Edit Your VIDEOS 3X Faster - YouTube Editing Tips For BEGINNERS

Hey content creators, do you absolutely hate editing your YouTube videos? You feel like it's taking you hours and hours? Well, I'm going to go over a step by step process that I use in this video to speed up your editing time.

Now, when I first started editing video, it would take me hours upon hours. Clearly something needed to change because I couldn't spend four or five or six hours ed editing video when I needed to make new content. I was still working a job, I had a business to run, so I was pretty busy and I didn't have a lot of time to just sit there and edit video all day. And I find when I work with YouTube clients, the biggest thing that comes up is the editing process and how long that does take. Now I just want to let you guys know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. When I started making more money on my guitar channel on YouTube, I did eventually outsource the editing process to a virtual assistant. So I don't really do any editing editing on that channel anymore. But I am back to editing the videos for this channel. So I'm going to share my process with you here. Now the first thing I'm going to tell you before we get into the step by step process is keep it simple in the beginning. Remember when you're just Getting started on YouTube and you're uploading your first 10, 20, 30 videos, chances are a lot of people aren't going to see those videos anyway. So don't spend hours and hours trying to throw in all these cool effects, all this B roll, all these images. I mean, you want to make it look nice, but it doesn't have to be perfect. My first video that took off right now, it's got about 1.7 million views on YouTube. I think it was a single take, front to back. And within that video is me stumbling over my words, making mistakes, dropping pics on the ground. And all I did was just do a straight take. I trimmed out the edges, I added a few pictures on the screen and and edited that out. And that was probably maybe a 13, 14 minute video. And even though the video quality was grainy and my editing skills aren't what they are today, that video took off and has 1.7 million views. It means that the people loved the content. So don't get hung up on the editing side of things. Keep things simple in the beginning and grow and expand your editing along with your YouTube channel. So. So the first step I'm going to give you is making sure that you script out or at least create bullet points for your videos. I know you guys can't see it here, but I have my laptop off to the side with my bullet points and my notes. This way I know what I'm going to say next. And I highly recommend that you go through the script one time before hitting record. See if this is something that looks familiar to you guys. Hey, YouTubers, in this video.

Hey, YouTubers, my name's Lauren, and we're going to be going over. So if you feel like you're having to do three or four or five takes to just get the words out of your mouth, I'd highly recommend running through the script once, getting through all those mistakes the first time through, because it's just kind of like studying for an exam. When you go through the material once, you're going to feel much more comfortable with it and you're probably going to flow better and have less stress things that you need to cut out the second or third time through. I also found that when I would make those mistakes, I would watch a section and then I would realize I made a mistake, and then I'd have to go back and cut that section out and then watch the next section. So just be aware that a little bit of preparation goes a long way in cutting down your editing time. Step number two is going to be editing your main footage. Now, I'm a musician, so I kind of think like, editing, like recording. So when you go into a music studio and record a song, you do it one step at a time. So you record one layer, then the next layer, and the next layer, and you pile things on top of that. I think editing works better in the same way. And there's a couple reasons for this. One, it helps me stay organized by just focusing on one thing at a time. Two, I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere by checking these things off the list. So when you go through, just edit down the main footage, cut out all the dead space, all the bad takes, and get it down to the front and back. And then you can go back and do the next step. Hey, real quick, if you're finding this helpful so far, help me out by subscribing to my channel below so that you know when I release more videos just like this one. Now, the next step I like to do is go back and add in my B roll or any images that I'm going to use over the video. Now, as I'm going through and editing, I'm taking notes of timestamps and where I might want to go back and record important things to insert into the video. I find with B roll and images that those things just tend to take the most time because you got to go look up, find the things that fit. You might have to do a screen capture. So by going through and editing first, you've now got a bunch of timestamps with things that you need to go and research. This way you can just go and download everything at once, upload it to your editor, and then throw it into the video. The next thing I like to do is just add in my text or my text bubbles because a lot of this is really copy and paste and. And I would highly recommend that you get familiar with the hotkeys in your editing software because that will save you a lot of time versus having to scroll around and find everything with your mouse. Control X, Control C and Control V are my friends in Camtasia on my laptop. So if you're a PC person, just go learn some of the quick hotkeys how to cut your video very quickly and it will save you a lot of time. Now, once you do that, a cool thing that you can go back is go through and see if there's points in the video where you feel like maybe you need to change a camera angle, maybe you need a zoom in, maybe you need a zoom out, or maybe you just need to cut the video to get a completely different camera angle. Now, again, this step in the process does add a lot of time. So if you find you're already spending hours and hours editing your video, I wouldn't go into this process of just yet until you speed up the process in the other steps first. But the bottom line with this step is these are some of the things that can really increase audience retention, particularly if you're someone doing a video like me, where you're just talking to a camera and you've got one frame just frozen like this. Zooming in or cutting in real quick is a great way to get your user's attention again and keep them interested in what's going on in the video. And the last thing you can add, and I'm going to put a little like asterisk on this one too, is background music. There's a lot of YouTubers like me who use background music and it's really low in the mix. Low in the mix means it's just subtly there, but it's not like way out in front. Adding background music can fill in the dead space a little bit and make your video a little bit more entertaining to watch. But this is where my asterisk comes in. If you are someone who is editing something where the mix music is the forefront of the video, then you are going to want to put this, this music in earlier after you edit out all the dead space. Now why would you do. Now why would you do that? Because sometimes you're going to want to cue edits and cuts with action that's happening in the music. So if you're someone where music is the focal point of your video, then go in, put that in a step two and then throw in your be real, then throw in your text. This way you can time it better with the music. But if you're someone like me who's just talking to a video and the music is really just an afterthought, it's really the speaking that's the forefront of the video, you can just go in and add the music at the end. Because now everything's going to be cut, edited down, and you can just find something that's going to fit within the timeline of your video. Now there's no doubt that good editing can improve your watch time and that is such important factor to YouTube. So if you're looking for some other YouTube hacks to grow your channel, get more views, more subscribers and increase watch time, go check out the video that's over there.