Beginner guide to editing vlogs (that grow your channel!)

today we're going to edit a vlog together in Premiere Pro and I'm going to share with you my personal workflow for editing Vlogs that your audience will actually click on and once they're there we'll actually watch until the end because honestly a high click-through rate and a high average view duration are pretty much the formula for having the algorithm love you and getting your video recommended more which helps to get you more views and grow your channel and a lot of that success comes down to how effective your edit is I personally edit in Premiere Pro but a lot of the tactics and strategies I'm going to share with you you can replicate in Final Cut or in Da Vinci resolve so no matter how you like to edit you can make it work for you so let's dive in as you can see my background is a little different today that's cuz I'm currently in Ottawa for a family wedding I promise someday soon there'll be more videos from my regular background I'm actually working on a little bit of a home office makeover that I'm excited to share with you so you'll have to stay tuned for that but in the meantime editing tips coming to you live from my hotel room so any good Vlog edit starts with good file organization and I've created a system that ensures all of my footage is always in chronological order and very easy to find I have it set up so all I have to do is select all of the footage that I've imported into my Vlog folder right click on it and select rename footage then automatically the date and the time that each clip was shot is added to the front of its file name this means that when I organize all of my footage by name everything is perfectly in chronological order even if I I shot it on multiple cameras so here's how I did that you're going to want to search for a program called automator on Mac open it up and select create a quick action from there you're going to search for the rename finder items action and you're going to drag it into this gray area here in the center and then drag a second one as well for both of these you want to make sure that they are set to the addition to the file name being before name not after okay so for the first one at the top here you're going to change it to to hour second minute and then for the second one for add date and time you're going to change it to day month and year this way when the action runs the first thing that's going to happen is it's going to add the time that the footage was taken at and then in front of that it's going to add the date so you have one long stream of numbers but it's going to be in the right order finally you're just going to go to file save and then choose a name for this quick action so for me it's rename footage after you save it'll start showing up in that menu that pops up when you rightclick or two finger click on a file or a group of files this is a really crucial step for me cuz I'm often filming with multiple cameras even if it's just my Sony zv E10 and my phone because when you film on multiple devices the file names are different for all iPhone videos it's IMG uncore and then a number and obviously that's going to be different from your camera from your GoPro from a drone and so if you don't do this when you sort by name all of your different cameras files are going to be clustered together and so yes you can go through them all in chronological order but it's not like Blended together so when you do this rename footage action it takes all of your clips from all your various cameras and blends them together in one long chronological list okay next we're going to open up my Premier Pro project template file I've created this template to speed up my editing process and I highly recommend doing this for yourself as well basically I have my b-roll library loaded in here as well as a folder of my most commonly used background music and sound effects and I also have other graphic assets in here like the title Styles I like to use a lot back background colors or other Graphics that are just like really useful like emojis or this little location pen or whatever so I keep this all inside this project file and then if I want to start a new Vlog I can just like duplicate this project file and then have everything already linked and easily searchable and ready to go and this is the workspace layout that I really like to use this isn't how Premiere Pro comes by default but I'll quickly show you how to set it up like this if you want okay so this is what Premiere Pro looks like when you just open up a blank new project and all you have to do to get my layout is start by grabbing the project panel in the bottom leand corner drag it up into the top left hand corner and then just even out the sizes between your Source panel and your program panel and then essentially what you have is from left to right a list of all your raw footage The Source panel is where you can preview that raw footage and the program panel is where you'll see your finalized sequence previewed I just really like this workflow because I feel like it kind of makes sense going from left to right raw footage to final product and it also free space up at the bottom lefthand corner for all the effects that I like to use and then of course the timeline okay now that we are all set up it is time to actually start editing so we are going to work on our timeline rough cut now for the purpose of this video we are going to do a chronological edit you definitely don't have to edit your Vlogs chronologically it actually can be really interesting to shake up the timeline a bit but I do feel like that's kind of a different creative process so you can let me know in the comments if you'd like to see a video about how to make non-chronological vlogs from the planning to filming and editing but for now we're just going to do things in the order that they actually happened okay so you're going to start over in that project panel and make sure that you're organizing your footage by file name and because we renamed all our files everything will be nice and chronological now starts the tedious step of just going through each and every clip and adding it to your timeline now there's two main methods for reviewing footage and adding it to your final sequence and I use both of these depending on the type of clip that it is okay so if I can see that it's a b-roll clip from the little thumbnail in that project panel what I'm going to do is click and drag that clip into the source panel and I'm going to review it and add in and out points for the clip I can do this by just hitting the I and the O keys on my keyboard I basically do this because at the beginning you know as I pick up the camera there's going to be a little bit of a shake and when I hit stop at the end there will be two so I don't need the very beginning and end so I just pick out the part of the clip that's actually going to be usable in the final video then because this is b-roll I'm just going to click on the little video icon and drag only the video into my timeline unless there's specific environmental or Ambient sound that I want to use in the video then I'll drag both but most of the time my be roll like there's talking in the background or something distracting is going on so I just want the video clip method number two is if I can tell that it's a roll from the little thumbnail in the project panel which normally I can tell this because my face is going to be in it and I'll kind of remember like oh yeah I filmed a clip talking to the camera at that point in the day then I will actually click on the thumbnail in the project panel and drag it directly into the timeline from there I can go ahead and just use the razor tool to cut out sections where there were mistakes or pauses I find this a lot faster than going through an entire like 3 minute talking head clip and setting in andout points and individually dragging it into the timeline it's much faster to do it directly in the timeline because you can use keyboard shortcuts so as I'm playing through the video I'll be cutting at any point where I kind of stopped talking or maybe there was an interruption and then when the play had gets to the point where I begin talking again I can just hit the Q button on my keyboard and it'll automatically cut out the break in between when I cut the video and when my playhead is on the timeline you can do the same thing but from the opposite direction by hitting the W key so if you cut kind of before you start talking again then you can press W when your playhead is at the end of the last section you want to keep ultimately you can use either method for picking out the selections of your Clips either by going through the source panel and setting in andout points or just dragging your footage directly into the timeline and then cutting it but I find this dual method works really well for me okay so at this point I'm really keeping in everything that could possibly be usable so the entirety of each b-roll clip that isn't shaky or blurry and all of the a-roll where there's not like a mistake or where I've repeated something I'm not necessarily going to keep everything from this rough edit in the final version but at least I have everything laid out that I could possibly use I'll be honest with you you this is a long and tedious process but it's very important to do it because it's going to start to give you a sense of what you might want to include in the final edit what the story is going to be what the vibe is it'll help you to start brainstorming for our next step and the next step is doing a final polished edit now that we have our very rough timeline laid out it's time to go back in and actually turn this into a video that somebody would want to watch there are a few key steps in doing this but really when it comes down to it I think the most important thing is that you want to think about your Vlog as a series of different scenes sometimes I think beginners go into this thinking about their Vlog as just like one continuous video which it is but if you think about it that way from a creative standpoint it'll probably end up being a little bit slow and a little bit boring if you think about your Vlog as a series of discret scenes each with its own creative purpose and place in your overall story then you'll be able to craft something that's a lot more engaging and keeps people watching okay so within this scene structure for each one you want to think about adding music aligning your b-roll changing the duration of your b-roll clips and adding any necessary titles and Graphics that kind of enhance your story My Method for this is pretty simple basically just start watching through the video from the beginning and making the adjustments that feel right to me for that scene I do have a few questions that I ask myself though that can help with this thought process first of all what is the purpose of this scene in my story what feeling do I want to evoke with this scene and finally am I trying to slow down the story at this point or to speed it up I think it would help to give an example so let's start with a really classic recurring scene in a lot of my Vlogs which is the getting up in the morning starting the day morning routine okay so in this particular New York City Vlog that I've been showing examples from what's the purpose of this scene really it's to establish where I am who I am provide a sense of like relatability and also a little bit of like calm but also anticipation also just some good old visual variety I personally love to film morning routines cuz there's so many individual aspects of it that are visually different and for me so much of my videos are me talking to the camera sharing my thoughts and ideas so anytime I have an opportunity to grab like a sequence of a bunch of different visual things I like to include that okay so what feeling do I want to evoke with this scene I want it to feel calm but I also want it to have that slow build of anticipation like this is going to be a big day there's something cool coming almost like a bit of quiet optimism okay so am I trying to slow down the story at this point or speed it up in this moment I think I'm actually trying to slow it down a little bit have this feel more calm and reflective and then later on when I maybe go out and emerge into New York City that's when we'll speed things up and make it feel more exciting asking these questions about your own Vlog will help you to be more intentional and strategic about your creative choices and it also helps to ensure that there's going to be some variety in your videos because I find for a lot of us when we don't think about intentionally making each scene different or having its own purpose or Vibe it's easy to fall into a pattern of making your entire Vlog feel the same like it would be super easy just to add a soundtrack of like Loi kind of hip-hop beats behind your entire video and cut each b-roll clip to be about the same duration but that is honestly going to make your 15minute Vlog feel like it's an hour long what you want to do instead is make your Vlog feel more like a series of like 1 to 3 minute scenes which each has its own feeling and part of the story this is so so crucial to having good retention and a high average view duration which is ultimately like the key to success on YouTube now if you're looking to add more visual variety to your Vlog kind of like I've been talking about but maybe you feel like you didn't shoot enough different clips when you were filming or maybe there were some clips you wanted to get but you just literally couldn't film like Drone footage for instance then the sponsor of today's video story blocks is going to be your best friend okay so story blocks is an online stock media library where you can access a ton of media for one simple subscription whether you need stock footage for b-roll or animation templates or background music or sound effects story blocks has all of the assets that you need to make your edit more engaging for Vlogs specifically I love using story blocks to get establishing shots of whatever place I'm in so for this Vlog in New York City I can get some really great aerial footage of like the Statue of Liberty the skyline of New York and this really helps to add to that Vibe like here we are we're in New York City get excited and obviously these are not clips that I'm going to be able to get myself I really think these add a lot of character and storytelling power to a video like it kind of makes it feel like a classic TV show where you establish the setting before you kind of zoom in on the character and I really love that I can download as many assets as I need from story blocks for one subscription price so I don't have to worry about the cost adding up from paying per clip because your story block subscription gives you unlimited access to all of these assets so if you want to try story blocks for yourself and start making your videos more visually Dynamic you can check them out at story blocks.com Katy plus I've got to mentioned story blocks has a special offer just for my audience when you sign up for an annual individual license plan from now until June you'll get an additional 3 months free I'm told you won't see it applied at checkout but rest assured once your account is set up you will get those 3 months for free so if you want to take advantage of this limited time offer make sure you go to story blocks.com Katy sign up for that annual individual license and you'll get 3 months free and thanks again to story blogs for sponsoring today's video final step is to publish now that your Video Edit is finalized let's get it out there for the world to see okay so your first step is going to be exporting inside Premiere Pro this is super easy because there's lots of presets you can choose from so I often use this like YouTube 4K preset cuz it's optimized for uploading on YouTube and like most editing software will have options like this now you'll also of course need a thumbnail this is super super crucial for that click-through right side of the equation that I mentioned in the intro we've been talking a lot about how you can optimize for view duration the thumbnail is very important for clickthrough weight so let's talk about that for a minute for a vlog especially I think it can be fun to do a collage style thumbnail and you can actually really easily do this inside canvas so let me walk you through it so first you're going to need to collect some stills from your video this is really easy to do within Premiere you can just scrub through your timeline and if you get to a still that you think is representative of your Vlog you want to use it in your thumbnail you you can just hit shift e on your keyboard to automatically export a full quality still so go through your video select some Stills that you think kind of highlight the story you're trying to tell and then you can upload them into canva obviously you can just start arranging these however you like but here are a few quick hacks that I like to just kind of make it more interesting I really think a layering effect is cool so you can cut yourself out of the background and then actually have yourself partially in one scene and partially in another to kind of bring the collage together so so the way to do this is take your still and duplicate it and then select the upper layer and click on edit photo and then select background remover canva will automatically edit out the background and then what you can do is actually select the layer below and then you can just click and drag to crop the image so you can kind of move it over have yourself somewhat sticking out of the scene somewhat within it I think this is a really interesting way to kind of have yourself moving from different moments in the video within your Collage if you want to make yourself stand out a little bit more you can select that upper layer again and go over to effects and select glow you can change these parameters a bit to make it more of a solid stroke sometimes it's fun to add a few little details almost that feel like stickers to just evoke the vibe of the video so for this one I might find like an iced matcha lat or like a stack of books because those are things that both feature in the Vlog this can be especially helpful if you don't have like a really great still of something you can just like grab an image from within canva that represents it finally I love adding a little bit of text kind of in a wave formation just cuz I think it's cute so if you want to do this in canva all you have to do is type out whatever you want your text to be figure out where the halfway point is and select the second half of your text cut it and then paste it into a new text box so now you have two text box of roughly the same length click on the first text box select effects and then choose curve and let's say you want to make your curve like 40 then you're going to select your second text box do the same thing but make it the inverse of whatever number you just set so minus 40 now you can see you've achieved the perfect wave with your text my last step in every thumbnail edit is I will export this out of canva bring it into Lightroom and then add one of my presets because I just like all of my thumbnails to kind of have the same color grading to them for the sake of consistent branding and I just find it really satisfying which by the way if you're interested in Lightroom presets specifically designed to help make your YouTube thumbnails pop I have some included in my content creator starter kit I'll have a link to that in the description now that your thumbnail is ready and your video is exported you're ready to upload it to YouTube and share it with your community now that you have the basic outline down of the Vlog editing process you might want to learn some more strategies for making your videos even more engaging and interesting to watch so you can increase that retention achieve a higher view duration ultimately get your videos shown on the YouTube homepage more often I made a whole video of High View duration editing hacks that you can check out here so make sure you watch that next and as always thank you so much for watching I hope you're having adventures and following your dreams and I'll catch you in the next video bye

Channel: Katie Steckly

Views: 8,665

Keywords: katie steckly, instagram hacks, beginner guide to editing vlogs, how to edit a vlog, vlog editing tutorial, vlog editing tips

Id: LE0l30uoNaM

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024