Continuing my description of my self-taught editing process, this time dealing with the final editing and rendering. This is as it relates to my efforts at creating reasonable length videos for my YouTube channel.
By this point, the video content is trimmed and clean, and the basic intro and ending graphics are in place. Generally, these require a few edits here and there, just to update text and other titles, but that is only a few moments of effort. More time is involved in actually changing the format of either the intro or the ending, based on whatever concepts or ideas I might have. For example, my latest Armada video added a scoreboard at the end, which wasn’t present before. In addition, I had to modify the fleet list graphics during the video, due to the location of most of the game. Much of this is trial and error, and then fiddling with the pieces to get it to look better. I can easily spend several hours on just this piece, if substantial changes are needed. However, for the next video, that time is no longer necessary (unless I change the format again).
Its at this point that I am already intending one additional change. In reviewing the YouTube content, I have the option to add a post-video end-screen, which would include various things like “subscribe now” or “view this other video” type links. Very useful, but not something I am currently using. Since this end screen by default uses the last 20 seconds of the video, my intent is to add a 20 second blank black screen to the video at the end (or perhaps a generic motion graphic), so that I can apply a proper end screen.
Assuming I am happy with the video edit itself, and the various graphics, I then start the rendering of the video. I use the default “YouTube 1080p” setting in Davinci Resolve, which pretty much optimizes everything automatically. Give the output file a proper name, and click go, and the computer then renders the final output. For my system, using the Lite version of Resolve, I generally get about 30 fps during the render, meaning it will take as long to render as the video is long. Once complete, then I can switch over to YouTube‘s upload interface, and actually publish the content.
