Workflow for video editing – the workflow

This is the fourth and final entry in this series. We’ve been through the sorting system, the software, and the hardware; the topic for today is the workflow itself:

Whenever I go to edit videos, I have a plan for what I want to edit. Be it a series of match videos, videos showing a day at the range, or something else, I come to the editing with a plan. I find somewhere comfortable to sit, hook up all my devices, and fire up the editing software. Next, I bring up the folder(s) where the source files are located, and load them into my other screen.

I then look through the source material. If it’s a match video, I like to have one video per stage, so I will typically drag and drop the video into the editing window, cut it, and apply titles and other things, such as a map zoom or an intro clip. I then send it to rendering, and render directly to the appropriate folder on my external drive.

If it’s a larger video, such as one of my day at the range videos, the process is a little more involved. Where a single match video is often edited within five minutes, I can spend as much as five hours on a larger video, depending on the number of clips I want to incorporate. Once I’ve got my clips in the right order, and the narrative set, I start cutting parts out, speeding up parts etc., resulting in a rough cut.

Rough cut in hand, I stop and look at the length of the video, before I take a look at what music I want to add. I’ve talked before about where I source my music, but I have some stuff stored, too, so that I can grab it when I want it. What music I use depends heavily on the mood I want the video to have, be it intense and driving, or calm and soothing.

With all that in hand, I add titles and texts, before rendering the video. After rendering, I watch the video before uploading to YouTube.