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Once you have video content, you need to edit it together into a final video, so how do you do that?
When using a video editor, first you'll need to choose the right software for the job, and get to grips with its basic layout and features, including the timeline. You will then trim and split up video clips to 'edit' them together into the order you want, and then you might add overlays, text, effects, and/or transitions to build up a final video. You'll want to make sure you create subtitles, save regularly, and know how to export your video in a suitable format and size when your video is complete.
Video editing requires specific software that can work with video and other media files to combine and edit them, and apply different kinds of effects and settings. As with most software, there's a wide range of applications for video editing, some of which are free and some of which can be quite expensive. Let's take a look at some of the available options:
These suggestions are focused on tools available at the University of York. If you're not a member of the University, you will need to check what you have access to or use free options.
Note: On this guide, our screenshots and examples will focus on Corel VideoStudio, as that is the software we tend to use in our video editing workshops. You may find that some of the buttons, layout of the screen, and names of features will differ if you're using a different video editor, but typically they'll have all the same basic functionality.
There are lots of free video editing tools out there. Some are open-source tools that are always free and others are free versions of paid-for tools. It can often be worth looking for open-source tools as otherwise you can run into limitations, for example needing to pay to export a video without a watermark.
Our free video creation/editing tools document lists a range of options for free video editing tools, but there's many more out there (as ever, with free online tools, you should think critically before using them):
Most video editing software follows the same basic layout conventions, though some programs will have more options and control panels than others. Here's a typical example:
As well as the main features outlined below, there will be some options (either at the top or in a File menu) for modifying your project's settings and for exporting your video into a final format. There also tends to be a range of mysterious buttons and options — hover over these to see a tooltip about what they do, or open a test project and try them out!
Most video editing tools will have built-in help from a menu, and may also have a walkthrough when you first open the application. Searching online for the name of the tool and what you’re trying to do can also be a good way to find help, particularly as there may be multiple methods of achieving the same result.
You may be asked to confirm the settings of your new project when you first open your video editor. You can generally go with the defaults, but you might want to modify certain settings if you've got a particular end in mind (for instance, if you're going to need a higher resolution).
Let's take a closer look at those typical main areas of the workspace:
The timeline is the main part of your workspace: it's where you compile and arrange the various parts of your video.
You can add an asset to your timeline by just dragging it into place from the project media. Often added items will ‘jump’ to the end of the timeline, but you can then reposition them to start at a specific timecode along your timeline. An item on a timeline is generally known as a clip. Clips may 'snap' to other clips, but you can generally control this behaviour in the settings or perhaps avoid it by zooming further into your timeline.
The timeline consists of multiple tracks which follow a layer principle. For video and images, there is often a primary video track (usually called 'video' or something like 'V1') and secondary video tracks (called 'Overlay or 'V2' etc). Any media placed on these secondary tracks appear on top of the primary video. That can be useful if you want to place a small image over the top of the main video to emphasise what's being discussed, for example. We've got some more guidance on using Overlays further down this guide.
You can add more than one item to the same track, but be careful of overlapping them — it might cause strange things to happen.
If you add an image to the timeline it will be converted into a video clip with default play length which you can then modify (usually from a right-click context menu or by dragging the right-hand edge of the clip to the duration you want).
The preview area is where you get to see how your video is actually looking at a given point along the timeline. There will usually be a traditional set of video playback controls here, but you can also use the playhead marker on the timeline to adjust the playback position.
In some editors, you may get two preview windows; one for watching the 'compiled' video project (sometimes called the program monitor), and one for watching the 'source' clip or there may be a button to allow you to switch between the two. Watching the original clip can be helpful for you to work out which part of a clip you want to add to your timeline.
This window also comes in very useful later on, when it comes to trimming and splitting your clips up to make your compiled video.
To edit together a video, you need ‘assets' — the media files you will be using in your video. Your assets might just consist of a single video file you've recorded. But you could also import multiple video files, audio files or image files. It's generally a good idea to store all of your assets into folders that make them easy to find and to give them sensible names. It completely up to you how you organise your folders; any logical option which means you can find them on another day!
If your assets are in common filetypes you should be able to import them into a video editing tool. There's usually a section for assets somewhere to the left of the screen. Be sure to check that any images and video are of an appropriate resolution for the video you're wanting to create (about the same as your frame size or bigger).
Once you've imported your assets you can drag them onto the timeline to add them to the video you're creating.
Video editors are non-destructive, meaning that when you drag a file onto the timeline, a copy is made. The original file is still in the 'project media' section and will not be changed or 'destroyed'. It's helpful to know as you can always add in a fresh copy of the original if you accidentally chop away too much, for example.
Let's look at some of the key functions you'll often need to use in a video editor to manipulate and change the original video. When you add a clip to your Timeline, it will appear as a 'clip', usually in a coloured box. If you have one long clip, you may need to divide this up into smaller clips so you can remove, reorder or reduce certain parts of the video to what you need. To do this, we use the functions of Split and Trim.
Leaving silences between sections during recording are really helpful when splitting clips. Silences appear as flat lines on the sound 'waveform' and help you to find the natural pauses in speech, where you may want to split up a clip.
Splitting breaks one continuous clip up into smaller bits, the same way that in the past, old analogue film was physically cut up and rearranged. This means you can then rearrange clips, or delete individual sections entirely. You can also just pick-out one small section from a much longer clip to use in your video. This can be useful when you are creating a jump cut - when a video quickly moves to a different clip or camera angle.
Splitting commonly involves needing to position the playhead - the marker on the timeline that shows the current point of the video being shown. Every video editor is slightly different, but an option to split will either appear when you right-click, or lookout for an icon which is often some kind of 'cutting tool' like Scissors or a Razor blade.
One use of splitting a clip is to add two splits at the start and end of a section that you want to remove completely. By adding splits, you can then easily delete the new, separate clip out.
You can cut a clip up into as many smaller sections as you need, but its often worth watching back after removing split clips, to make sure you haven't accidentally cut off anyone's words mid-speech.
Undo (CTRL + Z) will be your friend. You'll probably have to use it quite a lot as you get used to the drag and drop interface and ways of trimming and splitting clips.
Trimming is the ability to remove a certain amount of frames, from the start or end of a clip. It's often helpful when you just need to remove a few moments of silence and be precise about any unwanted frames you need to cut away. You can only trim either end of a clip. So if you need to trim something from the middle of a clip, you will probably first need to use the options to split a clip, as we mention above.
Often, you are able to hover your mouse over the side edges of a clip and will see your mouse cursor change to a different icon (usually some kind of arrow). You can then click-and-drag this to trim off the ends of a clip. Placing your playhead as a marker to the point you want to trim up to can be useful to ensure you don't cut too much off.
Use your video editor's zooming tool to zoom-in on the timeline, so you have a bit more precision over how much you're trimming.
Another approach to editing is to use markers to mark a certain part of the source clip. You can use this when you just want to grab part of a clip, instead of needing to drag a whole clip onto the timeline (which then may need splitting and trimming). Usually you can position the 'playhead' while previewing a clip, and then add In and Out markers. When you then drag the clip into the timeline, only the marked section will be included. It can sometimes be a more efficient way of working when you are compiling lots of shorts clips together.
In some video editors, the In and Out markers appear automatically but in others you may need to find a button or keyboard shortcut to add the markers in.
In most video editors, the audio that comes with a video is embedded or linked to the video clip, so that the audio stays in the right place when you move the clip around the timeline. There may be times where you might need to disconnect the audio from the clip so you cut the video or add in a different clip, but keep the sound from the original video.
If you choose to split (or sometimes referred to as 'unlink') the audio, do so with a little caution. Now they are two separate clips, it can mean they become unsynchronised from each other, meaning the sound won't play at the same time as the subject in the video. It can be a little tricky to line these back up, so you may want to ensure both are selected (use Shift to select multiple clips on a timeline) when moving them around.
To edit an audio clip, you can use the same methods of splitting and trimming a clip as we've mentioned above.
Effects can be applied to change your video in some way. They might alter the appearance of your video, for example the colour palette or visual style, or the sound, for example trying to remove certain background noises or changing the volume. You can also applying a kind of visual effect called a transition, which is how one clip moves into another clip.
Always focus on your content before you worry about effects and transitions: you want all the pieces put together before you worry about whizzy transitions or effects!
Less is often more when it comes to effects and, particularly, transitions! Think about the tone of your video and why you're using any particular effect or transition: they can be a great way to communicate a change to the audience, but use too many and you'll look like a cheesy music video.
Some more advanced video editing tools like Adobe Premiere Pro have a huge range of visual effects you can apply to videos, allowing you to do things like blurring moving images by tracking the movement, removing green screen backgrounds and replacing them with other content, and controlling how effects appear and disappear on the timeline.
Most video editors tend to allow you to apply effects and transitions by browsing them on a pane on the main window and then dragging them over to the timeline to apply them. For effects, they tend to be applied to individual clips, whereas transitions must be applying to a gap between two clips.
Once an effect has been applied, you can change many of the settings for that effect. Depending on how advanced your video editor is will impact on the options you get, with some video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro having features called keyframing that allow you to change how an effect animates or is applied over time (for example, creating a zooming in and out effect or a gradual colour fade). Tools like Adobe Premiere Pro also often allow you to create something like an adjustment layer, which allows you to apply the same effect over multiple clips on the timeline.
If you don't like your effects and transitions, you can delete them directly from the timeline. Be sparing and always test your effects and transitions before exporting your final video - sometimes what looked like a subtle wipe was actually a motion-sickness-inducing fly across the screen!
An overlay can refer to any content that appears over the top of your main visual content (probably your main video). You might've seen this in videos before: sometimes a smaller image or another video will appear on screen over the top of another video, often positioned in a way to draw attention to this smaller video. For example, if someone is talking to camera, there might be moments when they're talking about geese, and a picture or video of geese appears onscreen beside them.
Overlays can take up the whole screen, but they tend to only be part of the screen (hence why they are an overlay rather than just replacing the main video). You can also add text as an overlay, which we will look else elsewhere on this page.
To add overlays, make use of the different tracks on the timeline. Some video editors, like Corel VideoStudio, have a specific track labelled for overlays, but in other video editors you might need to pick a track you're going to use for overlays.
Most videos include some kind of text, like titles and credits, and all videos containing speech should include subtitles, which is a written version of anything spoken in a video that typically appears at the bottom of the video. You might also have text appearing on screen at different points, for example to say who someone is or to have facts and statistics appearing on screen.
Okay, now we've considered that, let's take a look at how to add text to videos:
A common way of adding text to videos is as an overlay, which means that it is placed over the top of any video or image content on the timeline, or sometimes over a blank screen in the case of credits. Most video editors have options for doing this, with built-in text styles and animations you can use.
Firstly, locate the text options in your video editor (they might be in a menu or an icon, sometimes a 'T' icon for Text). Find one you want to use, and drag in onto a track on the timeline. Sometimes there will be specific tracks labelled for you to use for titles or overlays, or you might just need to find a blank one. Be aware that the timeline works by ordering the tracks as layers, so to have the text appearing above the video (rather than underneath, where you won't see it) you may need to make sure it is in a suitably numbered track.
You can edit how long the text appears on screen for by dragging the handles at the end of the text clip, similar to how you can change the length of effects or trim the ends of videos.
There will usually be placeholder text appearing on the screen until you've edited it, so you'll need to find the option to change the text in your video editor and type what you want. You can change things like font and size and colour, though you might need to tell the video editor to look for 'system fonts' if you want to use fonts you've got installed on your computer rather than built-in options. You can also often tweak any animations that affect how the text appears, or remove them altogether, meaning the text will just appear instantly at the moment on the timeline that it starts.
If you want more advanced text styling or your video editor doesn't have the text effects you're looking for, you might want to create text in other applications and then import the video or image file of that text into your video.
For example, you might create a video of text (static or animated) using PowerPoint and import that video into your video editor. This can also allow you to add other elements like images and graphs alongside your text. See our guidance on creating videos in PowerPoint for more information on how to do this.
Subtitles are a blocks of transcribed text that appear at the bottom of the video, containing the text of anything spoken in that video. Subtitles are used by many people and in lots of different situations, so it is important to include subtitles on videos you create.
Subtitles can be added directly onto the video (sometimes called 'burnt on') or be a separate file that can be turned on or off by the person accessing the video. Typically, social media videos have subtitles added directly to the video because many social media sites do not have subtitle features in their video players, whereas videos going onto YouTube or Google Drive will have separate subtitle tracks. Having subtitle tracks means you can have multiple sets of subtitles, including translations in other languages.
Many tools can automatically generate subtitles or a transcript for you, but you will always need to edit this to ensure it is accurate. If you've recorded your video using a script, that can make the subtitling process much quicker as you have a general idea of what is being said.
Our Subtitling guide has information on how to generate, edit, and add subtitles to videos:
When it comes to using a video editor, there's two different types of saving:
Once you’ve edited your video together, it will need to be exported from the video editing tool into a single video file. You'll need to look for an Export or Share option, probably in the File menu or as its own button. You’ll be faced with a number of settings determining the kind of file you want to export, as well as its name and where you want to save it to.
Many video editors will give guidance around what each format is best for what use, and there may be some ready-made profiles you can use. For general use, MPEG-4 / H.264 / .mp4 are typically what you might want for a video you want to share or upload to a website. There will also be different quality options, and these will affect file size: higher quality videos can be very large files, so you might need to compromise quality in order to have a video that isn't taking up obscene amounts of disc space, especially if you need to upload it to the internet. Take a look at our technical side of video editing for a look at the various settings you're likely to encounter.
Once you’ve chosen your format, there'll be a button to select to start your export. It may take quite a while, depending on your video length and the settings you've chosen — the software will have to go through your entire video to create the file, so exporting might even take as long as if you were playing back your video from beginning to end; it may even take a lot longer!
Exporting a video might require a lot of your computer, so you're probably best leaving it alone for a while rather than trying to do something else on it at the same time. Go and get a cuppa and a good book.
Take a look at your exported video when it's finished exporting. It's always useful to test it has exported as you needed, and includes everything you had compiled together.
So, you've got a video file exported - what next?
You'll probably want to share the video with other people. Two important considerations are how widely you want to share your video and how you want people to know about it. You might upload your video to YouTube or a social media site, where it could be easily discovered by others (and you could embed a YouTube video on a webpage once uploaded). You might store your video on Google Drive so you can share it with specific people or send the link out to them via email. Or you might have another platform that you need to upload you video to.
If you're not sure how to share or host (which essentially means to upload somewhere that people can get to) your video, we'll take a look at some of the options. Bear in mind that video files can be very large, so you might not be able to use a method you're used to (like emailing the file directly to someone) as many tools have file size limits.
Alongside the practicalities of creating and editing videos that we've covered on this guide, there's also a range of technical details and specifications you might come across. Generally for video editing you don't need to know too much about these areas, but we've collected together some information here for people who'd like to dig a little deeper into how videos work and what this might mean for settings we get in video editing tools.
Videos - whether on film or digital - are a series of images shown very quickly, so you might also find our images guidance useful if you're delving into how it all works.
Video resolution refers to the amount of detail in your video, relating to how many pixels the images are made up of. As with digital images, size matters. But video has a very different history to that of the still image: a history wrapped up with that of television broadcasting. While a still image can be pretty much any size you like (within reason), there are certain standards to be aware of in video, and a whole new set of terminology for describing them.
Then there's the fact that video resolution is usually expressed solely in terms of its height...
YouTube supports a range of standard sizes of video: 240p, 360p, 480p (equivalent to American standard definition TV), 720p, 1080p (equivalent to UK high definition TV), 1440p (also known as 2k), 2160p (4K ultra high definition – digital cinema standard), and 4320p (8k) — the 'p' refers to the 'progressive scan' method we mentioned above. In each case the value is the height of the picture in pixels.
Most monitors on campus (at the time of writing, at least) are 1920x1080px, which is also the most common monitor size more generally (again at the time of writing), so making videos at a higher resolution than 1080p is a waste of time unless you're going for a theatrical release. But even 1080p will probably be excessive. A lot depends on the content of the video and what equipment your audience might be using to view it. After all, the higher the resolution the larger the file — some devices might struggle with high definition video content, and mobile devices are potentially going to be wasting their data on whatever you're sharing.
That said, YouTube and Google let you choose a lower playback resolution than the original file, so the more prestigious your video, the higher you'll want to set the resolution for the file you're uploading. Still, the time's you'll need to go beyond 1080p will likely be few and far between.
So how does video width work? It's complicated, and tied up with ratios... 4:3 (four units wide by three units tall) is the old television ratio but has now largely fallen out of use, having been replaced by 16:9 which is the standard widescreen TV ratio. 16:9 is also the most common ratio for a computer monitor, as well as being the ratio favoured by YouTube.
But those are just the two most common ratios, and the history of film is littered with others. The width of a 4:3 video should be 1.33...× its height, while for 16:9 it should be 1.77...× its height:
4:3
16:9
Standard definition (SD) television has a height of 576 pixels in Europe (PAL) or 480 pixels in America (NTSC). The number of pixels making up the width is not the same as the number of pixels you see on your screen: on Freeview (the UK's main SD TV platform) it can be anything from 544px to 720px which then gets stretched to 768px for 4:3 and 1024px for 16:9 (widescreen).
High definition (HD) TV comes in two flavours: 720px height, or 1080px height (sometimes called FHD). Widths of 960 and 1440 have been common for 1080 broadcasts, though a full-width 1920px is increasingly seen as standard.
Then there's Ultra High Definition (UHD), also known as 4K (confusingly a reference to its width!). 4K is 2160px high (twice that of HD). It's 3840px wide (a natural 16:9), or 4096px wide in cinemas (hence the 4K). Videos of this size require a lot of processing so can be difficult to run on older devices. But a modern phone may well be able to record at that scale, so pay attention to your settings.
Frame rate is the speed at which one still image replaces another on the screen. The higher the frame rate, the smoother the illusory movement will appear.
The above gif is made up of 15 still images (numbered 2-16) animating at 10 frames per second (10 fps or 10 Hz). Most cinema film animates at 24 fps (24 Hz): that's sufficient to trick the eye for most humans, but you'll often see higher frame rates than that.
Most digital video, like film, uses 'progressive scan': a posh way of saying that one still image appears after another.
The most common framerate in digital recording is 30fps: 30p (where the 'p' stands for 'progressive scan'). That's because it's aligned to what American television does (but more of that below). If you're wanting to keep file sizes down, you should be able to get away with 25p, or even as low as 10p if you're just recording a desktop application on a computer screen.
The lower your framerate, the smaller your video file, but too low and your video will look jerky.
Not every frame of a digital video is necessarily a full image in its own right. The vast majority of digital video formats utilise something called Group of Pictures (GOP) – sometimes referred to as key frame distance. At its simplest, this works rather like JPEG compression, but in a third dimension: one frame of video (a "key frame" or "I-frame") is an actual image, and the next few frames are rendered from that reference image using maths. The larger the GOP, the greater the risk of distortion artifacts. This is why flocks of birds tend to look rubbish on digital television, and why it takes a while for the picture to appear when you change channels (the television needs to wait for the next I-frame before it can show anything). A GOP that's twice the framerate (in other words, one I-frame every two seconds) tends to be standard. So if your framerate is 30fps, you'd want a key frame every 60 frames. But that's just a guide, and if the content of your frame doesn't change that much, you can afford a much longer gap.
The larger your GOP / key frame distance, the smaller your video file, but you'll get more distortion the bigger you go, and you'll also not be able to fast-forward as precisely.
Unlike film, television (even digital television) typically uses a technique called 'interlace': the odd-numbered rows of an image get sent first, and then the even-numbered rows (it's a process derived from how cathode ray tubes scanned the image, back when television used cathode ray tubes, but that's not important right now). Take this chess-board for instance:
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+ |
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If you see an 'interlace' setting, that's what it does: It fillets your frames to half their size and interweaves them. This is great if your image is still but can be messy if things are moving about. If you ever work with television footage you'll have to worry about something called deinterlacing which can prove to be a bit of a nightmare.
Interlacing will reduce your file size by playing tricks with the vertical resolution, but that might create distortions if there's a lot of movement in your video.
PAL television (the standard in the UK) uses 25fps (25Hz) but those 25 frames are interlaced meaning that you actually get an (albeit half-resolution) image 50 times per second: what's referred to as 50i (where the "i" stands for "interlaced"). NTSC television (the American standard) works the same but at 30/50 fps: 60i. That's why 30p is the predominant framerate for digital video.