11. Editing Essentials

Photo by Lisa Robinson.

The process of editing video takes your footage from simply living on your hard drive and turns it into something that you can share. Just as computers revolutionized photography, the process of editing video has changed drastically in recent years. Editing video on a computer is typically referred to as nonlinear editing because you can work on sections in any order (as opposed to the original tape or film style of editing that required a program to be built one shot after another in a linear fashion).

In this chapter you’ll learn how to choose an editing tool and discover essential techniques for editing picture and sound. You’ll also learn how video can be color corrected or even manipulated to improve its appearance. Learning how to edit takes time, and you’ll likely need to choose a dedicated book or video for the specific editing tool you select. However, I’ll attempt to give you a solid understanding of the core steps and technology that relate to editing video.