Continuing a basic description of my current video editing process, and the general times for each step. All part of my self-taught process by which I attempt to prepare semi-meaningful videos for YouTube.
Once I have the video into Davinci Resolve, and have the audio synced up, then the true editing can begin. Using my prior video as a starting template, I duplicate the project and remove all the unnecessary footage, keeping both the intro and ending graphics and any other effects.
My first step is actually not editing, but color correction – something that I have needed to use a lot due to the low quality of my camera and the lighting. For the most part, the auto-correction setting is sufficient, if basic. But in the latest video, the glare from the video made the blue spacefield very brown, so I had to correct quiet a bit further. Once one of the clips is corrected, it is easy to cut and paste the settings to each additional clip with a few key strokes. This is an important step to do before the editing process however, since once the video is chopped up, I generally have several hundred clips, instead of only a few (which would make selecting all of them to paste into troublesome).
Then working with the new video, I start viewing, marking, cutting, and removing, endlessly, in a loop. By listening and watching the footage, I identify points where the conversation drifts, or pieces that are unnecessary to the overall subject come up. Originally, my approach was just to leave everything. However, I found that ends up with a very large chunk of “noise” in the video, and makes the videos unreasonably long for any sane person to sit and watch.
In general, I try to trim about 50 minutes out of every hour worth of footage. However, that really depends on the particular activity, and how focused we are. In some cases, I can trim out large chunks, in others it is only a few seconds here and there. I also trim out the various pauses I subconsciously say during the filming (the “ums” and “uhs”), if only because it makes the flow of the conversation much smoother. Overall, this part of the process is by far the most time-consuming – I would say for every hour of footage I end up spending 2 hours reviewing, editing, and re-reviewing the material. Since I rarely have a very long session where I can stay focused, it ends up being broken out across several days (or weeks if I am very busy). But the end result is a much more consolidated and focused story of the video.
When that piece is finally done, then I move to the post-processing – the part when the start and ending is updated and modified, and then the final rendering of the video. I will go over that in more detail in the next post.
