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Video editing is the place where the magic happens during the production of video content. The video editing process takes otherwise boring, dull, and commonplace video content to new storytelling heights. Raw or unedited video footage is ultimately nothing until a good video editor touches it.
Sadly the video editing process can be as confusing as it is daunting — but don’t fret, today we will show you what’s important so you can produce videos that your students will love and learn from.
Create a Great Story
The first and most important thing to remember when editing videos is to create a great story for your viewer to watch. Right about now people often ask, “How can I tell a great story when it’s just a training or educational video?” Remember, every video that you edit should tell a story.
For example, let’s say you’re producing a video about punctuation. In this case, your story would be how to best use punctuation in your writing for more clarity. OK, sure it’s not a Star Wars caliber story, but it still represents what you’re trying to accomplish with the video. We often say begin with the end in mind.
Choose Footage to Enhance Your Story
Once you know what your story is, then you have to pick the best footage to tell that story. The footage you pick should have great lighting, be steady and not shaky, and should show what you are trying to tell the viewer. The best looking footage always gets the most viewer’s attention, so pick the really good stuff to use in your videos and let the rest hit the cutting room floor.
Great Text and Graphics are Crucial
Once you’ve picked great footage and put it together on your timeline, then develop text and graphics that move your story forward. Text and graphics should enhance and not detract from your video. Often young video editors will put in way too many graphics. This actually detracts from the story of a video and should be avoided.
The Right Music is Magical
After your video and graphics are in, find great music. If you ever have a question about the important part music plays in a video, take a moment to watch your favorite movie and turn off the audio. The right music track can make or break a great movie.
Without music, a video is often dull and boring. Now, there are sometimes where music is not required — like during a great speech. But most often music can only enhance the story and feel of a video.
Editing Videos on an iPad
Many teachers don’t have access to professional video editing programs, but many have access to iPads. Let’s take a look at some of the tools that you can access on your iPad that can make your videos sing.
When deciding what software to use to edit your videos, make sure that the application you choose allows you the most flexibility while making it easy for you to edit. You won’t be editing a Hollywood feature film on your iPad, so pick the software that’s the easiest for you to use. Ease of use will allow you to focus on the story content and not be bogged down trying to learn how to use the software. As your skills increase then maybe you can use an app with more bells and whistles.
iPad Limitations
iPads are amazing devices, but they aren’t full-blown workstations, so they have certain limitations but overall they will work just fine for most of the editing you’ll do to create content for your classes.
The biggest issue you will likely see is choppy playback of your edited video. Although this can be frustrating at times, it doesn’t translate to issues after you export your finished video. Simply stated, the videos you export will playback just fine once you’re done editing.
iPad Video Editing Apps
There are a lot of video editing software apps available for the iPad, here we’ll talk about a few that we think give you the most bang for the buck.
Apple iMovie is free and is probably the most widely used video editing app on an iPad. It’s easy to use and since it’s native to the iOS environment, it works smoothly and efficiently. iMovie’s ease of use makes the learning curve very easy for editors who are just beginning to work with video. Don’t let the ease of use fool you — iMovie is a powerful video editing app and should be able to fill your needs for most if not all of your video editing requirements.
InShot is free and somewhat similar to iMovie. A lot of the normal editing tasks such as transitions and layers are somewhat pre-canned, which means they are built for you already. This will save a great deal of time when you’re editing but may in some cases cause some angst in that you don’t have full control of them for your needs.
VLLO is also free and looks and feels a lot like InShot. A great deal of the regular tasks are canned and very easy to use. The free version does not watermark your videos but you may want to upgrade to the $14.99 version to unlock more professional features.
If you feel confident in your basic editing skills and want to amp up your game, you can invest in some better software. LumaFusion is $29.99, which is a steep price to pay, but it’s the closest to a professional editing package we’ve found at this price point. Multi-layer editing, custom bins, and several other professional features make this a great choice for video editors that need a bit more zip in their productions.
Professional Grade Video Editing Apps
Are there any Professional Grade Apps that run on iPad and do you need them? For those of you who have used a professional editing application, you have a couple of options.
Adobe Rush is the lighter version of Adobe Premiere and works and looks almost identical. If your video will eventually go to Premiere for finishing, then this is the app for you. Cross compatibility between the programs is seamless and very impressive. Sadly in order to get all the features you’ll have to pay a monthly fee just like all Adobe products. Even with that, Rush is the most professional of all the iPad video editing apps.
About this time, all the Final Cut Pro X users are saying, “What about us?” Final Cut Pro X does not run natively on an iPad, but on an iPad Pro you can run Final Cut Pro X in Mirror Mode. This means that as long as you have a workstation running Final Cut Pro X, you can mirror that machine on your iPad and edit videos.
In the final analysis, there are more than enough choices out there to get your video editing done. Go try them all and see which one works with your unique workflow and requirements.