Video has become the newest trend in the world of travel; photos are still popular of course, but nothing beats a moving visual; something that can truly tell the story of a trip, beyond the 2 dimensional.
Video is a much more creative and engaging way of sharing stories and experiences from your travels, and watching them back is a more effective way of remembering a trip. We’ve all heard the phrase “a picture is worth a 1000 words”, but if you’re shooting at 30 frames per second, every second of video is worth 30,000 words!
Shooting video is fairly straight forward, however when it comes to editing, that part isn’t always so easy. The final product needs to be compatible across various devices, you need to export for the best video quality, but aim for a small file size, and make sure that it tells a vivid story.
To that end, we have summarized the 5 most important video editing tips that every traveler needs to know.
5 Video Editing Tips That Every Traveler Needs to Know
Choose the Right Software
Frankly, picking an editing software is not unlike picking a car. There is no right answer, and you’ll swing through a variety of options: iMovie, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and so on.
You’ll choose an editing software depending on your taste and preferences, but if you’re just starting out there are plenty of free options that are easy to use, like macXvideo.
MacXvideo may be lesser-known, but it’s free, and gets everything done for you. It offers all the basic video editing features, such as cut, crop, subtitle, effect, rotate, merge, and accepts all footage types (which is important), including 4K UHD recorded by mobiles, DLSR, camcorders, GoPro, drones etc.
Something to consider when choosing an editing software is the highest quality you can export / save your videos to. For instance, macXvideo quickly encode videos to MP4, H.264, AVI, MKV, MOV, MP3, etc. and delivers your final file to social media, mobile flawlessly.
Pick the Right Computer
Not something people usually think about when it comes to video editing, but your computer configuration can really affect how smooth the process of video editing is.
Since 4K UHD videos can be recorded with mobiles and common cameras these days, many travelers have complained that they cannot edit 4K videos as smoothly as they have with 1080p HD videos. This is usually the fault of your computer.
To edit your travel videos in 4K UHD, your computer needs the necessary build to handle it. For instance, a great processor like Intel i7, 8GB RAM and hardware accelerated graphic card such as GeForce® GTX™, AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series or better.
That said we have found that the built-in hardware acceleration technology of macXvideo manages to take full advantage of your computer hardware, delivering a speed up to 5 times faster than others editing software when you’re dealing with footage in 4K UHD.
Focus on The Storyline
Yes, a video editor is actually a storyteller. No one wants to watch hours of your unedited footage; an unnecessarily long video is the equivalent to a meaningless conversation that can’t get into the point.
The best performing travel videos on social media are usually around 3-5 minutes, with the most essential parts reserved. Your every cut, every transition, sound effect and graphic needs to tell a greater story, and you need to make sure that the story is engaging enough not to offend people’s attention span.
You can get ridiculously fancy video editing software’s, and go crazy with transitions and effects, but remember that less is more, and that you’re not in the running for an Oscar for special effects.
Going overboard with excessive effects can distract from the purpose of your story, and often come off as really cheesy. All you really need is something like macXvideo to trim the length of your travel video, cut videos into clips, add subtitles or effects, rotate videos and merge essential parts together.
Once you loaded your travel videos, those options are all conspicuously shown on the main interface so that you’ll know how to crop, cut, merge, rotate, add subtitles and effect by instinct.
If you need more detailed video editing tutorials there are a huge range of great instructional posts and videos on Make a video hub. This is one of our favorite blogs for learning about everything video.
Good Music Changes Everything
David Lynch, one of the best directors in the world, once said that films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound, and sometimes sound even overplays the visual. So it makes sense that adding music can really give new meaning to your video.
But be aware that the rights to music usage can be expensive, and you do have to make sure that you’re allowed to use someone elses music in your video. The same notion copyright that applies to photos applies to music.
To ensure your travel videos will not be revoked by the social media owing to the music copyrights issue, you can go to YouTube Audio Library to get free music adding to your videos. Other sites that offer royalty free music include Epidemic Sound, Free Stock Music, and CCMixter.
Export For The Web
Though it’s easy to get caught up on the big screen, in reality most of your videos will be viewed on mobiles, computers, or TVs. So it’s important to export your edited travel videos for the web with in highest quality without ending up with a huge file size.
As you know, sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook have different requirements when it comes to things like video codec, resolution, bit rate, frame rate etc. for uploading. So you’ll need to adjust your video parameters to make it available to the specific site.
Sound overwhelming? MacXvideo allows you to do so easily, namely transcoding video to YouTube supported formats and codecs, as well as things like lowering the bitrate, frame rate, changing the resolution to best fit the video aspect ratio, and even changing your audio settings.
Hopefully you now feel inspired to create your own video editing projects. Go ahead and start editing your travel footage into inspiring videos!
Example: 12 Hours in Istanbul
CAMERA GEAR WE PERSONALLY USE FOR VIDEO. CLICK PHOTO ↓
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Megan is an Australian Journalist and award-winning travel writer who has been blogging since 2007. Her husband Mike is the American naturalist and wildlife photographer behind Waking Up Wild; an online magazine dedicated to opening your eyes to the wonders of the wild & natural world.
Having visited 50+ countries across all seven continents, Megan’s travels focus on cultural immersion, authentic discovery and incredible journeys. She has a strong passion for ecotourism, and aims to promote responsible travel experiences.
25 Comments
Arghhh edits are the killer. So many hours of footage it can be overwhelming.
Like 5 hours to edit down to a 1 minute clip right!!
Having the right storyline adds pop to the video Meg. Some bloggers nail it; they weave a narrative, adding that rocking energy to the presentation. Many travelers know where they want to go but need that reason why, that something extra, to vibe with a video. Enter a story teller.
Absolutely Ryan – I’ve seen some great examples, but then some really terrible examples to! … usually the terrible examples are just being too long – we have a very short attention span, so it needs to be kept snappy :)
Hi Megan…Remember me!! Very usefull tips found in this article. Happy to follow.
Hi Ruma! Thanks for stopping by … So glad you enjoyed the article :)
It’s not the editing, I used to be an DVT editor back in the UK and did a lot of multimedia work. It’s my equipment that needs updating… a bit like me really.
True, quality of footage will always depend on the quality of equipment :)
Tell me about it… I’m of an era where one manufacturer’s video camera would convert easily to DVD, and another would not. Same old same old rubbish. Just like VHS & Betamax. Technology is wonderful when everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.
Very good information. Thank you.
You’re welcome Penny … Glad it was useful :)
Great advice- especially about choosing music. It does get very expensive.
Thanks Roy – yes, music is always the toughest part for me – finding something that effectively conveys the mood but that it listed as royalty free :)
Its just like hair., don’t let it grow to long and don’t cut it too short.
Haha or like a mini skirt – short enough to keep it interesting but long enough to cover the essentials am I right
Lol love the metaphors. Yes, exactly :D
Video editing is NOT EASY!!!
Definitely takes practice, and a lot of patience!!
Thoughts on editing travel videos for widescreen vs. portrait?
I stick to traditional widescreen, though if the purpose of the video is for social media, portrait can often be a good option, and is widely accepted on platforms like Facebook :)
Agreed. We do mostly widescreen videos but switched some to portrait on Facebook and really like how it looks.
If only every platform could have the same dimensions right! :)
Agreed!
Interesting post. It would be nice if you’d included a sample of one of your own videos at the end – one of your favorites – as an example of a good one.
:-)
Susan.
TodayInIreland
Hi Susan, thanks for the feedback :) I’ve included one of our recent videos called 12 hours in Istanbul at the end, hope you like it!
You can find more videos our YouTube channel here too if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/user/mappingmeg
Thanks for reading!