Video Editing Tips

Many people get all wound up about creating a marketing video. The countless cheerful recommendations on the net about "keeping it real" tend to get lost in your anxiety about looking unprofessional or amateurish when you make that first video. But here's a secret for you, in case you've forgotten it: You can always edit!

Editing is the best feature about video marketing. You get to have all the fun of making the video. And then you can sit there and cut out every bit you don't like, or tighten up the "script", if there's a point where what you're saying on screen seems to drag.

If you've forgotten something, you can insert it.

If your target market are all visual learners, you can insert second mini-videos - just drag and drop new clips into your story line - showing them examples of what you've just been explaining.

And if you're demonstrating how to use a physical product - for example, your video is about wood carving - you may not even want your actual recorded sound track at all, for some sequences. You can replace those screeching truck noises from the highway and your neighbour yelling at his dog with appropriate music.

So there you are: You've explained how to use the wood carving tools, and now you're going to demonstrate carving a face into your block of wood. Segue in the music, speed up the action so it's not dragging on and on - and just show them 1 minute of you actually doing some wood carving, at your speeded-up pace.

Much more entertaining than real-time slow, methodical scraping of wood with trucks roaring by, don't you think?

Tips for Inserting Missing Information

If you've forgotten to include some key point in your video, it's easy to go back and insert it. Just shoot the "missing bit" - and drag and drop into your storyline.

If it's something as simple as forgetting your URL at the end of the video, this is easy as pie: However, if what's missing is you explaining a key point in your "How To" video, you'll need to make it look as if the new section wasn't thrown in later as an afterthought.

The first way to keep it consistent is easy: Just wear the same clothes and especially make sure your hair looks identical to the way it was in your original video. But there's a second part to this, and people often fail to include it.

Make sure your lighting is identical. If you shot your video outdoors, it means waiting for the same sort of weather, and shooting the "fill in" segment at the same time of day. If you shot the original video indoors and there is any source of natural light coming into the room at all, the "same time of day" rule also applies - but you shouldn't have to worry about weather (unless your video was shot on a bright day, and there's an abnormally dark thunderstorm rolling in).

Never Forget Your Notes

This brings us to our last tip: Make notes about your video, as soon as you've shot it! Include things like the time of day, camera settings, lighting details.

But if you're really not happy with that first video, and all else fails, you can always go for the ultimate "edit" of all.

You can simply re-shoot.