How to edit video in house with tools that fit your expertise

This is the second of a three-part series on nonprofits’ use of video. Also see:
• Part 1: What to consider when investing in video
• Part 3: Video for your cause: Getting giddy over Viddy

Guest post by Kyle Henri Andrei
Idealware

Before the digital revolution, videos — like still photographs — were actually shot on film. Editing them involved cutting out individual frames and splicing the filmstrip back together, a tedious and expensive process that resulted in lots of little plastic squares on the cutting room floor. You also had to move through all previous footage to reach the scenes you wanted to edit, more or less requiring you to edit the film in the order in which you shot it.

Today, software makes editing digital footage faster, easier and much more affordable, and puts it within reach of anyone with a personal computer. Even better, digital video editing is “nonlinear,” which means you can access the scenes you want to edit directly. This helps speed up the process, especially for a short, Internet-ready video for which you just need to trim off the ends and add a title screen or two.

Video editing: Tailor your video to your audience

You’ll never shoot a perfect video from start to finish in one take. A phone might ring, the wind could pick up, the sun could cause glare, or a dog might start barking. Editing lets you cull the best parts from several takes and combine them into one — or, more simply, cut the bad parts out of a single take.

How much do you need to edit your footage? It depends on what type of video you’re making, or who your audience will be. A video to show your donors at a fundraising gala may require a professional touch, but a guerrilla- or documentary-style video — a quick and simple one designed for the Internet that forgos high production values in favor of a spontaneous look and feel — doesn’t need to be polished and perfect. You might just add some titles or credits and trim out unnecessary bits, like when your talent forgot a line or stuttered while speaking.

It is possible to over-edit your video. All of the software options we discuss come with special effects that can enhance your video. Don’t overuse them — a little goes a long way. Some effects look cheap and gimmicky and will distract the audience from your message, while others — like dissolves, which let you transition between clips, and fades to black — can be used safely with some regularity.

Different tools offer different approaches to editing and degrees of usability. Let’s look at them one at a time.

The free tools: Free video hosting and remixing

There are several free or very low-cost solutions that let you make short videos or slideshows with minimal edits.

Animoto: Quick, easy & slick slide show

1Free for nonprofits, Animoto is not technically video-editing software but a website that allows you to create professional-looking slide shows quickly and easily by uploading and arranging your photos. The site also includes a library of licensed, rights-cleared music you can add to your slideshow, as well as a variety of themes and backgrounds. Although Animoto won’t solve all your video needs, a polished slideshow can be a great way to thank donors, volunteers and other supporters online or at a gala or other event.

YouTube: Basic editing features do the job

2YouTube, the popular streaming video site, now provides a handful of editing features. You can add up to seven of your previously uploaded videos into a basic timeline, trim them and add transitions, titles and other effects to create a new video. These features probably won’t be the best choice for those planning on creating a lot of videos but are a compelling option for organizations that need to edit videos infrequently.

In addition, mobile devices that shoot video, like smartphones and tablets, have started to offer basic editing functionality, and mobile apps can add more features. However, the built-in microphones are designed for phone calls, not videos, and the audio quality suffers as a result. Some small cameras also allow you edit videos on-screen and offer higher audio and video quality than smartphones. They might be attractive low-cost options for beginners looking to make a few short videos.

Beginner tools: Free & pre-installed? Go for it!

These are generally free or low-cost options that may already be installed on your computer. They’re good ways to get your feet wet with video editing.

Windows Movie Maker: A good introduction to editing features

3Windows Movie Maker (pre-installed on all Windows PCs, or a free download from Microsoft) is a good tool for people just getting started with editing, and the prevalence of Windows computers means you may already have it in your home. Movie Maker handles basic tasks well, like trimming clips and adding titles, transitions and soundtracks but offers limited file options for exporting edited videos or converting clips and files from one format to another.

iMovie: Get in the serious lane

4Apple computers have a long history of being used for creative purposes, including editing video. iMovie (pre-installed on Apple computers, or $50 as part of iLife), pre-installed on all recent Macs, is a surprisingly powerful and easy-to-use editing program designed for beginners. While Apple computers have grown in popularity, they are still uncommon in nonprofit offices. If your organization has one, this is a logical choice for editing your videos.

Adobe Premiere Elements: A step up from Movie Maker

5With an interface similar to iMovie’s, Adobe Premiere Elements ($99 retail, $15 on TechSoup) is an affordable and beginner-friendly editing tool. It’s a step up from Windows Movie Maker that offers more advanced functions and allows for importing and exporting many more different video file types. While iMovie users should have little trouble adjusting, Premiere Elements requires a longer learning curve than Movie Maker.

More advanced tools

While more expensive and technically demanding than the beginner tools, these options also provide more powerful features and greater flexibility for experienced and power users.

Adobe Premiere Pro: A good choice for professionals
6A significant step up in price and features, Adobe Premiere Pro ($799, $60 on TechSoup as a component of Adobe CS5) has little in common with Premiere Elements and uses a substantially different interface. It works well with other Adobe products, including the Creative Suite and After Effects, which, if used correctly, can create high-quality special effects for your video. Several blockbuster Hollywood films have been edited using this software, which means it’s certainly feature-rich enough for most nonprofits.

Final Cut Pro X: Top of class

7Final Cut Pro X ($300 for Apple computers) has long been the leading alternative to more expensive editing software like Avid, and a logical progression from introductory software like iMovie. With the release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple has geared the professional-level software to a wider consumer base, simplifying the interface, which will be familiar to iMovie users, and making it more accessible to the average nonprofit user. (The previous consumer-level, discounted version, Final Cut Express, has been discontinued by Apple, but can still be found for under $200 on some websites and continues to be supported.)

Other high-end solutions

If you’re skilled or savvy enough and have high-end video production needs — and a budget to support them — there are numerous video solutions available on the market. Avid Technology makes the most well-known, including the core of its product suite, Media Composer, which costs several thousand dollars and requires a powerful computer to run it properly. Avid also has a range of lower-priced solutions, but if your need for video editing is sufficient enough to need such tools, you’re likely better off contracting a professional video editor.

This article originally appeared on Idealware and is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial No Derivatives license.

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An overview of software for multimedia editing, video hosting & podcasting

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, NGOs, citizen journalists, media makers. This is part of Creating Media, our ongoing series designed to help nonprofits and other organizations learn how to use and make media.

By Kaitlin LaCasse and Laura S. Quinn
Idealware

Want to get started using audio or videos to engage your current supporters and pull in new ones? There are a number of tools that put multimedia within the reach of most nonprofits. In this excerpt from the Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits: Fundraising, Communications and Outreach, we explore three related multimedia topics. First, we take a look at multimedia editing software, which can help you whip your audio or video files into shape for public distribution. Then we explore how video sharing websites can help you put your video into the world. Finally, we talk about podcasts, a way to let people easily subscribe to audio or video shows.

Multimedia editing

Multimedia editing software gives you the capability to create videos or audio recordings with a level of a polish that used to require a lot of expensive hardware. Good editing takes time and some skill, but a number of low-cost, straightforward packages put the tools within reach of any nonprofit.

With audio packages, you can edit interviews for length, cut “um”s and pauses, and add music or voiceover introductions. Both GarageBand (for the Mac) and Audacity (for the PC or Mac) are free, solid tools that provide all the functionality you’re likely to need. If you’re eligible for the Adobe donation program through TechSoup, you may be able to get professional-grade Adobe Audition for a $35 admin fee.

Video tools let you cut out pieces you don’t want, splice different sections together, and overlay graphics and text onto your piece. You might join an interview with a constituent together with scenes of your program participants, and put a title screen at the beginning — and even upload it to YouTube with a single click.

For Mac users, iMovie (free with the Mac OS X operating system) is a great editing tool for simple movies. The free editing software available for PCs, on the other hand — like Windows Movie Maker and Pinnacle Systems’ VideoSpin — can be difficult to work with, and often imposes insistent front-and-center ads or confusing limitations on supported formats. For PC users, a good alternative is Adobe Premiere Elements (pictured at right, $15 for nonprofits on TechSoup, or the movie editor is about $79 retail), which provides friendly features very similar to iMovie.

[Editors note: There are also a few online video editing options, including Jaycut.com (free), Motionbox.com (free), Moviemasher.com (free & open source) and Kaltura (fee-based and open source, though these solutions have serious limitations.]

If you’ve outgrown the low-cost options, or want to create more robust animations or special effects, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro provide logical stepping stones for Mac users, while Adobe Premiere Pro (a $70 admin fee for eligible nonprofits through TechSoup) is a popular option for both Macs and PCs. These products, all under $1,000 retail, provide all the power you’re likely to need. If you need more, consider hiring a professional video editor.

Video sharing websites

Videos can provide a compelling way to tell your story online. While they can be expensive to produce, both in staff time and actual money, video sharing websites let you upload videos to the web for free. Once they’re online, viewers can comment and share them with friends. In general, you maintain ownership of the videos you post, but you grant the site certain rights — before you post a video, read the site’s Policies and Terms carefully.

There are many free video sharing options, including YouTube , Blip.tv, Revver and Vimeo. DoGooderTV is geared specifically at nonprofits. Brightcove lets you show videos and video pages without any logo or branding for Brightcove itself, but starts at $2,000 per month. YouTube offers nonprofit-specific functionality, like the ability to create a branded YouTube channel, link calls to action directly in videos or accept donations directly through the video page.

Want to “go viral”? If enough people share a video, it can spread around the Web exponentially, eventually reaching an enormous audience — this rare, sought-after phenomenon is known as “going viral.” There’s no recipe for creating viral videos, but you can start by making sure it’s relevant and irresistible enough to compel people to share. And then cross your fingers.

Many of these video sharing websites also allow you to post the videos on your own Web page or blog. They provide HTML (the coding language of websites) code for you to copy and paste to embed the video. In most cases, the sites’ logos are displayed on these videos.

Podcasts: Hosting and directories

Podcasts are syndicated audio or video shows that allow people to subscribe. Once that’s done, whenever a new show is available, files are automatically downloaded onto subscribers’ computers. In fact, that’s the main difference between podcasts and other types of audio or video files — podcasts are subscription-based and downloaded via RSS so subscribers don’t have to seek them out.

Nonprofits can use them in a number of ways to create awareness or educate people about their causes. Podcasts can be useful to record and broadcast meetings, conference calls, speeches and more. Keep in mind, though, that creating polished multimedia content is time-consuming. If you have the audio or visual content or the experience to create podcasts, they can provide an interesting way to distribute information, but think carefully about the time involved before committing yourself to creating new multimedia content on a regular basis.

The first step is to record audio or video using a microphone or camera, and edit it using multimedia editing software like GarageBand or Audacity, mentioned above. Once you’ve polished the content and exported it into a standard file format, decide whether to post the podcast on your own site or on a site designed to store and share them, like Hipcast.com, LibSyn, Podbus, Ourmedia or others. These sites range from free to around $5 per month.

Once your podcast is hosted and published, people can subscribe via most RSS readers. You should also submit your podcast to a site like iTunes or Odeo that allows people to easily find it. On these sites, users search for podcasts or enter their Web addresses, and the site downloads the files directly onto their computers, iPods or other portable devices as soon as they are available.

Related

• Comparing Terms of Service at video sites (Socialbrite)

• BlogTalkRadio: Extend the reach of your nonprofit (Socialbrite)

• More in our Making media series

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