Short video production and editing skills!

In this era of materialistic information flow and big data, our work plays just the tip of the iceberg, and people are visual animals. So how can we control and make more people familiar with the videos we produce, so as to further increase the traffic and click-through rate of the videos? Let me further explain some key points and techniques in the production of information flow videos!

1. Selection of video editing software

First of all, what we need when making videos is video editing software. A high-quality editing software is essential for a high-quality video.

1) Several mainstream editing software: Premiere, Finalcutpro, Vegas, Edius, AE, as well as iStudio, VideoStudio, Jianying, etc.

2) What they have in common is that they can crop and cut videos, but the differences lie in their functions, expressiveness, and difficulty of operation. Premiere, Finalcutpro, Vegas, AE and Edius are five editing software that professionals like to use. They are powerful and complex to use, but the quality of their video presentation is very high. The remaining editing software are very suitable for novices, and are easy to operate.

Here I will show you how one of the ones I usually use (PR) works↓

① Before editing each video, a new project file must be created to store the layout and typesetting of the video in our editing. Basically, once you open your video editing software, a dialog box will automatically appear, select a new project (if not, you can usually choose to create a new project in the file in the upper left corner). Select the save path for your project file and name it. This is important if you want to edit your video later. In addition, it is best not to change the storage path of the required video hardware, such as putting the video from the desktop into the D drive, which will cause the video hardware to be lost and re-searched and replaced. (As shown in the picture, this is the basic layout of pr)

Drag the video clip materials (video, music, pictures, etc.) you need to the lower left corner of the interface. This completes the first step of making a video - importing materials.

②The next step is to create a new sequence. The size of the sequence can be determined according to the video you create (Ctrl+N to create a new sequence, and the size can be designed). Drag the materials you need into it. You will find two long bars, which are the video track and audio track. You can adjust their positions by dragging them. Right above them is our player.

③There are several commonly used small tools in the box below (from top to bottom). The first one is the selection tool, which is used to drag video and audio; the fourth one is the razor tool, which is used to split video and audio; the eighth one is the text tool, which can be used to write text on the video.

④After we finish making the video, we need to export it. The prerequisite for exporting is that you must select the sequence of the video you want to export (remember to select the sequence). The export interface is shown in the figure below. The shortcut key for export is Ctrl+M. What we need to pay attention to here is the saving format, the video presentation effect, the output location and the export time (the time must be from zero seconds to the total length of the entire video).

2. Video production process

The editing process is mostly about visually combining the bunch of material you shot into a perfect short film through cutting and collage. From a process perspective, it is divided into four stages: importing materials, cropping materials, combining materials, and exporting films.

1) There are a few points we need to pay attention to when importing materials: importing materials means putting the original materials into the video project library. If there are many materials of the same type, it is best to name them in Chinese. (Example: "① Scene 1" and the same category of names are equivalent to a stage record)

2) We can cut the materials according to our own ideas. There are inevitably some unnecessary parts in the materials that can be removed. The purpose of material segmentation is to eliminate unnecessary videos and leave useful videos. The time for this process depends on the size of the material. In addition to manual cropping, some software also provides smart cropping functions. In other words, the position of the cropping point can be determined by image and sound recognition, which is a very practical function in some simple scenarios. If you want to further improve your cutting skills, you also have to rely on your own exploration in the later stage to make a qualitative accumulation.

3) Combine materials. That is to splice the materials in the order of the copy or script, drag the useful materials on the timeline, and then define the image switching actions between the materials. After splicing the main body of the video, add background music, sound effects, subtitles, introduction and ending, etc.

4) After finishing the video, we will export it into a film. After the video is exported, it must be exported according to the requirements of the main video platform. The current video delivery platform has three resolutions for users to choose from: high, medium, and low.

3. Video Color Grading

As we all know, humans are visual animals. Good color matching can give people visual enjoyment and comfort, and it can also make the video more pleasing to the eye.

1) Learning the color schemes of high-quality works can effectively improve your aesthetic appreciation of colors. We can mix colors from the color matching website, which will provide you with several different color schemes for you to choose from. Then I will briefly list a few common industry color combinations for you (medical white; commercial blue; industrial red; Internet industry dark blue; party and government red with yellow).

2) In the design, we emphasize the use of primary colors for color matching. When making short videos, we can choose the same color as the background color and use materials that match the background color to ensure the consistency of the style of the entire video.

4. Ideas for video editing

If you want to make the video more eye-catching and have a higher click-through rate, then some novel ideas and the overall layout of the page are essential!

1) First of all, the cover of the video is crucial. If the video cover can make users stay on this page for three seconds, it means that it can attract them. In the "golden three seconds" rule, it is also crucial for us. This sentence will greatly affect the success rate of your video. Therefore, it is necessary for us to choose a good start so that users can stop and watch the video you made; this will have a good completion rate and the chance of success will be greatly increased. So what elements should the high-quality video cover we want to present have? ① The format style of the cover should be consistent with the video; ② The text font of the cover must be prominent and eye-catching. Without affecting the beauty of the overall picture, the font can be effectively enlarged or some special effects can be added to make it more recognizable; ③ The cover should stay on it for less than one second, so that the audience can have a reaction time and form an impression in their minds, instead of not knowing what the video is about; ④ The picture material selected for the cover is also crucial. We can find some hot search and fashion picture emoticons related to the video to make the cover picture, which is more attractive.

For example, in the two pictures above, they use some sharper buzzwords, as well as some emoticons and pictures from the Internet to increase the overall texture and effect of the video, making it less abrupt.

2) If you want to make the video more exciting, it is also essential to choose excellent materials. Try to select the best parts of your video content. Regardless of the duration of the video, the duration of a single material should not exceed 20%, and the best clips should be played first, so as to achieve the effect of the breaking point. For example, if we are making a promotional video, we can summarize the characteristics of the place we want to promote into a small segment (just a few seconds for each characteristic location, and then combine them together). This will leave the viewer with a desire to explore and allow them to continue exploring. After making the front section, we will introduce the characteristics and advantages of these characteristics one by one in the back section, thus satisfying the viewer's needs. If the video is to be produced in installments then we can introduce one segment in one video, and so on.

3) Background music is the soul of the entire video. We can choose some popular songs. At the same time, we must also grasp the overall tone of the entire video. The main emphasis is on which direction the production is more inclined to, and which part of the emotion we want to express in the entire video is soothing, ghost-like or funny. This is a point we need to be familiar with. Only by figuring out the overall emotional tone can we further filter the people, things and pictures in the short video. The second point is the overall rhythm of the video. Except for narrative shorts, the rhythm and emotion of most shorts are inspired by the background music. In order to make the background music more compatible with the video content, it is best to make a simple and rough edit according to the shooting time sequence, and then analyze the rhythm of the video to find suitable music according to the overall feeling. The more the rhythm of the video image matches the music, the more sensitive the picture will be.

4) The time period of video release is a key point in our video click-through rate and playback volume. Currently, the forms of short-term video marketing can be divided into: hard advertising release, content implantation, Internet celebrity activities and cross-platform integration. We will select two of them for brief explanation; the first is the placement of hard advertising, in other words, video exposure is achieved through paid marketing; secondly, let’s talk about content implantation, which is one of the earlier and most commonly used forms of short video marketing. Next, let’s talk about the time periods for video releases: 7:00-8:30, 12:00-12:40, and 20:00-24:00. The knowledge sharing in these three time periods has the largest traffic. You can refer to these time periods. The number of active people in these three periods is relatively obvious.

5) Another thing is the title we choose for the video. First, we can raise questions or rhetorical questions in the title. Question sentences often arouse users' strong curiosity and are more effective than exclamatory sentences. Second, we can use numbers and data to formulate a title. Numerical titles are logical and easy to understand, which improves reading efficiency. Numerical expressions are more specific and vivid, and can easily arouse readers' interest. Third, we can use some popular words to formulate a title. Words related to hot events will increase the number of video views, which is what we often call "riding on the hot spots" and "leveraging marketing." If the content of your video is related to the topic, you can try to add relevant words to the video title so that everyone can see it.

Video editing and production often cannot be separated from our thoughts and creativity, but more importantly, we need to rely on our own practice and accumulation to cultivate our own aesthetics and knowledge, so that we can complete video editing and production more effectively. Well, the above is my personal summary of video production. I hope it can help everyone.