Just like renovating a house, video editing is an iterative process that could either take a day, a week, or more. Several factors come into play that determines how fast or slow your work is going to be. A one-minute video takes approximately 5 hours to edit if you are a beginner and at least an hour or two for the professional editors. And while speed does not determine the quality of your work, it helps to ensure work is efficient and that no lags exist. But did you know that you can cut down this time by a great margin when you quickly create a video from scratch using an online video editor?
Some of the factors that determine how long the video editing process will take include the following:
The Length of The Video
For a one-minute video you’ll need:
- At least a quarter an hour to download all the necessary files.
- If it has dialogue, then you are looking at about an hour to edit the conversations.
- Adding roll clips and graphics with lower thirds takes about another hour to get it right.
- 30 minutes to find, choose and select an audio track.
- Uploading your video to the web takes another half an hour, depending on the size of your footage. You could end up taking an entire month of editing just to finish a 20-minute clip.
The length of the video greatly determines the amount it will take you to finish the video editing process. Online video editor tools take most of the load off your hands and with a few keyboard shortcuts, you can greatly cut on editing time.
The Storyline
Visualizing the story you want to make makes it easier to plan your work. Be it acquiring equipment, angle placement during recording footage, the shots, or the editing work itself, you need a solid plan.
If the story is feasible, then it saves the editor a lot of time during filming. Experts usually try to capture the complete story using very little raw footage. This ensures that you can edit videos faster as there’s not much data to sift through.
Type Of Footage
You could decide to make content videos, educational videos, or entertainment videos. Vlogs take very little time to edit as compared to complex videos like comedy sketches or music videos. A five-minute vlog could take four to five hours to edit while a complex five-minute comedy sketch could take approximately a day or two to complete editing.
Amount Of Footage
Size matters. Video editing involves analyzing large files of data, most of which end up being cut out. If the size of the footage is very large, then it will take more than a day or sometimes even weeks to edit the video. If the size of the footage is small, then the editing time goes down by almost half.
Quality Of The Footage
There are two extremities involved in this case. The quality can be categorized as either poor or very high. Low-quality footage means the video editor will use a lot of time to fix it. While high-quality footage is a sight for sore eyes, it ends up affecting the computer’s processing speed. This in turn slows the entire production process as rendering, file access, and uploads start lagging. Low processing speed, therefore, means more time for waiting and editing.
Hardware Constraints
The computer and video editing equipment you have contribute to the quality of work you’ll produce. If a computer has low processing power, then it won’t support most editing software.
A slow computer means more time editing. If your computer crashes out of nowhere and you end up losing all your work, then that means more work for you. You can find that a task that would normally take two hours to edit could end up taking days to finish.
However, when you’re using an online video editor, the hardware doesn’t matter much because all of the operations is basically online.
The Online Video Editor You Choose
Video editing tools handle most of the computation. Thus, making the video editing process faster compared to offline editors. Regardless of the video editing software, you decide to use, issues like software crashes can have adverse effects on the production process. The edit time is not only lengthened but you also risk losing most of your data if you haven’t kept a backup.
Therefore, we advise that you choose the right offline or online video editor to avoid any delays and lags during editing.
Editing Style
Online video editor tools come with an array of features and effects to pick from for your video editing journey. Incorporating basic jump cuts is much faster. Adding details, sound effects, music and transitions take a lot of time. Thus, increasing the edit time. The more the effects, the more the processing time. Hence, the longer the video editing process.
Repetition
Repetition not only builds the skillset of a video editor, but also greatly reduces the editing time. You can either use an offline or an online video editor, depending on your preferences, to complete the task. After practicing for a while, you too can become a seasoned video editor and be able to complete very large tasks in under a week.
Final Thoughts
While online video editor tools will cut your edit time in almost half, always choose a video editing software that meets all your needs. Investing in the right equipment, software and learning the right shortcuts can go a long way in minimizing your edit time. It may seem like a disheartening endeavor at first. However, with repetition and a lot of patience, you’ll be editing complex videos in under a day too.
