September 18. 2020

Fri, 9/18 6:32PM 10:15

Today and welcome again to the show. We work in here. Hey guys, let's do this again. Maybe you

heard it twice and maybe not. Welcome to the show today. Welcome to digital Zen. I apologize

first of all for not making it yesterday. I had some personal things come up and couldn't

broadcast. I will continue to try to do just about every day, Monday through Friday. Of course life

happens sometimes and sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. You missed a good show

yesterday. No, I'm kidding. Hey, um, so today I wanted to talk a little bit about video editing.

Okay, and many of you may not know that I have a pretty rich history in video production and

video editing. I helped create a a teaching course called inaction brought to you by Zen Digital's

maybe we'll get into that in a few few other episodes as well. But one of the things I find that's

really challenging for people in, in the production world and in content, creating digital content is

creating their own videos and then editing their content. People have this big barrier when it

comes to editing. And I thought I'd try for a couple minutes here today to demystify that process

so to speak. You know, a lot of people worry about what kind of video video editor they use, you

know, people like Final Cut Pro, they like Adobe Premiere, they like avid, they like DaVinci Resolve

Camtasia. The editor in YouTube is probably pretty simple. But at the end of the day, it really

doesn't matter. What really matters is your vision. What are you trying to say with your edit, that's

the most important thing. Because just like any other art form, editing is an art. It's not a science,

okay? And you can create it To be whatever you think you want it to be. So it could be just one

piece of footage going all the way through. It could be a whole bunch of little things in a montage,

it could tell a story, it can not tell a story it can, you know, anything. Is is, is okay, in the world of

editing for the most part doesn't mean someone's going to like it, but anything is okay. So what I

try to tell people, especially newer editors, is the first thing you ever want to do in an edit is sit

back and think about your edit. Okay? Is it going on Facebook? Is it going on Instagram? Is it a

Snapchat? Is it going for a commercial purpose on your website? Where is the intended place that

your edit is going to go? Okay, that's number one. Number two, once you figure that out, you got

to figure out what format it's going to be is it going to be a rectangular 16 by nine format,

September 18. 2020 Page 1 of 3 Transcribed by https://otter.ai

derivative thereof whether it's 640 by 480 or seven 20 by 1280 are you know any of those? Or is it

going to be you know, a square formatted which is a one by one ratio, okay, like typical

Instagram video. Those are probably the most important functions to figure out at the beginning

of your edit because that's going to tell your editor what size of a product to use, and it's going to

show your crop because if you crop on a 16 by nine but your format is Instagram even though

Instagram these days will let you do rectangular format if you're trying to go with square format

and then you blow it up pieces are going to come out of your edit and this and that so the best

thing to do is just figure it out first. The second thing I would try to figure out and it's not really

that important, but it's important a little bit is what speed Are you editing it? You know some

some footage is it 24 frames per second some it's 2997 and some is 5997 or 5994, which is How

many frames per second are generated by the camera that's creating your footage, okay? So

when you play back, or if you edit in a different speed, it's just going to take you to some extra

time while it renders, or it's going to change in some fashions, the quality of the video that you're

looking at. Some people like to film at 60 so that they can playback slow motion. And you know,

that's conversation for a whole other day. But anyway, figure out so when you set your editor, you

want to try to set it for the same frame rate of the video that you shot. Okay? Once you do that,

the sky is the limit. Okay, it just comes down to your imagination. So what you want to really do is

you want to think about your Reddit. Think about the different pieces of footage that you have.

Think about what you want to go in, build your storyline before you get into your editor, put your

put all of your stuff into your editor and then create If you have the opportunity, like if you're on a

final cutter, if you're in a pro editing platform that gives you multiple timelines, you can build little

timelines, then assemble your big timeline from your little timelines. And what I mean by that is to

make a timeline, assemble a whole bunch of footage, let it be rough, you don't have to tighten it

up or make it all flow or anything but just tell your story. Then you can use those timelines to build

your main timeline. Once you have a main timeline built, trim down your little edit pieces and

build your story. It's really as simple as that. If you're a new editor, I sometimes like to refer people

to this really good little editor. It's called create. Create is super easy. A lot of people have used

iMovie or different things like that Cree is like a more advanced version of something like iMovie

but it's way way way more robust and allows you to be creative. I've done things as little as social

media pieces on there, but I've also done pieces that have been used as part of an Olympic

program and some other programs as well. So you can really get intricate with it. Although to be

fair, and to be honest, if I'm going to give you, if you're going to be in a really intricate type of edit,

you're going to want to be in a more pro based program. Any of the four that I mentioned are

good. But if you're a new editor and you want to fiddle around with some stuff, you want to make

some stuff for your social media, you want to get unafraid of editing, pick up create creates a

good little program. Camtasia is a good program created cost a couple of dollars creates like

$120 or something like that. In fact, my company I used create, promoted Kermit creating it in an

older in an information product. I put together the thing that I mentioned before in action, and I

think I have a discount code. I'll look for that discount code. I'm pretty sure I do. I'll put a link in the

comments here. So have created something you're interested in. I think you can pick it up. With

September 18. 2020 Page 2 of 3 Transcribed by https://otter.ai

with the code for like $65, it's way worth $65. And if you're going to learn editing and if you're

going to be involved with digital content, whether you're editing photos, whether you're editing

video, whether you're putting music to things, it's really cool. Also, it also has a speech to text

converter, which is pretty cool. Or I should say it backwards. It's got a text to speech converter. So

if you've got a video, you can drop a voiceover into it. And they're pretty decent. I mean, it's not,

it's not like you paid somebody to do voiceover but it's, it's pretty good considering. Um, I mean, I

think that's probably all I would say as an introduction. But the main, the main thing that I would

say is if you're a beginner editor, it sounds overwhelming, but it's not. Going back to what I said at

the beginning. The most important thing is just sit back and try to figure out what you want your

edit to be. then work backwards. Okay? If you're doing a social media post, for your For your

brand, okay, you've got a boot company, you know better if you, I'll also put in here, I actually do

a primer for create, okay. And in that primer I show something I did for a, for a faith based

company for their t shirts. Take a look at that. I'll put that in here as well. But behind it, in essence,

what it is, is if you're putting something together, you know what you want to go in there. You've

got pictures of your product, you've got headlines that you know that you want to put in there.

You've got a voiceover, you've got some music, you've got some background underlying footage.

What you want to do is you just want to assemble on paper, write it out, write out what you want

it to look like, you know, you want to have the the footage playing behind while you have the title

come across the top, and then you want to have the voiceover Popping over the music and it

comes in at the second second in there, creating your mind what you want it to be and then go

about assembling it. That's really it. You know, I'm a diver I like to scuba dive. And one of the

things I learned back in dive school a long time ago and it really permeates my thinking as a

when I create, you know, digital content, video content and any of that stuff. They used to say,

plan your dive and dive your plan. They used to say that because if you plan your dive you don't

have problems underwater. You don't run out of air. You don't have the wrong kind of air you're

not underwater, so long that you need to have nitrogen added to your blood into your to your mix,

etc. Plan your dive and dive your plan. Editing is exactly the same. Plan your edit and edit your

plan. You'll come out on top. Live with get live with gratitude, my friends. Have a great day. Have

a great weekend. And I'll see you on Monday.

September 18. 2020