How Difficult Is Video Editing?

Image by mchiroque from Pixabay

Depending on what you know about video editing and what it entails, you may find it difficult, or easy. For beginners in editing, you can use a video editing tool to make a video in minutes! In fact, with an online video editor, the inbuilt features give you limitless boundaries of creativity to do whatever you like. But the result of this can be the use of too many visual effects that can overshadow the main message and create confusion. Therefore, the question is, can you actually do video editing, and is it that simple? Truth is, it is not difficult to learn how to use any drag-and-drop software interface for editing. Learning the actual editing is what’s as difficult as any other complex craft that takes years of mastery. Take time and learn more about editing and using an online video editor.

Editing itself is an art and the better you get at it, the better your final product becomes. The process of editing is just like speaking or writing a language. For you to speak or write a language with fluency, you must learn and practice how to construct sentences and paragraphs. This means also learning other elements of sentence structure to the acceptable standards of the rules governing the language.

Knowing how to edit a video and doing it in an interesting way that will communicate your message is what will engage your audience. With any online video editor, you can do some video editing. However, the technical specifications of video editing are what makes it difficult. These are:

Type of Video

Video editing can be simple or complex depending on what you want for your final product. It also depends on your level of knowledge in editing. If you are a beginner working on a simple video, an online video editor can help you trim, add, drag, and drop some elements. But if you are aiming at producing a top-dollar marketing video, film, or documentary, the process will be more complex and difficult. 

This means that you need to get an in-depth understanding of the subject being covered in the video. You have to collect information in the area you are covering while considering your target audience’s demographics. Therefore, you should know their age bracket, their location, motivations and how much they know about your subject, and so on.  This will help you determine the scope of what to cover in the video and what to edit out.

Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay

Scripting

The foundation of making good videos is a well-written script. Unless you are just cutting and joining shots for a personal video, you cannot produce a good video without scripting first.  Video editing is easier if there is a script determining the length of the video. It also guides the layout of the shots. Scripting is not something an online video editor can do for you. You have to put in the work by researching your topic. Also, research your target audience and come up with a captivating script. Remember, it’s not just about writing anything, but writing a script capturing the mood, tone, and objective of your video.

Pre-Editing Modalities

Video editing is not a stand-alone entity. It is a process in video creation.  Making videos involves developing a story, taking video clips that tell that story, and editing the content for viewing. By the time you attempt to customize your video into quality production, you should have quality video clips to work on. Otherwise, your efforts in patching things up or evening out mistakes will be futile.

Video editing outcomes are based on quality video footage. Therefore, you have to ensure that the video footage has the right exposure, color balancing, and versatile shots before working on it. Moreover, this means that you should have clips with close-up shots, long shots, panoramic and wide-angle shots to choose from.  If your clips have poor exposure or are of low quality, this is something you cannot entirely fix with editing. You may have to re-do the video recording to get the right shots to work with.

Capabilities of Your Online Video Editor

While shooting your video clips, you are bound to make mistakes that need to be evened out. This is where your online video editor comes in. While some tools will just give you a drag-and-drop option, others will give you more editing options you can explore. Therefore, to achieve good results, you need to add intros or outro elements to the video. Moreover, add cool effects, transitions and remove unnecessary parts. There are several video editing software you can use, depending on how conversant you are with the functions. The type of tool you choose to use for video editing determines how your editing experience will be.

Final Thoughts

What makes video editing a challenge is not how you chop off the beginning and end of shots to line them up. Anyone can do this in a matter of hours.  As discussed above, there is a lot that determines the kind of experience you will have in video editing. From the type of video to be produced, scripting, the quality of the footage, and the capability of your video editing software. There are several things you have to piece together; which makes it no simple task. Luckily, there are several video editing tools to choose from that can make it easier for you.