Behind the Edits: Josh Flavell’s Video Editing Magic

By Josh Flavell

Importing media.

Importing media is the first step in the editing process. Importing media, put simply, is the act of choosing a video / audio clip or selecting multiple of either that you want to use in your edit and bringing it into the media pool from your files. This is a straightforward step of course but very integral to the process as it is what you need to do if you wish to do anything whatsoever on your preferred piece of software. Next you need to select the media you’ve chosen and either copy and paste onto the timeline or drag the video / audio clips onto the timeline and now you’re ready to begin the editing process.

Cut and crop media. 

Cutting and cropping media is rather self-explanatory. It is the act of shortening a video / audio clip to do away with awkward silences or other takes that aren’t to your liking. One way that is easy and simple to do is to use the blade tool which is my preferred method of cutting and cropping a piece of media. The way I use the blade tool is by using markers to show where I wish to start the cut and end it and then using the blade tool, which on DaVinci Resolve snaps to markers to help with accuracy. Another way of cutting and cropping media is by dragging the start or end of the video / audio clip to cut out the start or end of said clip. I personally do not like using this method as it can be messy and doesn’t allow you to cut or crop the middle of a clip which restricts what you can cut out of the clip so I would recommend the blade tool using markers. 

Effects and Transitions.

Effects and transitions are the third step in the editing process and really is where you start to see your project start to come together and resemble a professionally edited piece of media. The effects menu allows you to drag effects into the timeline including video or audio effects that you can place wherever you please. I would recommend placing the effects at the beginning of a clip if you used the blade tool as to negate the sudden jump in audio levels so the clip sounds more audibly appealing since the blade tool is precise yet can seem like an abrupt start to the clip. You can also use the effects menu to implement subtitles which, when creating promotional content, will come in handy as it is often requested by companies wishing to self-promote on social media. It is easy to use subtitles again by just dragging the subtitles option to where you wish to create the subtitles. The only downside is that you must manually type the subtitles when you hear the words being said but if you don’t mind tedious tasks like that then you can go ahead and implement that to your project. 

Deliver and export.

The final step is to deliver and export your project which is just a fancy way of saying that you need to save it somewhere on your device like how you would save a word document onto your computer in a particular file. There isn’t much to say for this segment, but it is important to mention that you must do this as it means you can send your project to a client or just save it to your device depending on what you think the best course of action .

In between now and next time I will be colour grading and masking some projects and shooting footage for reels using the new vertical aspect ratio feature which was added on firmware update 8.1 for BMPC4K more details here