More video editing tips
The importance of an organized workflow:
Get to know your footage. Log your material. Organize into folders, if that helps you see everything.
Go through and isolate your sound bites. Figure out a system that works for you. Usually I have the interviews on V1, B-roll on V2, and text on V3—at least at first. For audio, usually I have interviews on A1, B-roll audio on V2 (and sometimes B3 if it overlaps) and any music last.
At least until you’re ready to commit to the placement of your B-roll, it helps to keep it on its own separate track because one you start unlinking audio from video and moving them around, it’s easy to lose talking head shots that you later want to bring back, and then you have to go back through the original raw clip, bring it back down again, potentially re-sync the audio… it’s a pain.
Linking and unlinking audio and video.
You can temporarily mute individual tracks while you’re editing.
Audio and video transitions. Adjusting the length of these transitions.
Zooming in and out for more accurate edits.
Widening audio tracks so you can see the waveform and using the pen tool to tweak audio manually.
Adding text slides.
Zooming in and out on footage once it’s in the timeline.
Slow-mo (again, make sure you’re actually shooting at the higher frame rate if you intend to do slow motion or it will look jerky)