Pre-Editing tips & tricks
There’s a first step for everything. From my own experience, I will give you the first few basic tips that will help you begin your video editing journey much more easier. My goal here is to prevent you from going back to the drawing board. To be a successful editor you need to consider that organization is a big factor. Of course managing your footage and your workflow are important but never forget that self-management should be a big part as well. These tips and tricks will help you with whichever editing software you’re using, here they are:
Backup
The footage needs to be backed up every time at the beginning of every project. It’s essential to avoid any issues such as failed or corrupted drives. A wise investment is to buy a reliable external HDD. So you can transfer all your footage and don't have to worry about losing them or rescheduling a shoot. There’s also Cloud storage, you’ll be saving data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. For example, if you store your data on a cloud storage system, you'll be able to get to that data from any location that has Internet. Really convenient to share your project with your team. Only draw back is that you will be limited by your connection speed. Take that into consideration when time is of the essence.
Performance
If you've got more than one HDD/SSD installed in your PC (which nowadays almost all systems come with a standard of two HDD/SSD). You definitely want to transfer the project footage in a different drive than the one where the editing software and operating system are installed in. This will keep the drive’s efficiency stabilized (which will affect the performance of your workflow) to keep the chemistry between you and your project consistent. Having one drive will get your work done but you’ll definitely see a performance difference once you’ll work with much larger files. For better performance I recommend using SSD for both drives. As it has a much faster reading and writing speed than the HDD and it's more reliable. It’s way more suitable for your workflow as well.
Managing video files
Make sure to name every folders and files as you import them in your PC to keep track of them. Trust me, you don't want to be looking for specific scenes when all your files are similarly named. So that the files are chronological, you should name your folders after YRMODA (year-month-day) like today’s date 160314. Now the files will be named after the folder, following by a keyword that describes your video (ex.: 160314_TaxiScene) to help you remember. You can also use 160314_TaxiScene as a subfolder and name your files with a more specific keyword if you got more than one shot for this scene, resulting in a final name like 160314_TaxiScene_CloseUp. Once these files are backed up and transferred to the right drive, it's time to import them to your video editing software. Avoid cutting corners as it will be unpleasant the next time you’ll get back at your project. Everyone has a way of structuring their folders, once you find one thats suits your needs, be consistent!
Self-Management
Before every session of video editing you should always motivate yourself. Begin your projects with a positive mindset as It affects your work. It will bring you more ideas through your project. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. If you are tired or got no more ideas you should take a break once in awhile. Trying to do something else will help you refreshly get back at it. Listening to music, playing an instrument, occupying yourself with something you like. Get some air, go for a short walk as long as you're doing something different than working on your project.
Here you go, I hope all of these tips and tricks will help you as they still do with me. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take notes while you're off your editing post. Snap pictures of things you like at the drop of the hat.These will bring you ideas.
