New video project, with challenges

[Garry Edwards]

I'm a still photographer, and a specialised one at that, with a very narrow field of expertise.
However, I stupidly volunteered to create a series of "how to" videos for my youngest son, who is going to create a YouTube video on heavy machinery repairs. Because of physical distance, he's doing all or most of the filming himself and I'm doing the editing.

The backstory here is that he's bought quite a few old agricultural machines, following the death of a friend. His family sold them for scrap and he bought them from the scrappy, with the intention of rescuing them.

So far, he's got some great footage with his iphone, remarkable quality, and he also now has some extra cameras, a gimbal and sound.

I'm a beginner at editing. Before I retired we made a series of videos, but I delegated the editing to someone younger and cleverer than I, and was only involved with making sure that the content was right.. The editing doesn't seem to be as difficult as I expected. I started off using Premier Pro, not the easiest interface but learnable, but when I tried to render and export it constantly failed. Sometimes it came up with a vague error message, sometimes it just crashed and closed the programme. According to YouTube vidoes, that's a common problem with multiple possible causes, so I gave up, after first checking that I had the latest graphics card driver installed, life is just too short to waste on frustration.

I moved over to Photoshop, which of course is a programme that I know fairly well. It doesn't have as many bells and whistles but it does seem to have everything that I need.

Any comments or suggestions from people who know more than I do (that's everyone) would be appreciated.

 

[TimHughes]

I've stuck with Premiere and it has been much more reliable since I added more RAM, now at 64GB. Others swear by Resolve and it looks great, but I don't have the time to invest in learning to use it. If you are at the limit of what you can do with Photoshop, I would try Resolve next.

 

[4wd]

If you are able to scrub through what you have edited in Premiere timeline it seems odd it won't render.
I would suggest (depending on your version) trying one of the lower res options like 1080p for youtube.
I usually export through Media Encoder you do need the matching version for the Premiere you are using.
There are plenty of free editors will do an Ok job for basically joining clips, minor tweaks like exposure/contrast and and exporting .
The free version of resolve is worth trying - but I find having used PP for many years it can be frustrating, but somethings it does very well notably stabilising.

I just remembered when exporting with my laptop it sometimes seems to try too hard and will close down halfway through, the fix is reduce how many cores it uses in Task manager, a bit of a faff as you have to change it every time but that is only doing 4K export

 

[ah5168]

I would stick with Premiere. When I started using it I found the rendering very unreliable as well. I found things were failing when the video included a few jpg stills and/or I was running other applications while rendering. I have now switched to using tiffs and don't using anything else while rendering and it now works OK.

 

[ilikebowens]

It sounds like you need more computer, gaming machines seem to be the way to go but they are costly. An alternative suggestion would be to have someone on fiver edit the videos. Just a thought.

 

[realspeed]

My first tip and possible the most important is to make copies and use them for editing. Mess up the originals and your in deep do dos

What I actually do is only edit so much then save the work done. If you balls up you don't have to start at the beginning again


to put onto youtube I use Adobe Premier elements if shooting in AVCHD format as no conversion needed.
If I move up to MP4 or MOV format then Wondershare or Movavi editing 4K seem to work the best FOR MY NEEDS.

Editing is a whole new ball game I have found out over the years through trial and practise. you can produce "old fashion" videos like this

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yto9he6qMs


or link individual photos into a video like this

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhekX0Frcqk


then there is adding text(rolling/scrolling etc) in so many different forms/styles or even voice overs after recording

QUOTE
" Really it is a case of planning how to present, what sequence to show and what you want to add. OH by trhe way youtube are hot on copywrite with music so best to seek our royality free stuff
I'm a still photographer, and a specialised one at that, with a very narrow field of expertise.
However, I stupidly volunteered to create a series of "how to" videos for my youngest son, who is going to create a YouTube video on heavy machinery repairs. Because of physical distance, he's doing all or most of the filming himself and I'm doing the editing." UNQUOTE

Not so much "how to"as to "what to" would be a better way of putting it. Really a sequence of events "videos" in the order to present is better to make a list . So say in the first video before linking them up together ask how your going to open up the video. Do you want a screen explaination as the opener or using overlaid text. Do you want to fade in the beginning and using fade out to the next fade in. you could use other methods as an intro to be eye catching. OK onto the next how long a pause between clips? do you want to add slowmo in some clip. Do you want to insclude a stills /zoom shots in the video so people can get a better look at the subject brfore resuming the video.
Just a few ideas to get you started

 

[realspeed]

For Garry Edwards

Having done my first video with the new camcorder of Bodium Castle It came time to think about editing and how to go about it . So first of all I downloaded all 26 clips onto the computer.
next was to weed out those that were no good or forgot to turn off recording. Iwould have logically thought to edit in the order taken but no the remaining ones needed shuffling about.
That sorted now to be cruel and really put on one side that were not really needed. That bought the number down to just 6. all clips put into a file on back up drives
From there opened up Adobe premier elements 2020 version and dragged onto this editing suite the chosen 6. I examined each clip in turn and deleted part of the clip if necessary as being too long
Having done this to all clips that were now on the same video and audio editing bars. Came the time to add fade in/out to each one then reduce the time gap between each clip.
also added on another video bar the words which then automaticaly get added to the video


sample only to get to this stage( not as per video)



Now ready for export to youtube. after closing gaps ( or dragged close together) as shown on dropdown

 

[Garry Edwards]

I've stuck with Premiere and it has been much more reliable since I added more RAM, now at 64GB. Others swear by Resolve and it looks great, but I don't have the time to invest in learning to use it. If you are at the limit of what you can do with Photoshop, I would try Resolve next.

Thanks for that. I've now increased to 64Gb of RAM and it's now working fine.

 

[Sangoma]

I keep going back to VSDC free, it isn't hard to get used to, and it has more features than most hobby users will need.
Never had any problems with it not doing what I expect.
Don't seem to need a very powerful machine either, thou no doubt it would run better on one.

 

[Garry Edwards]

I keep going back to VSDC free, it isn't hard to get used to, and it has more features than most hobby users will need.
Never had any problems with it not doing what I expect.
Don't seem to need a very powerful machine either, thou no doubt it would run better on one.

Well, there's lots of different video editing software and I'm sure that most of it is very good. But, for me, there's a pretty sharp learning curve involved and that's why I'm not experimenting. I also think that one of the problems is that the programmes tend to understate the computer specs that are actually needed, no doubt to increase their sales. The programmes that I use require much higher specs than stated to work properly.

So, I do all of my basic editing in Photoshop (maybe because I understand it from stills editing) and it's quick and easy. But it's very limited, especially on the audio side, so after the basic editing I move the job into Premier Pro, which is much better but also much more complex, and strange things sometimes happen with it.

 

[J.M.R]

Hello Garry,

I use Cyberlink Power Director, it could not be easier, you will soon be making your own transitions and masks using Ps. Not only will it render to many sizes you can also make a render to a size that fits what you have done and not what the software initially lists.

And it renders fast I use PD14 from 2015 it rendered the 12 minute video I posted here to 1.9 GB in 5 minutes. At MP4, 1080p, 30fps, 40 MBS, high quality etc. And then used Handbrake it' s free and fantastic and reduced the file to 125K without any loss of quality.

Cheers - J

I'll send you a PM