Consider the following scenario:
You are on a project that requires your subject matter expert (SME) to provide you content and they decide to provide you a recorded webinar or two for you to use. One webinar is a recording of them discussing as series of topics with a group of team members on a Microsoft Teams call. It’s a “cameras on” call that lasts about 45 minutes. The second video is them presenting information to their team in another MS Teams call for about an hour. This one is a PowerPoint-focused presentation.
You know you can’t just load up these videos in their current format and call it done. In your heart, you know that nobody wants to watch this content in that format. You are now in a position where you need to edit videos.
Knowing that you are in a training department and not at a film production studio, the reality is that your skill set requirements are much lower than if you were editing the next epic blockbuster film. That means you probably don’t need to color correct, add motion graphics or sweeten your audio. If you don’t know what these terms mean, that’s just fine…it likely won’t come up and you can ignore these parts of the editing application. It also means you don’t need to know all the terminology that goes with them. This will greatly simplify your experience while you cut up your videos for this project.
In this two-part article series, we’ll discuss 10 skills you need to start editing training videos.
Skill 1: Install Dvinci Resolve
For the purposes of this article, I will assume that you don’t have Adobe Creative Cloud and you don’t have a budget to purchase it. I will also assume you have a PC, so you don’t have access to Final Cut Pro.
That means there is one application that fits your bill at the perfect budget level – free! DaVinci Resolve is a very powerful video editing application that can rival Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro. It does everything you need at a price that makes your budget smile.
Skill 2: Importing Media Into Resolve
Once you have your application installed, opened and the project is started, you need to get your media into the application. This is as simple as dragging your media from your file system into the media bin. You can bring in any videos, images or audio files.
You need to know that these files are linked to the video you are creating. They are not embedded. This means that the file path to the media is important. If you move the files, you will break the link between Resolve and the media. Put the media where you want it to live on your file system first, and then import it into the application. Remember: There are ways to relocate the media, in case it gets moved later.
Skill 3: Make Basic Cuts
The immediate reality of the videos your SME provided to you is that:
- You probably need to trim off the front and end of the videos. This is when people are joining the discussions and when they are leaving the meetings. You can expect that in an hour-long meeting, you may only need about 30-45 minutes of that content.
- In the actual content of the meeting, they probably spoke about several different things related to the topic. There may even be parts of the discussion you don’t want to include.
To remove these sections of the video, you need to apply basic cuts. This is easy to do, and if this was one of the only extra skills you learned, you would be able to accomplish your goal of creating the content you need.
When I edit videos like this, my first task is to watch the video from beginning to end and apply cuts to separate the sections of video that I want to keep and want to remove. I then delete the pieces I want to get rid of. By default, when you delete a segment of video, Resolve should pull the following segments towards your player head on the timeline. If you want to be fancy, you can use the technical term – “ripple cut”. I also like to manually add a gap between segments that are different topics and will eventually be part of different videos. This way I can visually see them on the timeline.
At this point, if you can render your edited videos out, you are essentially done. But, for the sake of this article and giving you direction, let’s discuss some of the other valuable skills you may need.
Skill 4: Adding Text to the Screen
If you want to add the presenters name on the screen, you need to be able to add text as a title onto the timeline.
You can find the Titles element in Resolve’s Toolbox panel. You simply drag it onto the timeline in a layer above your video. Then, you have the ability in the Text Properties panel to add the actual text and format it, including changing the font, the font color, and alignment. You can also adjust the placement of the text on the screen using the Position controls. If you can learn this part of the skill, we will be duplicating it using another feature later.
Skill 5: Adding Transitions Between Clips
Tools like video editors and Microsoft PowerPoint provide you with a mind-bending number of transitions for you to use in your projects. But it’s best to use only 1-2 different transitions. (The others are all fluff, and you should ignore them.)
I know that statement might be controversial, so let me briefly explain. Next time you watch television or a movie, pay attention to the types of transitions you see in them. My guess is that you will see two types — a cut or a cross-dissolve (also called a fade). There are two key exceptions to this that I will call out, because if I don’t, I am sure some of you will think of them – “Star Wars” and “Home Improvement.” These two franchises are famous for transitions. “Star Wars” uses left, right, horizontal, and circular wipes. The “Home Improvement” show uses fun transitions like a hammer smacking a nail or a drill. These two are the exceptions, rather than the rules.
Expect that if you overdo your transitions, they become distracting. Keep it simple. If you right-click between two clips on the timeline and select to use the default transition, you will get a cross-dissolve. That’s all you need unless the situation demands something more. I promise…nobody will complain that you didn’t use the spinning star transition. In full disclosure, I rarely even use cross-dissolves.
Here’s another pro tip for you regarding transitions: If you use Articulate Rise or any tool that grabs the first frame of your video as the thumbnail, you don’t want to fade up from black. This is what we are normally used to, so it is against the normal and potentially it will feel odd. But, don’t fade up at the beginning of your video. If you do, when you upload it into Rise, the result will be a black square and your learners will think your video is broken. So, that’s one less transition you need to worry about.
We’ll discuss five more skills for effective video editing in the next article of this two-part series.
Register for the next in-person Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) to hear Barry Nadler’s session, “Top 10 Video Editing Skills an L&D Professional Needs To Know.”
