Video editing..

[willhub]

I browse through YouTube regular and there is a lot of content that's creative in the way videos are made and presented, so two questions.

What software is used edit videos and add effects, titles, all that sort of stuff, and is it very complex?

Secondly, uploading videos, if I take a 4k or even 8K video on my phone, or on a camera, I assume it still needs to be manually compressed and then uploaded to Youtube?

I last dabbled with trying to get videos uploaded in good quality about 6 years ago and I found the video compression was horrendous and it was very time consuming uploading the videos.

 

[iamtheoneneo]

iMovie or Premiere Pro/After Effects combo are the two most popular. Sony Vegas used to be there but fell off hard over the years.

Resolution isn't everything, infact it means absolutely nothing really. You need to think about overall bitrate and colour depth for editing. you can have an 8K source with trash bitrate and it will look worse than a 1080p video. Most phones come with their own mini editors now, so small videos you could probably just do that and upload, but if your looking to edit a lot more than a clip then yes you need to put it in an editor and get it encoded into a file format for Youtube.

Youtube bitrate standards for 24p-30p video are:
2160p (4k) 35–45 Mbps
1440p (2k) 16 Mbps
1080p 8 Mbps

 

[Donnie Fisher]

If you want to dabble, try installing the free version of davinci resolve - the free version will give you the initial experience of a full fledged editor and some of the things they can offer ( particularly colour grading in resolve ). Its performance will be stiffled a little as for GPU acceleration support, you need to full version, but it'll run fine.

Most editors though cost a fair chunk for the main versions though. I went with full resolve as its a one time payment versus monthly for Adobe ... and i'm now saving money compared to Adobe. That being said, Adobe is very very popular.

As sgarrista says though ... resolution is far from the main factor to worry about. If you're wanting that 'look' thats on youtube at the moment, then a substantial amount of it comes from lighting, not resolution. Whilst I'm no vlogger, I do use video calls a lot, and poor lighting is really bringing down the video quality a lot ... so thats where I am at just now.

As for youtube ... as above. Many editors now have preset options to export for youtube.

 

[Spleen Sauce]

I did quite a large project for the NHS and used Premiere for it - it’s decent software when it works but I had all sorts of instability issues with it which was frustrating.

I’ve moved to Final Cut Pro now. I think it’s excellent.

Resolve is amazing for the price (free) and even if you upgrade to Resolve Studio it’s still very fairly priced.

 

[The_Arbiter]

Vegas is £20 on sale fairly often. Pretty easy to use, but not the most powerful. I've found it very stable however. YT will compress further whatever you upload regardless. There's various how-to vids on YT for editing also.

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

I did quite a large project for the NHS and used Premiere for it - it’s decent software when it works but I had all sorts of instability issues with it which was frustrating.

I’ve moved to Final Cut Pro now. I think it’s excellent.

Resolve is amazing for the price (free) and even if you upgrade to Resolve Studio it’s still very fairly priced.

Premier Pro is basically as stable as your hardware.

I cut broadcast TV on Premiere & Avid - usually 1hr documentaries. My Premiere setup is a 'proper' one, with a Blackmagic box, lots of RAM, properly configured timelines, proxy workflow, etc, and I simply don't get crashes. It's rock solid, so long as you treat it correctly.

Exactly the same with Avid

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

Oh, and use Resolve.

 

[Spleen Sauce]

Premier Pro is basically as stable as your hardware.

I cut broadcast TV on Premiere & Avid - usually 1hr documentaries. My Premiere setup is a 'proper' one, with a Blackmagic box, lots of RAM, properly configured timelines, proxy workflow, etc, and I simply don't get crashes. It's rock solid, so long as you treat it correctly.

Exactly the same with Avid

Unfortunately for me, as I'm not a professional I don't have time to faff around and massage Premiere to get it working well - I just want it to work well out of the box. On my Windows 10 workstation I've now switched to Resolve and its rock solid, similar sort of workflow as I put through Premiere. Given that my machine has 32gb Ram, a Geforce 3090, 3800X, etc - it's plenty capable yet Premiere some days would be fine and other days be completely unreliable - freezing, crashing, etc. Yet, I can use Final Cut on the M1 Macbook Air, with 8gb ram, and it runs pretty much flawlessly.

Anyhow, was no huge deal as the work I did for the NHS was volunteer work while furloughed, but still proved frustrating. Adobe's support couldn't even explain why it was flakey.

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

...I just want it to work well out of the box.

This is kinda the thing, really. Premiere isn't really meant for you and your use case. Yes, it's there for you, but it's customised and optimised for my use.

The scope and ability of both Premiere & Avid is well beyond that of either FCP or Resolve, and as a result it has more moving parts and needs maintenance.

Used properly, it's nothing short of amazing and is very stable. To say it's not is simply untrue. Bit it does need to be used correctly, and in my case that means workflow meetings to determine how we're capturing, editing and delivering the programme, plus an assistant whose job it is is to understand all of the in's and out's of Premiere and the workflow, and to prepare and manage my media in very specific ways.

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

Oh, and it works way better on Mac