Would you like to improve the performance of your computer to help you edit videos faster?
There are ways to do that both with hardware upgrades and without buying new computer pieces! When we need to develop more complex editing techniques in a video project, the video editing software can start working slowly.
But it’s not just changing the hardware on your computer that will improve your video editing workflows, there are other things you can do that don’t involve buying new equipment, and that’s what we’ll cover in this post!
Let’s discover 6 ways of speeding up your computer for video editing!
1. Set up your video editing software to improve computer performance
The first thing you can do is set up your Video Editing Software in a way that speeds your computer, no matter what software you use. To do that, you can change the video preview quality on the editing software, that will reduce slowness and improve the computer processing. The video preview is the little screen that displays the video preview. The quality gets lower while previewing your editing project, but this greatly improves the workflow.
You can also create Proxy files for your project videos. In video editing, Proxy files are low resolution copies of the raw videos you are going to edit, they are much smaller and easier to be processed by any video editing software. At the time of rendering your video project, you can replace the Proxy videos by the original videos in high resolution. A good software for creating Proxy files is Handbrake, which is free to download, install and use.
2. Close unnecessary programs running in the background
Another thing you can do to improve your computer performance while editing videos is check the RAM and processor memory consumption. Programs that are running in the background may be consuming processing power that could rather be used by the video editing software. So, open the Task Manager of your computer to see which processes can be closed and which are consuming the most processing power.
Remember to close your Internet browser (Google Chrome or other) while you’re editing videos because browsers end up slowing down your computer. Try to leave only the video editing software window open, if you need to download music for your video or other files that will be added throughout the editing project, plan your video in advance and download everything you need before you even open the editing software.
After that, you can store the downloaded files in separate folders, such as one folder for music and one for videos, and group those folders in a new folder named something like “My Project”. This will allow you to keep all windows closed (except the editing software) when you start editing and it will also prevent you from having to open the Internet browser to locate the files inside your computer, in the downloads folder for example.
3. Free storage space on your computer’s internal drive
The first thing you need to have on your computer to edit videos is a good amount of storage space on the internal drive, it doesn’t matter if it’s a HDD or SSD drive. That’s because video editing programs work with cache memory, which are the files that the software generates itself to manage the media of a project when you’re editing it. When your computer’s internal drive is full, the operating system gets slower, and this affects the usability of the Video Editing Software.
You can store part of your computer’s files in the cloud on a service such as Google Drive or Dropbox. You can also get an external drive to store some of your computer files. The most recommended type of drive for external storage is an HDD because it has greater storage capacity, up to Terabytes (1,000 Gigabytes). Another thing you can do is search on YouTube for how to clear your internal drive cache from within your video editing software.
4. Run a disk cleanup on your computer
You can run a disk cleanup on your computer. A disk cleanup will delete all unnecessary temporary system files that are generated by the system itself on a daily basis when the system is running or completing a task. This feature comes as a tool that is already built-in on most computers, but there are ways to do that manually or with specific disk cleaning software programs if your operating system doesn’t have this feature.
Don’t worry, the disk cleanup won’t erase your personal files, only the system files that are no longer useful and are taking up disk space that could be used for something else, but for that you need to select the right computer disk to be cleaned, it must be the partition on your internal disk drive that stores the operating system, otherwise it won’t increase the computer performance, it will only free storage space.
To run a cleanup on your computer the correct way, search YouTube or on Google for tutorials that show you how to perform a disk cleanup for your operating system because this works differently from system to system. An example of what you can type to search for tutorials is “how to run disk cleanup on windows 10 to speed up the computer“.
5. Consider getting an SSD for your computer
You might consider getting an SSD as the internal drive on your computer, this hardware piece will greatly increase your operating system performance and make it faster for all tasks, including video editing, no matter what video editing program you use.
Getting an SSD as an internal drive for your computer is a very useful way to render video faster, the processing speed of an SSD is much higher than the one of an HDD. Video editing programs processes commands faster and also contributes to a smoother workflow when your computer has an SSD as an internal drive.
In case you want to upgrade your all your computer hardware ensure a smoother workflow in any video editing software, see our post:
6. Work on lightweight video editing programs
The video editing software you use can overload your computer depending on its hardware. Also, you can use video editing programs that are less demanding that allow you to edit videos well, especially if you need to edit videos without elements like motion graphics and 3D animation.
See our Advantages Guide of less demanding video editing programs that deliver professional quality workflows:
- VEGAS Movie Studio: The Complete Advantages Guide
- MAGIX Movie Edit Pro: The Complete Advantages Guide
Conclusion
Awesome! Now you know to set up both your editing software and your computer for a much faster editing workflow! So don’t hesitate to put what you’ve learned into practice!
You can also share your thoughts in the comments below!
