How to Get Started with Editing Video

Pete Garbacz here, Robin’s asked me to write a guest blog on video editing, and I’m going to use some work I did for him as an example.

So as you will no doubt be aware, Robin hosted a panel at MCM Comic Con, London 2019. The raw footage was circa 35 minutes long. I mean, Robin could have just uploaded it to YouTube, as it was, and it would probably have done all right – in fact he did and the MCM uncut footage is here.

However, he’d invested time in coming up with the content, in getting the speakers, designing PDF downloads for after the event and has a powerful brand which needed representing.

So – Where Do We Start? With Video Editing Software.

For short videos, I use an app on my phone called Inshot Pro, this is good for short, quick, on-the-fly editing, but I needed a little more oomph and more functionality.

So I selected Magix Vegas Pro (Formerly Sony Vegas) on my laptop. Its RRP is £758, which I’ve never seen it actually on sale for – It almost always seems to be on offer at around the £250 mark.

The first job was to chop the video up; so we went from one long video to a video made up of 2 or 3-minute segments. I then went into each section, highlighted the most valuable soundbites, and deleted the rest. I also removed the repetition (where 2 or 3 speakers had covered similar content) and 35 minutes became 13 minutes.

What To Keep In Or Edit Out Of Video?

Now this is a massive judgment call, and there was indeed a conversation with Robin about what he saw as “Valuable”; although it has to be said that all of Robin’s guests were brilliant, which made my life really, really, hard.

Once we’d whittled down the content, it gets a lot simpler. Vegas is incredibly intuitive, and I was quickly able to add titles for each speaker and put in transitions to make the whole thing feel smooth and slick.

Music, Graphics & Questions, Oh My!

We then moved on to the final polishing, adding music, graphics and tweaking the volume so everything is level. The music was taken from Facebook Creator Studio, which has a vast library of Royalty Free tracks. I selected an 8Bit style track because I felt that was a good fit for Coaching for Geeks’ branding and tied in with the graphical style of the downloadable cheat sheets.

The “Question” graphics before each section I made in Canva Pro and exported as an MP4 which I was able to drag and drop into the video at the relevant point.

Now, there are going to be people out there who are a bit snobby about software; however, I’m a big believer in using (and therefore paying) only the tools needed to do the job. You wouldn’t use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

How Long Does It Take To Edit 14 Minutes Of Video? (Not A Trick Question)

I’d estimate I spent around 5 hours from start to finish on this, but the key isn’t just spending the time – it’s having the creative instinct (cringe!) and going with the flow and tone of the content.

So, like a rubbish Bruce Wayne I’ve just told you that not only am I Batman, but I’ve told you how to be Batman and given you a shopping list to take to the, erm, Batstore? After reading this, where I’ve just told you how to do it, you think you can? Then that’s fantastic for me – job done. 

That said, it might be you need a wingman to guide you, or you want to offload the entire thing onto someone either to get you started or to work long term on a channel or project.

If you’d straight up like to dive in and get me to edit your content, pop along to www.petergarbacz.com/cfg and use the code ‘cfgblog’ to get my done for you service, rrp £197, for just £97.

Alternatively, if you want to pick my brains, or talk about a longer-term project? I’m all ears.