It is often challenging for beginners to start using video editing software. Most contain numerous tools and features, and beginners often aren’t sure what the majority of them do.
Knowing some of the more simple tools that are present in most video editing software is a good start. Not only will they provide an easy way to get started and edit videos, but some can also be very effective in their own right:
- Crop The crop tool will let you remove a section of the video that is adjacent to its frame – and effectively alter the shape and dimensions of the frame itself. It can be useful to remove part of the composition that is near the frame, or to adjust the aspect ratio of the video. More importantly by reframing your video you can improve its composition. It can help to use techniques such as the rule of thirds as a guide if you choose to do so.
- Trim Trimming a video involves cutting and removing clips of footage. It is frequently used to remove unnecessary segments from the video and shorten it. In fact the audio track can also be trimmed independently in most video editors.Editing software may have several variants of this tool designed to extract clips, split a long video into even segments, and so on.
- Merge One of the cornerstones of video editing is joining clips of footage together to create a final video. Some clips may need to be cut and trimmed prior to merging them, so that they transition more smoothly using different types of cuts.
- Rotate At first glance rotating videos may seem to be only useful if they were recorded in the wrong orientation – which is partly true. However it is a tool that you can use to also ‘straighten’ videos that may not be level, to make them look more balanced – but you may need to crop the frame to make it uniform too.
- Color correct Color correction involves changing the colors in videos to make them look more like real life. Although that sounds complicated, most editing software have automated tools to help improve the color balance of videos.
Further adjustments may be necessary however, which is why eventually beginners should try to become familiar with the manual color settings too.
It may help to try using Movavi Video Editor to experiment with the five tools described above because of how user-friendly it is. In fact you can find instructions on how to rotate a video here, and can also try other features to stabilize, enhance, apply effects, add audio tracks, and more.
Using the tools listed above will make it much easier for beginners to start editing videos, and help to smooth their way through the learning curve that is involved. Think of it as a shortcut that you can use to get more experience under your belt as you start to experiment with some of the other tools and features that are available too.
