Cut Your Video Editing Time In Half With These Expert Tips
Learn how to optimise your workflow for faster video editing. We share practical tips for both pre and post-production that could cut your editing time in half.
Of all the processes that go into making a good video, editing is usually the most tedious and time-consuming. Most editors spend anywhere between 3 hours to a whole week editing a single 10-minute YouTube video. And unless you’re a full-time content creator, you probably don’t have the resources – or energy – to commit this much time.
So what, if anything, can be done to speed up your video editing? Below, we share practical tips on how to optimise your workflow and setup to drastically reduce your editing time.
Preparation
If you’re serious about reducing your editing time, you should first consider how much prep work you’re doing for your videos. Added prep might seem like more work overall, but it can drastically reduce the time you spend working on any video. Below are some things you can do during the pre-production stage that will lighten your load when it comes to editing.
Know how much time you currently spend editing
By knowing how much time you currently spend editing videos, you’ll be able to integrate the following tips into your workflow and gauge which are the most effective.
You might also want to set yourself a goal e.g. ‘I want to edit a 10-minute video in 2 hours’, or, ‘I want to spend no longer than 30 minutes on my rough cut’. Having a measurable goal to work towards will help keep you motivated.
Optimise your workflow
If you’re a one-man-band content creator – which most YouTubers are – you need an organised workflow that keeps you focused and motivated. Understanding exactly what’s required at each stage in your workflow will help you tick off those boxes quicker without getting sidetracked.
Here’s what a typical YouTuber’s workflow might look like:
- Ideation/visualisation: Brainstorm topics, research competitors, and define the purpose of your video (educate, entertain, sell, etc.) Write a checklist of what you want to show in your video, then refer to this when editing to stay focused on your vision.
- Research: Gather facts, stats, or any other information you need for your video.
- Scriptwriting: Develop a clear and concise script with an engaging intro. Include valuable content in the middle, and end with a strong call to action. Make sure your script is final and includes everything you need for your video – nothing more, nothing less.
- Shotlist: Plan out the visuals that will accompany your script. Be as specific as possible, including camera angles, props, and settings. You can also include ideas for graphic overlays, transitions, and sound effects, so you don’t always have to think of these on the spot while editing.
- Prepping equipment: Write out a checklist of the equipment you’ll need to avoid any hold-ups when recording.
- Filming: Set up your space and follow your shotlist religiously. Try not to make any adjustments when filming unless absolutely necessary – this will ensure you can easily refer to your shotlist when it’s time to edit.
- Editing: Import your footage into your chosen editing program. Edit your timeline first before adding visuals, adjusting audio, and colour grading.
By strictly following each stage of your workflow, you’ll minimize distractions, mitigate hold-ups, and know exactly what to do when it comes to editing.
Take time to create and perfect an optimal workflow like the above. You can use it for every new project you take on and continue to refine each step for faster content creation.
Find out what your audience wants
Figure out which elements of your video your audience doesn’t care much about. You can spend less time and energy focusing on these aspects when editing your video.
For example, your audience might not care for background music or sound effects. So instead of spending hours searching for the perfect instrumental accompaniment for your videos, just reuse tracks from your older videos.
Focus
Learning to stay focused will make a huge difference to your productivity and editing efficiency.
Here are some things you can do to stay focused on the task at hand:
- Eliminate distractions: Put your phone in another room, close all unnecessary tabs, and have a dedicated workspace that you don’t use for recreation.
- Maintain good posture: Bad posture can lead to pain and discomfort, which can be distracting and make you want to avoid your desk.
- Take regular breaks: Breaks are super important to avoid burnout, keep your mind fresh, and get your creative juices flowing. Learn to step away from your work every 10-20 minutes, and be strict with yourself on this – don’t delay your break until you’ve finished a certain task. Postponing your breaks too much defeats the purpose of taking them in the first place.
- Keep snacks ready: How efficiently you think is closely linked to your glucose levels – that’s why you may find yourself getting hungrier when you work hard. Preparing healthy snacks or meals in advance can help satisfy those hunger pangs without junk food – junk food can cause fatigue and brain fog after the initial sugar rush!
Recording
Don’t shoot anything you don’t need
When it comes to recording your footage, try to stick to your shotlist as strictly as possible. This will not only ensure you don’t miss anything, but you also won’t have to trawl through a ton of extra footage when it’s time to edit.
Delete bad clips straight away
If you know a clip isn’t going to be useable, there’s no point keeping it on your camera roll. Delete any bad clips straight away so that you’re left with 100% useable footage when you go to put it all together.
Top tip: if you find you have to rerecord most of your speaking parts, a free teleprompter app might help reduce your mistakes. Teleprompter Pro allows you to import your script directly into the app and read it from your phone, tablet or computer.
Give yourself a deadline
When you challenge yourself to complete a task within a certain timeframe, odds are you’ll actually do it. Setting a deadline adds more incentive to the task, motivating you to stay focused. Even if what you end up with is messy, you’ve probably still achieved more than you would have had you not set a timer at all.
If it currently takes you 6 hours to edit a 10-minute YouTube video, you could challenge yourself to reduce that to 3 hours:
- 1 hour to do your rough cut
- 1 hour to refine it
- 1 hour to add effects/music
You’ll probably surprise yourself with how much quicker you can get things done!
Editing
The part you’ve been waiting for! Below are some of our top tips for speeding up your editing.
Organise your footage
Once you’ve imported your footage into your chosen editing software, you should organise it into relevant groups e.g. A-roll, B-roll, graphics, and stills etc. This will help you find things more easily when you’re deeper into the edit.
Depending on your chosen editing software, you might have different options for organisation. Final Cut Pro, for example, allows you to create smart collections using tags and keywords, whereas Adobe Premiere Pro uses folders called ‘bins’.
Start with your ending and intro
If you haven’t written a script or storyboard, you’ll probably find yourself umm-ing and ahh-ing with the bulk of your content – not knowing what to keep and what to delete.
By starting with your ending and your intro before moving on to your ‘middle content’ you’ll better understand what’s essential and what’s not, speedung up your editing time.
Learn to read your audio files visually
Learning to read your audio files visually is a lesser-known tip that’s particularly useful for interview-style videos. The idea is to spot pauses in speech, loud noises, or coughing – parts that need to be cut out – without having to watch the entire clip.
View the audio waveforms of your clips within your editing software and look for peaks, troughs, and gaps – the tell-tale signs of unusable footage. This technique is far more efficient than watching and waiting for people’s mouths to move.
Play your footage back at a higher speed
When importing your clips into your video timeline, play the footage back at 1.5x or even 2x speed for faster organisation and trimming.
Make sure your rough cut is rough
Trying to perfect your video before the structure has even come together will always hold you back. Your rough cut should be just that – rough. It’s the initial assembly of all the clips you want to include, in roughly the right order. Nothing more, nothing less.
Fine-tuning your clips with colour grading and sound effects at this stage will only mean wasted time should you decide to delete any later on.
The sooner your rough cut is done, the sooner you’ll see the big picture. It’s like how an artist starts with broad strokes – once you have your vision, editing becomes a lot easier.
After your rough cut is complete:
- Do your colour grading in a single pass for consistency and efficiency.
- Avoid transitions unless completely necessary (jump cuts are the norm now – they keep up the pace of the video and your editing!).
- Mute your effects if they require rendering, then render them when you leave your desk or finish the project.
Create keyboard shortcuts for your most-used tools
The keyboard is generally faster than the mouse. That’s why most video editors strive to complete the majority of their tasks – if not 100% of them – using keyboard shortcuts.
Using a keyboard shortcut can reduce any task by a couple of seconds. That might not seem like much, but multiplied across hundreds of tasks and projects, it can really win back a lot of time.
Understand the default keyboard shortcuts and customise the ones you use most frequently for the most efficient setup.
Top tip: Customise most, if not all of your commands to the side of the keyboard you use most. This will allow you to keep one hand on your keyboard and one hand on your mouse while editing. It will also save you time stretching your fingers to reach spaced-out keys.
Invest in new computer accessories
If your budget allows, you could invest in some tech accessories to speed up your editing. A couple of examples include:
A performance mouse e.g. the Logitech MX Master 3S:
- Ultra-fast and precise scrolling.
- More customisable buttons than a standard mouse to optimise your workflow.
A video editor’s keyboard e.g. Logickeyboard Adobe Filmmaker, Editors Keys DaVinci Resolve 16 Windows Keyboard, or Editors Keys Final Cut Pro Keyboard
- Program-specific labelled keys eliminate the need to memorise keyboard shortcuts.
Create your own templates
If you tend to use a lot of the same effects, title screens, or transitions in your videos, you should create a template. Templates are particularly useful if you’re creating a series or like to use similar colour palettes across all your videos. They’ll keep your episodes cohesive and make the series feel more professional and well-put-together.
You can also buy premade templates from websites like Motion Array, which offers thousands of customisable templates for all the top editing programs.