Before 2020, I had no idea what I was doing with video editing.

As an entrepreneur, I’m extremely bullish on the power of video, I believe it will be the main conduit moving forward to communicate your message, brand, offers, and ultimately the value you can provide others.

I messed around with a lot of video editing software like Flixier, Viddyoze, InVideo, and I cranked out a handful of videos using Filmora. Yet with me standardizing on Mac for all my entrepreneurial venture gear and after listening to Justin Brown, I went all-in on Apple’s Final Cut Pro X as the best video editing software (for Mac).

I needed to get up to speed on video production and video editing. What better place to do that than through, video!

Here’s a running list of my favorite video editing tips and hacks, hopefully, these are helpful to you as well. I’ll link directly to the pertinent timestamp in each of these videos for convenience. Thank you to each of these creators, make sure to subscribe and like their content!

Keyboard Shortcuts

Using “i” for in, “o” for out, and “f” for favorite to select favorite parts of imported clips is game-changing for speeding up your editing process.

Use “N” to turn snapping on in Final Cut Pro, or use the menu View > Snapping to toggle snapping on or off.

Transitions

Make it look like you’re continuously speaking (in talking head videos which I do a lot of) between cuts with the Flow transition.

For a dramatic transition, use Cross Dissolve.

Speed Effects

A Rewind effect plays your clip, rewinds it at a selected speed, then replays it again – I used this to create a neat “opener” or intro.

Blur Effects

I created a video where I needed to blur confidential information, so I had to learn how to blur footage in Final Cut Pro, which is not the simplest thing to do! I found this video was helpful in sharing two ways to blue or censor content in your video using Gaussian Blur, shape masks, and keyframing using Transforms.