Video editing is a time-sucker. Editing a 3-minute video can easily take you three days. Budding videographers and YouTubers quickly face the truth: to make video a viable profession or to even consider daily vlogging, you have to master fast video editing!
A quick search on Google will produce tons of online tutorials and videos on how to edit faster. You’ll find plenty of great tips there. But it’s not just about technique. It’s also a lot about the tools you use. Your video editor or NLE can slow your process down tremendously, no matter how well you master shortcuts and editing techniques.
I’ve used all the most popular NLEs on the market: Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Apple’s Final Cut Pro. I now understand why most YouTubers and especially daily vloggers make the switch to Final Cut Pro if they’re lucky enough to work within the Apple ecosystem.
Save Time Rendering and Exporting
Not only is the learning curve for Final Cut Pro shorter than for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, but it’s hands down the fastest video editor on the market. Final Cut Pro blows its competitors out of the water in terms of rendering and export times, even on lighter computers (though it helps to own a fast or recent Mac computer).
While rendering famously locks up your editing bay in Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro processes your edit in the background so you can continue working and remain time-efficient while your video is rolling out. You’ll notice that even 4K footage won’t dramatically slow down your editing time.
Because Mac computers and Final Cut Pro (and by extent its main integrations Motion VFX and Compressor) both are proprietary Apple products you can’t help but notice that FCP is perfectly optimized to work well within the Apple ecosystem, while Premiere and DaVinci Resolve were created by third-party developers.
Save Time by Using Templates and Plugins
Another way to speed up your workflow with beautiful results is through the use of templates. Though you could create your own effects, titles, and transitions from scratch with Final Cut Pro and the FCP add-on Motion VFX, you can save yourself many hours of work by using templates. Final Cut Pro comes with many high-quality effect templates installed out-of-the-box.
If you want to level up your video output quality without ending up with the same titles, transitions, and effects as everyone else, there are some out-of-this-world Final Cut Pro templates available that plug right into the editor.
Don’t Let Yourself Be Limited by The Tools You Use!
Professionals will tell you time and again that the secret to fast editing lies in properly structuring your edit workflow, organizing your footage, and knowing all the keyboard shortcuts in your editing software.
These valid tips will greatly speed up your editing time. However, using the wrong tools might still see you twiddling your thumbs more often than you’d like. If you want to edit your video in under an hour, then take the time to select the right weapons for the task. Switching to Final Cut Pro and investing in professional-grade and unique templates will get you a long way.