Introduction to Video Editing

1.2 What You Need

In this lesson, you will find out what you need to get started editing. Footage, you need something to edit. For this course, you will footage to work on as you go through the lessons. I won't be showing you how to edit every clip that you download. So you will have some material to practice with after the course. A computer, all editing software needs a computer. Even if you're editing on a mobile device technically that's a computer, too. All editing software will have some minimum requirements, so you definitely want to check that out. For best performance, you may wanna look at the recommended system specifications, as they're often more realistic. The idea is that there's a minimum of what will run the software, and then there's the level you can actually use to do some work. All of the video editing software is going to need a pretty fast CPU, a healthy amount of RAM, and some space for the software, and your video footage. What's going to work best is a multicore CPU. Dual-core is probably the minimum, but I would want at least a quad-core. For RAM, you're going to want more than you think you need. HitFilm, the software that I'll be demoing in this course, calls for 4 gigabytes as a minimum. This is probably a bare minimum. If you have a few tabs open in your browser, you'll probably run into performance problems with 4 gigabytes. 8 gigabytes is probably more realistic, but I try to shoot for at least 16 gigabytes and up. That way if I have other apps open, I don't get performance issues. When it comes to data storage or hard drives you want something fast. If your hard drive has trouble spitting out the video, you're going to have performance issues and that's going to mean frustration. It's usually best to have a secondary drive to put your footage on so that you don't tax your main operating system drive. SSDs are nice. They're super fast. But once you start editing, you'll find that you're gonna quickly run out of space because transcoded video footage can be really large. I would shoot for an SSD on the OS drive, and then a big, mechanical fast drive for all your footage and assets. An external drive can work fine for this as long as it's USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, or faster. I edit from a USB 3.0 raid drive without any problems. Some edit software will list a certain graphics card level for best performance. This is because some of the work that used to be handled by the CPU can now be offloaded on the GPU which is the graphics processor and this increases performance. Depending on the software and the graphics card and the type of work you're doing, this can make a huge difference in your performance. Now if you're thinking that all of that sounds intimidating and expensive, you may be right, but don't let it stop you. As long as your system meets the minimum requirements, you should definitely get started editing. You can look at upgrading or getting a more powerful system once you have the need for one. For editing software, you have a lot of options for commercial products, and there are some free applications that will work as well. In this course, I will be using HitFilm. HitFilm is a relatively new editor/compositor and you can use the HitFilm 4 Pro version for free for a limited time. You can also check out HitFilm 3 Express for free. The express version is more of an a la carte option. You can use the basic editor for free and then buy the options and extras as you need them in order to increase functionality. Now, how does HitFilm compare to the other editors like Final Cut, Avid, and Premiere Pro? I think it's an incredible value, because you can use HitFilm 3 Express for free. If you look at the full version of HitFilm 4 Pro, it's a remarkable value for your money. It comes with a lot of features for editing and compositing with truly outstanding effects. As a video editor, HitFilm is more limited than some of those other products that I mentioned. But it definitely hold its own for video effects. The bottom line is that it's a great tool to get started with and it's packed with a ton of feature that you will not grow out of anytime soon. Even if you have another editor, you can still follow along in this course because almost everything that I show in this application works in other editors. The edit tools, the work space, layout, effects, and workflow are all going to be very, very similar in HitFilm as they are in other applications. A lot of the tools even have the same keyboard shortcuts. So whatever you have, you'll be able to follow along without any trouble. Now that you know what you need to follow along, you're ready to move on to the next section of this course where you're gonna learn about file structure and learn about the HitFilm interface.