Thursday, March 28, 2024

Editing Your Video: YouTube Video Editor to the Rescue

You’ve created your own video, and have uploaded it to YouTube, only to realize that you still have some editing to do. This tutorial will show you how to use the YouTube Video Editor to save your day! Don’t expect to be able to make any fancy edits, add transitions or effects, at this stage. But, the video editor can offer you a quick fix to what ails your video.

Trim Video

With the nearly ready for prime time YouTube Video Editor, you can easily trim frames from the beginning and/or end of your uploaded videos.


For example: I had several videos live on YouTube that included a title card at the end for a Web site where the video originally appeared. Now, as that Web site has retired, I wanted to remove the end title card but could not bear the many hours of re-upload/re-processing. The YouTube Video Editor provided a nice compromise. Since it is editing the already compressed video, reprocessing time is greatly reduced.


Trimming a video is as easy as grabbing the adjustment bars with your mouse and moving to where you’d like the video to start/end, and then saving. When you have completed all edits, give your revised project a new name for better organization, then click the publish button.




Currently, when you edit an existing video, a new video is created. Therefore, your views count and comments will not come along for the ride. (Many users are lobbying YouTube for the capability to retain those statistics, so perhaps more flexibility in the future.) However, if you wish to retain that information for your use, you could simply unpublish (set to private) the original video.


Merge Videos


The video editor is not only about trimming video; it also enables you to combine short video clips into one longer video, by simply dragging and dropping desired videos onto the “storyboard” (timeline). Once on the storyboard, you can easily reorder the clips by dragging-and-dropping into different positions.


Don’t think that you now can get away with torturing, er, “entertaining” viewers with more than 10 minutes of grandpa sleeping. You still will have to keep your content at a manageable length.

Add Soundtrack


Another integrated feature that many YouTubers will love is the soundtrack option – especially since YouTube has started muting unauthorized audio in user videos. I mean, hey, there’s a video of your dog licking his junk, and then there’s a video of your dog licking his junk to Josh Kelley’s “1, 2 Forget About 3”. Am I right?


Although the video editor does not allow for uploading your own audio directly, it does offer thousands of selections from AudioSwap partners, categorized by genre and artist for efficient browsing. The audio preview lets you listen to the selection first.


Good in a Pinch


A feature-rich video editing application is a highly sophisticated (and expensive!) piece or collection of software. Consider that industry standards Final Cut Pro, Avid, and Premiere cost more than $1,000 for the software alone, and require the highest end computers with expansive memory and storage to run optimally.


While there is no substitute for a good offline editor, the YouTube Video Editor does offer a solution in a pinch. Moreover, the application is in development, which means that features will most likely expand and improve.


To get started, visit http://youtube.com/testtube, click Video Editor, and log into your YouTube account from there. Good luck!

Tyme is a freelance writer and multimedia specialist of many years. She likes walks in the park, cotton candy, and baby ducks. To learn more: http://www.multimediabytyme.com/.

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