Improving Your Video Editing Workflow

By Author: Matt Williams
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When you're editing a video project, one of the most effective ways to optimize your workflow is also one of the simplest - get organized. In addition to your core video footage, you're likely to have a variety of other file types to incorporate into your project, such as photos, titles, inserts, music, and more. The more files you need, the more likely you are to have the data spread across multiple locations, such as flash drives, external drives, discs, and of course your hard drive. Organizing these files into an orderly, accessible location can massively improve your video editing workflow. Let's take a look at how this can be achieved:

Get Organized
First of all, move all of your files to a single location. Whether this is your hard drive or an additional external drive, make sure all of your files are situated on the same drive. In addition to the materials needed for your specific project, this should also include additional media that might be used or reused down the line, such as stock footage, graphics, titles and music. Once you have all the files in one place, it's simply a matter of creating a folder ...
... for your project and filling it with sub-folders for video, audio, photos, graphics, and whatever else your project might entail. Your next step is to assign readily identifiable names to any files that have ambiguous titles. While these may seem like basic, simple measures, it's surprising how many video editors skip this preliminary step.

Depending on the size of your project, the process of organizing and naming all of your files can be very time consuming. However, any time spent getting your files in order will almost certainly be worthwhile thanks to all the time this process can save you once you're working on your project. If you're not thoroughly organized, the time you spend hunting for the right files, searching various locations, and checking the content of poorly named files can quickly overtake the time needed to complete the actual project.

Disk Performance
Evaluating and improving your computer's hard disk performance is another effective method for improving your video editing workflow. This especially holds true if you're using a home computer, such as a computer not dedicated exclusively to video editing.

Your computer is likely loaded with an abundance of programs and files. While some of these are essential, it's possible that you can do without some of them. Scan your programs or applications folder in search of software that you rarely use, and delete anything that you can do without for the time being. Remember, in most cases you'll be able to reinstall the programs at some point in the future, so just get them out of the way while you're working on your video editing project. For example, video games are often notorious hard drive hogs. If you have a few games on your computer and you think you can do without them for the time being, free up that space and get them off of there.

Video files (unrelated to your project, of course) are also a good target. Maybe you have a few movies or TV episodes downloaded from iTunes on your hard drive. If you still want them, transfer them to an external drive or other mode of storage, and clear them from your hard drive. You'll be surprised how freeing up a few gigs of space can speed up your computer, boosting the performance of your video editing software and increasing your workflow.

Backup Plan
Once you've finished editing and created a final output, you'll want to free more hard disk space by deleting all previous stages of the project. However, in the event that you ever need to revisit the video and make any changes, a deleted project means working from scratch once again. It's a good idea to invest in a decent-capacity external drive for the final storage of your materials. This allows you keep your hard disk running fast and efficiently while still providing you with easy access to any past projects you might need to enhance. External hard drives have become very affordable in recent years, and the addition of a good one to your setup can only help improve your workflow.

Now that we've covered some of the basic ways to improve your workflow, let's take a look at how to keep things optimized once the project is underway.

Audio Levels
Adjusting your audio levels after completing the final mix of a project can be a time consuming and heavily frustrating situation. Fortunately, many video editing programs include a way to handle this situation with ease. For example, if you're working in FinalCut, select all the audio that you want to enhance and enter the command "CNTRL OPT-L." This will open the Gain Adjust feature which allows to alter the db of your selected sound files as a group.

The "Relative" option for the Gain Adjust allows you to add or subtract db from an audio clip relative to the clip's current status. That means a clip of 5db leading into a clip of 8db will automatically be changed to 8db leading into 11db. This kind of potential to make accurate, across-the-board alterations can be a huge timesaver.

Copying Attributes
Even if you're a novice video editor, you're probably familiar with the process of copying and pasting your clips across the project timeline. But what you might not be familiar with is the time-saving trick of copying and pasting a clip's attributes.

When you copy an individual video clip, you are also copying the attributes that you've assigned to that clip. This includes things like cropping, opacity, speed, basic motion, distortion, and any other filters. You may need certain attributes applied to a variety of clips but the painstaking process of adjusting each individual clip's attributes can really slow down your progress. Luckily, many video editing programs include a helpful workaround when it comes to attributes.

For example, in FinalCut, the command "CMD V" will paste a copied clip into your timeline. However, if you copy that same clip and press "OPT V," you'll bring up a prompt asking you which of the clip's attributes you want to paste. Once you've made your selection, applying identical attributes to any clip in your project should be a breeze.

Of course, there are many other ways to improve your video editing workflow. Some of them are relative to specific editing programs and some of them aren't even related to your computer, such as keeping a clean and tidy workspace. But most of these tricks are built on one of two surefire steps to optimizing your video editing workflow-know your software inside and out and above all, stay organized.
About Author:
ArcSoft, Inc. is an industry-leading software developer of multimedia technologies and applications for both desktop and embedded platforms. ArcSoft's technologies can be found inside many of the world's most popular mobile phones, digital cameras, printers, optical drives, personal computers, and consumer electronic devices. Visit online for your Blue Ray software and HD HVD software needs.