TOP Video Editing Questions and Answers [IG Live REPLAY]

Hello there. So if you're catching the replay, I'm going to be sharing today some of the biggest questions that I get asked about video editing and how you can really start to streamline your video editing so it goes faster and you have prettier videos. The reason why I wanted to do this is because so many of you tell me the reason you aren't creating video content is because editing takes you literally. I had someone say a million years edit. And so I would love to find any possible way to make editing easier for you. For me, I will tell you that I will get a video from a client. She's probably going to send it to me here this afternoon and It'll be about 30 minutes of raw footage and I'll be able to turn that around to her in about two hours flat. So I'll take a 30 minute video raw footage that she sends me and edit it entirely in two hours. So that's color correction, B roll animations, all of that, using some of these things that I want to share with you. So I do say it will take you about two hours to edit a video. But what we can do with that one video that takes about two hours is not only do we have a YouTube video, which is so critical because here's what the stats are when it comes to lifespan of your content. An Instagram post lifespan is 48 hours. Hours. And a Facebook post lifespan is 6. 48 hours. Yeah, sorry, six hours is a Facebook post. Sorry, I totally lost track. But a Facebook post lifespan is six hours. But a video on YouTube has an average lifespan of 20 days. Days. So that's why it's so important to think about YouTube as the top of your content creation funnel and then repurposing your content down from there. And so like I said, It'll take me two hours to edit a complete YouTube video. But that's also a Facebook version, an Instagram TV version, and three Instagram story clips. And we've also been doing Pinterest videos as well. So while it seems like two hours is a lot of time, think about all the content that you're creating from that one video. And video has the highest point power. Video is king on every single platform. Facebook, Instagram, you know, these platforms are pushing video. And so if we aren't creating video, we're really missing out. So let me go ahead and jump into some of the questions that you guys had. If you've got questions while I am on here, please let me leave them in here. I see Jen is here Azure Burdette. Sorry, I am terrible at names. I am totally horrible. Horrible. But let me know what questions you have. Okay, Jen just sent one. I will answer hers before I jump into the ones that I got on Instagram here. Because my iPad shut off, I find I repeat things over and over again and have to pick the best one. And it takes forever. Any workaround? Great question. So one tip that I've heard, it hasn't worked for me personally, but I know a lot of people it's worked for is to edit your videos from the end forward. Because like Jen said, her best take is usually her last take, and she said it over and over and over again. So if you start from the end, going back to the beginning, once you have that complete clip, you, you know, you can delete all the other clips to get back to the next one. One thing that I do is I look at the sound waves. And so for me, when I'm filming videos, I will pause between every take. So as soon as I see a pause, I will jump to it. Starting. Jump to the sound wave. Starting. Jump to the sound wave starting. So that I can easily cut those out a lot quicker so that I'm not watching the whole thing. Right. I'm looking for my best take. And then I'm cutting it that way because I do repeat as well. I will say things multiple times till I get it right as well. So don't think like that's a totally. Just a you thing. It's an everybody thing. We say things multiple times. I know with a client's video that I'm going to edit here tonight, she'll probably repeat things a couple of times as well. And so I'll just look at the spaces between the sound waves. That's what I'm really looking at when I'm editing as the sound waves to be able to cut those things out a lot quicker. So that's a great question, Jen. Keep dropping your questions as you have them in here. Another question that I got is how to edit seamlessly from cut to cut. So, like, when you do make those mistakes. So my best advice is to only record chunks of video at a time. Now, your camera is going to be rolling the whole time, but even with my clients, I got my clients to film this way too, so it's easier for me to edit theirs. You just want to film if you've scripted like a couple sentences at a time. Okay. You want to film a couple sentences. Pause. Do a couple sentences. Pause. Do a couple sentences. Okay, That's Going to allow you to cut a lot easier so that you're not looking down as you make a mistake. If you finish all of your sentences looking at the camera like I am right now, and then you take a breath and then you look down at the next and you come up and film the next set. That will make editing so much easier. So we also need to think about, are we planning our videos properly before we even edit? And as we're recording, are we recording in the best way to make editing a lot faster? Because that's literally how you can make editing go a lot faster. One, you plan your content out in advance. So for me, I always have my hook planned for my video and also bullet points for my script. Personally, I can't write my script word for word or I get too nervous and I totally mess up and it takes me forever to film. So what I do script word for word is my hook. And then I have my bullet points in the middle so I know exactly what I want to say and the direction that I'm going. So I'm not going off on a tangent. And I have this massive raw footage of video to edit. That's what's taking you a lot of time, is having this like 40 minutes of raw footage to edit. So if you can game plan your video before you even film, that's literally going to cut your time in half. Catherine says, yeah, I do. This helps me cut it easier. I sometimes stutter because I have so much excitement in my brain going on. Absolutely. So try to just do chunks of your video at a time. Obviously still one giant clip, but you're able. Again, what I'm looking at when I'm editing is the sound waves when I'm speaking. That literally will help you so much when you're editing so that you can see when there is no sound waves, you know you're pausing. So you can easily cut that out. And if you're just doing small chunks of your content at a time, that will streamline it as well. Okay, so keep your questions coming. I'm going to give you another. I'm going to answer another one here. Another big question I got is which editing software do you recommend? So there are a lot of options out there, and there are a lot of options that are good options that I haven't got to try yet, just because I don't have time to try all the editing softwares out there. But if you have a MacBook or a Mac computer, I highly recommend the $300 investment for final Cut Pro. Now Final Cut Pro does have an option to try it for free for 90 days. Now when I bought Final Cut Pro about two years ago, I that 90 day free trial wasn't even available and I knew that I wanted Final Cut Pro. So I started saving before because I use Imovie when I got started again. Imovie is a great software to start too, especially if you're getting started and you have Apple or Mac products. Imovie is absolutely free and pretty much Final Cut Pro on training wheels. So I would start there and then start thinking about saving for Final Cut Pro. Because Final Cut Pro gives you a little bit more options of editing. You can stack multiple things on top of each other. You just have a little bit more freedom with Final Cut Pro. A little bit more advanced with Final Cut Pro than Imovie. But start saving or get the 90 day free trial and start saving. Like if you break it down by a week, think about how much money you have to save per week to be able to upgrade to Final Cut Pro. So you actually get to use it while you're saving. And I am actually going to be releasing a course in just a few weeks called Editing for Conversions that is going to show you exactly how to use Final Cut Pro from bottom up. So how to import, how to edit exactly my editing process for Final Cut Pro. And here's the cool part about this. I have a wait list open right now. So if you go to treanalittle.com editing for conversions or the link here in my Instagram bio, you can get on the wait list. Not only when you get on the waitlist are you going to get my editing checklist. So everything that I do to edit a video, but you're on the wait list, which means you're going to get early access to my course Editing for Conversions. You're going to get it at a discounted price for the waitlist. And the very first person to buy Editing for Conversions is going to get their purchase refunded so you get your money back. Plus, we're going to be giving away US$250, a spot in my VIP Video Strategy Academy, and a couple more prizes to the very first purchaser of Video Editing for Conversion. So if you want to get on that wait list and potentially be the first one to purchase it and get it for free, get $250 and get access to my VIP program Video Strategy Academy. Head to treanalittle.com editing for conversions to get on that wait list. Because those that's where you're going to get the instant notification when the doors are open so that you can win. So that course is going to go into complete detail with when it comes to Final Cut Pro because I have found Final Cut Pro has been the best for me. Like I said, the other options are imovie. Another great option if you have the Adobe suite is Premiere Pro. I have multiple students inside of my program that use Camtasia and Filmora, which are great options as well, and cheaper versions. The problem that I have with Adobe Premiere Pro and why I didn't do that instead of Final Cut is because Final Cut Pro is a flat $300 fee, whereas Adobe Premiere Pro is a reoccurring monthly fee. And so if you think about it, if you're going to pay like 10 or $15, whatever the Premiere Pro monthly price is, think about how long it's going to be until you spend $300 on it when you can just get Final Cut Pro for a flat free. I personally like flat freeze and be flat fees and being done with it. So that's why I chose Final Cut Pro as well. My Camtasia, Filmora are all great option and Sony Divi no DaVinci there's another one that I can't think of right now which is another great one too that talks money. Yes, I will put this on my stories so that you can watch the replay as well. So those are some great options for editing softwares. The next question that I had, again I'm looking at my questions over here was how to find music and how to add text to your videos. So the best way to find music that is not copyrighted is in YouTube. DaVinci Resolve. Tyler. Yes, that's it. That's another great one that a lot of my students have heard as well. Thank you Tyler for that. Hey Stacy Morgan. Final Cut Pro is for app and Mac app slash Mac products. Whatever you want to say, but DaVinci resolve is great for any PC, Mac, whatever and I've heard great things. So to find the best music, literally YouTube audio library has great options and you know you're not going to get copyright strikes for the YouTube music. YouTube also has sound effects that you can get for free. So when you go into YouTube and you go to your YouTube studio, if you go to the YouTube library I think it's called, I don't have my computer up right now, but there is music there and there are sound effects and those are the best places places to get music. My best advice is to pick like two or three Songs that you like and just keep using those. What can happen is if you want to add music in every single video, when it comes to time to pick that music, you're going to go down a massive rabbit hole and spend way too much time looking for the perfect song. So pick like two or three that you like and just use them, cycle through them, because that is going to save you so much time. As far as using music in your background. I have for years not used any background music in my video. I had comments that it was too distracting. So we didn't use any music in the background. But this last week, last week we did a video with music in the intro. So when I was doing my hook in the intro, that led up to the real meat of my content. We did music and we did see our audience retention increase with that music. But again, it was just kind of like that music to get them hooked in. We didn't have it the whole way through the video. So that's how I would use music. I would use it maybe as a way to get people into your video, get them excited and then maybe just fade it out a bit so it isn't so destructive when you're sharing the meat of your content. Like the good stuff, text. So with most softwares they allow you to add text, but sometimes like with Imovie, you can't add your branded font if you have like a special branded font. So Canva, Canva has been game changing recently. They allow you to create animated text literally inside of Canva. Sorry, I gotta switch hands here. And if you put it on a green screen, like if you put a green background on it and you add your animated text on Canva, you can download it for free. You don't even need the transparent background. You can download it for free and then just use your editing software's green screen option and boom, you can use whatever text that you use. You can create whatever you need to in Canva and really up level your editing no matter what software you're on. DaVinci, resolve, final cut, Pro, Premiere Pro, whatever it is you're using, that's the best way that you can always up level your editing is. What I have found is Camtasia. Another question that I had was B roll. So I get a lot of questions about B roll. And so here's the difference between A roll and B roll. Me speaking to you right now is the A roll. If I were to put like a clip over this, talking about. So let's say I was talking about you Know, spending the day on the beach and how the kids and I made a sandcastle and I was talking here to you, but then the clip that I put over top of me talking was actual foot footage of us building that sandcastle. That would be the B roll. You can also think about it. If you're watching the news and the reporter is talking to you, and you see the reporter talking, and then you see the footage of other things like, say, they're talking about, you know, an animal shelter having volunteers working extra or something like that. And you see the B roll of the. You see the clips of the dogs being played with people, but you still hear the reporter's voice. That is the B roll. The dogs. The clips of the dogs being played with is B roll. So here are my best tips for B roll. 1. Create your own B roll library. Not only do I do this, but a client of mine do this, does this. Oh, my gosh, I've had way too much time off and it's only been four days. We create a B roll library. And so she talks a lot about planners and working in her office and finance. And so she has clips and where she's just taken her camera and filmed herself on the computer or filmed herself working in her planner, or filmed herself with her son. And we put them in a Google Drive folder that we can constantly access to add to her videos when we need them. So we're using them over and over again. And that's okay because not everybody's watching every single video that you create. See, we have poor connection. I apologize if we have poor connection, but I think we're good to go. But creating a B roll library and keeping clips that you would use over, over again in a Google Drive folder or a Dropbox folder is really going to level up your editing. You're going to be able to show people what you're talking about instead of telling them. And that keeps them way more engaged than just a talking head. So think about different things that you can film yourself doing to save in your B roll library. And then there are other places where you can get stock footage of B roll as well. So there are options out there as well to get B roll, but that's the best way that I would start building your B roll library. Some other great places that I use to streamline my editing so, like to get animations and to get callout text and title screens that are different than what your software might have. The three places that I use are called Pixel P I X E L, Pixel Film Studio Leno FX L E N O F FX Placeit is also great. P L A C E it and then Canva has been really great as well. And again, if you want to learn like my entire A to Z process for editing on Final Cut Pro, I am going to be opening the doors to just the wait list at the end of this month so you can get on that wait list@trina little.com forward/ Editing for conversions. The link is also here here in my Instagram bio and it literally will show you from uploading to editing how I use these different places to find animations and text that really stand out. And the first person to buy on the waitlist is going to get their money back for purchasing. They're going to win $250 and get a seat inside of my VIP Video Strategy Academy. There are a couple more prizes that we haven't released yet, but you need to be on that VIP list, that VIP wait list to be able to be the first person to buy because we're only opening the doors to that list first. So make sure you do that. If you are on here and you do have questions, please drop them in the comments. I would love to answer your questions if you are here live. I do have a couple other questions that I have had submitted to me that I am going to answer. But if you are live, I would love to answer yours right now since you are here with me live. So I'm going to jump into the next question and if you got one go ahead and pop it in. The other big question I got is how do you organize all your video files? Yes, video files are massive and if you start editing videos for every single week, your computer is quickly going to fill up and your computer is going to hate yourself. So one thing that I have done is have an external hard drive. I actually have three of them. The brand that I use is called Lacie and La C E E I believe and I have three of those right now. I have an entire client's templates editing templates on there and all of her videos saved on there for right now. And then I have one for all of my family videos and stuff. And so I would definitely suggest backing up your stuff on a Lacie drive. I will also once my video is exported and completed I personally delete the RAW footage. I don't need the raw footage since I'm uploading a complete video to YouTube I will save the final version video on my Lacie drive for a couple months. But you can always Pull your final version down from YouTube. You can always download it from YouTube. But if you're using something like Final Cut Pro, you also have to be aware of how your editing software is saving files too. Because with Final Cut Pro, they save a lot of rendered files. And so that can back up your computer as well and eat up so much space to where your computer hates you. I've totally been there where I. I cannot save one more thing to my computer because the editing and video files were eating everything up. So I definitely suggest getting a. An external hard drive. Sorry, excuse me. To really save space on your computer. What I also do is I will just save one template. I will create a templated project in Final Cut Pro that has my name callout, that has my title screen that I like, that has my text callout that I like, that has my end screen. I do this with a client too, so that has her buffer. So when you go from your hook into your intro and you see that branded intro with the name and the music and all stuff, that's called like a bumper, I saved that on a template for her. So we can easily just copy and paste from video to video without having to recreate that for every single video. So I will save like one templated version and then delete all the other ones again. As soon as my video is over and I've exported the final file, I will delete everything from that video from Final Cut Pro to again save my computer. And then I also, if I had to download her RAW footage, I will delete that too, as soon as she approves it. And so you really need to think about that because editing takes up. Editing videos takes up a whole heck of a lot of space. I'm going to answer one more question that I had here and then I'm going to let you all go. But again, if you guys have questions that are here now, please let me know. I would love to hear if you guys are editing videos, which software that you are using. I love to just get a sense of what everybody out there is using. So please feel free to drop in the comments, what editing software you are using, or if you have any questions. Questions about editing. What do we have next? Okay, so let's go with if you are filming your audio and video separately. So I did this for a really long time. I used the Canon G7X and the mic on that wasn't very good. It had a very tingy audio. So I would use my blue Yeti mic, but that meant I had an audio file And I had a video file. And so the best way to sync these up, and my client does this as well when I edit her videos, is make sure your camera's on. Make sure you're recording your audio file. Because I just used QuickTime for my blue Yeti microphone to record my audio. So make sure QuickTime is started for your audio, make sure your camera is recording and clap a lot of times that you will see, you know, the slate, the camera slate, the clap of the camera slate. That's actually allowing the producers to sync audio and video files. Because when you import them into your editing software, you see that spike in the sound wave and you can match them up with your video file and your audio file. Once you do that, specifically in Final Cut Pro, I can make a compound clip so that these two are tied together. And the blue YETI file, the blue Yeti audio file is automatically and permanently connected to the video file. I will then turn the sound off of my video file once I have it all synced up. And that's how I sync it. Simple as that. Now that I do have a Canon EOS and I got a rode mic to add on top of that, I do have just one file. Now my audio and video is all in one file to make it a little bit easier. But that is the best way. Make a clap so you can easily see that sound wave. Sorry, there's a bug on me. I use Video Editor on Microsoft Desktop and Kinemaster on my phone. That's awesome. I haven't heard of Kinemaster. Is Video Editor a Microsoft software? I know Microsoft for a long time had Windows Movie Maker and then it wasn't available anymore. So I knew a lot of PC and Windows people were using things like Filmora and Camtasia. But yeah, as Video Editor on Microsoft like their new editing software, because I knew it was Movie Maker. Yeah. So I'm actually, if you want to use Final Cut Pro and you do need to be a Mac user for that, like I said, my course, Editing for Conversions is going to teach you everything. Teach you my entire editing process from literally A to Z. And that's coming out at the end of September. But to get access to it, you need to be on the wait list. The waitlist to sign up for that is here on my Instagram Bio. It's Trina Little.com editing for conversions. I will send you the link to try Final Cut pro free for 90 days. That's a huge trial period so that you can play around with it, go through my course. It'll literally take you like maybe five hours to go through my course step by step. I would suggest like filming one of your videos and then as you edit it, watch my course alongside of it as you do it. That's going to be the quickest way to get through the course and really utilize it. When I developed this, I wanted to make it as simple as possible for you to edit. And so I just thought, you know, let me just edit a video from start to finish in this course so that you can literally pull it up and follow alongside with me. And being on that VIP list gets you the opportunity to win the course for free. To win US$250 in a seat inside of my VIP Video Strategy Academy. Because the very first person to buy editing for conversions will be the winner. And we haven't released yet when we are launching it. We haven't told the time yet because you have to be on that wait list to get the time and get the link to sign up because those are the people that are going to get first dibs to win all those prizes. So I'm really excited to be offering this to you guys. So many of you said editing has been a pain in the butt for you and I just want to make it simpler. I want to streamline it for you. I want to see more of you on video. I want to allow more of you to see the power that video has. So at any time, if you got any video editing questions after watching this, please don't hesitate to DM me, ask me, reach out. I would love to help you. And yeah, thank you guys so much. I hope you have the rest of the week, a great rest of the week.