Video Editing

Last week we learned the basics of video editing, covering everything from the general workflow to special effects and color correction to a primer on encoding and delivery. Here's the complete guide with all the videos and notes in one convenient location. These lessons concentrate primarily on editing video in Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, but that doesn't mean they won't be helpful for other editing software. The idea behind having the lessons with both applications is to demonstrate that when you learn one editing application it's pretty easy to learn another. Most of the stuff is the same, and these lessons mainly concentrate on the sorts of things all video editing software can do. We'll get a little application-specific at times, but you'll get an idea of how different applications tackle the same problems. If you want to learn Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro, that's great, but if you'd prefer to learn other editing software you shouldn't feel like these lessons don't apply to you, too. HEY YOU! This is going to be a little intimidating at first if you have zero to little experience with professional editing software. Don't worry. This first lesson is here to get you acquainted with all the stuff you see on your screen, explain how a few things work, and get you more comfortable before actually doing much of anything. In subsequent lessons, we'll look at creating a project from scratch, color correction, effects, and more. Video editing with professional software is actually very easy but it's just intimidating because of all the buttons and options. Once you know what things are and have the basics down, you'll be able to do all sorts of great things. While these lessons will deal primarily with Final Cut Pro, we'll also be exploring Adobe Premiere as a means of demonstrating how the lessons are really applicable to pretty much and professional video editing software. Even if you're not using Final Cut Pro, stick with it as we'll be addressing concepts and techniques that are useful in pretty much any editing program.