumb for motion graphics work in video is to make sure it’s readable. You want to aim for high contrast, legibility in the fonts that you choose, making sure the duration of the text on screen is adequate and so on. And if you are animating them on, ease your keyframes! That’s the quickest way to go from low to pro quality.

8: How do I fix bad audio?

So I mentioned Resolve being a great place to start your editing journey and their AI audio tools are things that I use every day now in my professional work. Things like AI noise reduction to clear up noisy filming locations as well as the new AI audio assistant function which basically takes your whole timeline – dialogue, music, SFX, the whole shebang, and does a professional audio mix on it. It’s pretty remarkable.

There are of course a whole bunch of other traditional and emerging professional audio tools in these programs, all which have their specific uses. But basically if you can, try to get your audio recorded as cleanly as possible on set and if you can’t, then dive into the tools to help you clean it up in post.

9: How do I make my cuts feel smooth instead of choppy?

This is an interesting one because for the most part, I feel like editing styles are getting choppier these days.

But if smooth transitions is what you’re going for then for sure fall back on something that was drilled into me in film school editing classes: cut on the action.

So cutting on the action is basically exactly as it says on the tin; if you’re cutting from one shot to the next and they both involve some movement, make your cut point in the middle of that movement. You’ll see this in countless feature films now that you know to look out for it but it’s also employed on commercials, corporate work and here on YouTube. 

If you’re working on talking heads type content, like me talking to camera here, make sure you cut out the awkward pauses before someone starts to speak. We all joke about the millennial pause, and being hard in the millennial camp I get it, but as the editor you can help us poor millennials and cut out the pause – please!

10: What are some easy tricks to make my videos more engaging?

And finally we come to the end of this list with a question about easy tricks and I hope that if you’re still paying attention that you’ll realise that there is no one or two or three easy tricks when it comes to editing. It’s an amalgam of techniques – both technical and creative – that come together over time.

The easy trick is to follow the advice in this post, honestly:

• Cut out the faff in your videos.
• Don’t employ flashing editing tricks just for the sake of it, make sure that it’s servicing your story.
• Know your audience and the platform your work will be on and cut to the platform in terms of best practices.
• Make sure your audio is crystal clear.
• Get some help from places like Envato to really polish up your work, quickly.
• And honestly, the number one tip is just practice. Keep slugging away. Edit things, show your friends, publish them, read the comments, watch your old stuff, make notes and learn by doing.
• And also pick apart the content that you enjoy watching. If you like it, ask yourself why? What was it about that video, the editing, the motion graphics, the information, the story. What was it that hooked you? And how do you replicate that?

That’s a wrap!

I hope this little Q&A has been helpful, let me know down in the comments section of the video if you agree, if you disagree, and if you have any more questions. We can keep the convo going on down there.

Until next time, happy cutting!