Editing video is more accessible to the amateur videographer thanks to the availability of free software and the sharing of information on the web. While it can be daunting to learn how to edit videos without professional-level training, it is possible to edit everything from a family vacation montage to a pilot episode of a web series. To help, we created a step-by-step guide that will teach you how to edit videos even if you’ve never touched editing software before.
Getting Started
Before you jump into the video editing process, you’ll need to do some research. Here are some questions to consider when getting started:
What kind of videos are you editing? Are you working on “vlogs” for YouTube, short films, feature-length films, documentaries or home movies? All of these different genres of video require different approaches to video editing. Creating artistic films may require more complicated trimming and cutting tools, while creating “vlogs” or tutorial videos may be doable with more simple software.
What capabilities do you want the software to have? Do you want to stick to the basic drag-and-drop editing model or do you want to get more complex and create visual effects? This goes hand-in-hand with the first question, as the complexity level of the software you want will differ depending on what type of videos you’re editing.