Do you want to edit more engaging videos that hold the attention of the viewers?
There are many editing techniques you can use to get that result! Working on video dynamics, timing, audio and video effects can give a video much more audience and engagement than you may think! It’s not just technical pre-production and production elements that make a video “watchable”, such as video lighting and camera quality. The editing phase is critical for keeping viewers attentive all-video-through!
Let’s discover how to edit attention-grabbing videos!
Add background music and sound effects to your video
Background music and audio effects can greatly improve the quality of a video, that makes all the difference for editing a successful video that keeps the audience focused and aware of the video’s details. Background music is useful for any type of video, with speech (people talking) or muted, not to mention that it’s very important to add music to muted videos made with muted footage, and it’s even more important to add music to marketing videos that are somewhat related to a brand or service.
As for sound effects, they can be used to animate muted scenes and to improve the quality of scenes that have people talking. Adding sound effects to videos is also called sound design, which is a great way to make videos sound much more professional and more engaging!
You can view our posts below to find copyright-free music and sound effects to use in your video projects:
Also, you can find out how to choose the right music for videos in our post:
Improve the video dynamics with cutting techniques
Videos can become more engaging and attractive when you apply editing techniques that make them less boring and more appealing to the viewers. If you pay attention, you will notice that movies and series change the camera angle many times in the same scene. That is done by cutting out not-so-good parts of recorded scenes and also by grouping video clips in the Video Editing Software timeline.
One of the most efficient editing tools that you can use to increase the dynamics of any video you edit is the video cutting tool, which allows you to organize videos into clips (small pieces). The same goes for video audio that can be dynamically cut. If there is speech (people talking) in the video, it’s even more important to trim speech pauses and pronunciation errors (if any). Just be careful not to cut off important parts of the spoken audio so that the audio remains understandable as well as dynamic. Don’t cut words or phrases in half and leave something from 1.5 to 2 seconds between each phrase.
If the video has no speech, you can try to cut the background music dynamically by grouping the most interesting parts of a song, for example. That will also increase dynamics and keep the audience focused. Remember that videos with a slower dynamic require less video cutting on video files, and more dynamic videos require more video cutting.
Even if you’re editing a video that doesn’t require much cutting, you need to understand what are the main types of video cut. The most popular ones are:
- J-Cut
- L-Cut
- Jump Cut
So, no matter what video editing software you are using, search the Internet for how to apply these three types of video cuts to your specific software, such as “How to Jump Cut on VEGAS Pro“.
Zoom in on video scenes
This technique is easy to do and it can be applied to a video with any editing software. The zooming tool Video Editing Program that magnifies images can be used to emphasize scenes in any type of visual media that you add to a video, whether it’s footage (video clips), photos, visual effects or others.
For example, in a video of a person explaining something for 5 minutes, you can use the zooming tool of the program software to zoom in on certain parts of the video and then zoom out to the original screen format. This way, it will be much more interesting to watch the video because this technique will give the impression that there were two cameras filming the person, one farther away and one closer!
You can apply this technique in a dynamic way in terms of timing: you add the zooming in, zoom in for 1 minute and then return the video to original format, then apply the zooming in again for 45 seconds, and so on. That’s better for longer videos that are more than 1 minute long. There is no perfect formula for using this technique, the important thing is to test it out and see what works best for each video you edit.
Add visual effects to your video
Visual Effects a.k.a. VFX are a fundamental part of any video, no matter what the video type is. For example, there are advertising videos made for companies that use a lot of VFX and almost no live-action footage (videos shot by cameras). VFX are 2D or 3D animations created digitally, they can improve the dynamics of any videos and impress the audience, making a video look much more professional.
To create VFX you can either design them from scratch or use a VFX template.
See where to download copyright free video VFX templates in our post
Either way, whether you want to create VFX from scratch or edit a VFX template, you’ll need Post-Production Software. We recommend VEGAS POST Suite to help you with this type of video technique.
Conclusion
Awesome! Now you know how to edit attention-grabbing videos by adding background music and sound effects to your video, by improving the video dynamics with cutting techniques, by zooming in on video scenes for better video dynamics and by adding Visual Effects to videos! So don’t hesitate to put what you’ve learned into practice!
You can also share your thoughts in the comments below!
