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CyberLink's Top 10 Video Editing Tips & Tricks
Whether you are looking at how to best capture and share a video of your baby’s first Christmas or the excitement of a marriage proposal, CyberLink makes it easier to tell a compelling visual story with a new list of our Top 10 tips and tricks for editing your videos. Designed to help you create highly captivating stories by using basic editing and finishing techniques, the tips are based on frequently asked questions from the more than two million members of the world's largest online video editing community, DirectorZone.
2. Get Organized: Keep your files and folders sorted on your hard drive
3. Set the Pace: A video is like a song, it needs a rhythm
4. Save Your Progress: Save, save, save and save again
5. Be Precise: Make professional edits with precise keyframe controls and trim tool
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Cut: A good idea in principle might not fit the final mold
7. Keep It Simple: Don’t overdo the fancy wipes
8. Spend Time on Your Soundtrack: Complement your production with music and sound effects
9. Be Creative: Apply the final touches with creative Blu-ray and DVD menus
10. Get Social: Upload your videos to social video websites including YouTube
1. Tell a Story: In pictures or dialog, a good story makes all the difference
Whether you’re producing a blockbuster feature film or a home video to share with family and friends, a great story is the basis for any well-constructed video. Take the time to plan ahead, brainstorm, get inspiration, discuss with others, share ideas, write out your thoughts and watch as it all comes together during the editing process.
One great place for inspiration and to connect with video editors worldwide is DirectorZone.com
2. Get Organized: Keep your files and folders sorted on your hard drive
Make sure you don’t get caught up spending hours of your precious time looking for a misplaced file or a specific scene in the middle of 30 hours of raw footage. Take the time at the beginning to create a folder structure that is easy for you to understand, keep your files named for easy recognition (a clip named “arrival-at-canyon.avi” is easier to recognize than “clip01.avi”), and keep a notebook to record time points in your footage where specific scenes are located you’d like to use later.
PowerDirector 11’s newly revamped interface allows you to organize and preview your content more efficiently than ever before
3. Set the Pace: A video is like a song, it needs a rhythm
In film school, my editing instructor would bring a metronome into class as an example of how we should approach our editing. Editing isn’t just about cutting whenever you feel like it. It’s about creating a tempo that matches the tone and mood of your video project. The metronome would act at a beat marker to help us see if our cuts were timed appropriately throughout the project we happened to be working on, fast or slow.
Use PowerDirector’s music beat detection to scan your music tracks and locate key cutting points
4. Save Your Progress: Save, save, save and save again
This is perhaps one of the most overlooked and most under-practiced unwritten rules of video editing, or using a computer in general. Nothing is worse than losing your last two hours of work because of a power outage or system crash. Make sure to get in the habit of keeping your hand on the Ctrl+S keys and saving every five minutes or so. Another good idea is to save alternate versions from time to time as you progress through your project, just in case you change your mind and want to revert to a previous save point.
PowerDirector automatically backs up your progress for auto-restore in case of a system crash
5. Be Precise: Make professional edits with precise keyframe controls and trim tool
You want your project to be perfect. To achieve your desired result, take the time to make precise edits using keyframe controls and trim tool. Keyframe control is a must-have tool to create visual effects which times and synchronizes effects along the timeline, such as a fade from full color to black & white, or movement of an object along a path. Trim tool allows you to select the exact sections of your clip on a frame-by-frame basis for precise accuracy throughout the entire editing process.
Use PowerDirector’s 400+ Tools and Effects, including precise keyframe controls and trim tool
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Cut: A good idea in principle might not fit the final mold
Sometimes a scene might sound great on paper, but could end up detracting from the final result if it doesn’t fit the tone or story. Even if it happens to be your favorite scene, don’t hesitate to cut it if you feel that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the video. One thing I have done in the past is keep the clip to use as a “Director’s Cut Bonus” on the DVD, either as an outtake or worked in to the extended version.
Try out PowerDirector’s new ripple editing function to insert or remove clips while keeping others on the timeline aligned
7. Keep It Simple: Don’t overdo the fancy wipes
Words from my editing instructor: “Less is more”. What he meant was that when editing, everything you use – effects, titles, dissolves – needs to have a purpose that complements your production. Going overboard with star wipes or motion paths, for instance, rarely ends in art. In most instances, a simple cut or dissolve will do the trick and have the appearance of adding quality to your video.
PowerDirector has a multitude of effect and transition options, but use the ones that best complement your production
8. Spend Time on Your Soundtrack: Complement your production with music and sound effects
Ever watched a movie or section of a movie with the sound turned off? In many cases, you can quickly determine the quality of the video editing by doing so. But even in the case of Hollywood productions, a simple sound effect or music cue can get you through an awkward edit. Try cutting on the sound of a door slamming, a dog barking, a car zooming by. Mask background noise in your scene with light music. Determine the right microphone setup for recording your own sound effects, or download and share sound effects at DirectorZone.com. An excellent resource for free music downloads is at www.MusOpen.org.
CyberLink’s AudioDirector Ultra works seamlessly with PowerDirector 11 to provide professional sound design and restoration
9. Be Creative: Apply the final touches with creative Blu-ray and DVD menus
Once you’ve cut together the perfect project that you plan to burn to disc to save as a memory or share around for others to watch, make it really stand out by adding a creative DVD menu. The first impression is important, and the menu will be the first thing people see when they fire up your DVD. DirectorZone.com contains a huge library of free DVD menu downloads, or customize your own with background graphics and fonts.
Use PowerDirector’s built-in professional DVD menu templates, download your own from DirectorZone or design your own within the program
10. Get Social: Upload your videos to social video websites including YouTube
What good is it to spend all that time on your video and in the end, have no one share it with? With all the social sharing options available, and the billions of videos being watched daily, upload your video productions to YouTube, Vimeo or other popular video sharing websites. First of all, you’ll get some exposure. Second, you’ll get feedback from the comments which may have some good insight on ways to improve your future projects.
Use the social sharing functions in PowerDirector to produce and upload your videos directly to social video websites
