Your home to learn to edit video faster.
This is Part IV and the final chapter in a series called Over the Editor’s Shoulder where I document my daily progress on a freelance editing project I’m working on. I chronicle what I do in the edit bay, what I learn, my struggles, failures, successes and more.
This video tutorial and article is on the different options to play (preview or playback) your composition in Adobe After Effects.
Hey guys! First off, I know I’m late on this week’s post. My bad…it’s been a hectic week. Long story short I had to make an unexpected mad dash to New York City on Monday and got there just in time for a shoot. Then I got to make a fool out of myself on national TV.
On the train ride back on Tuesday I was going in a complete different direction with this week’s post. I simply ran out of minutes Tuesday and Wednesday to finish it but it worked out in the end. I found out this morning that my Tuts+ course Introduction to Video Editing in Avid Media Composer went live!
In this post I’ll tell you about my course and how to watch it (and hundreds of other courses) for free.
I want to make you a better video editor. That’s what I’ve been doing through my site, YouTube channel and other avenues for the past year. Pretty much this entire time I’ve been helping a faceless audience. I’ve been guessing at what you want to learn and hoping I’m using something relatable to be able to teach you. I know it’s working for a lot of you (I love the thank you emails I get!). However a lot of the time I still don’t know what you are struggling with. You, the one reading my words right now, I want to help you. That’s why I want to be your coach.
Recently I’ve had a huge problem. I have had several requests come in for complex custom tutorials that can’t be reused for everyone. I want to help these individuals out but I have such limited time after my 9-5, creating content for this site, walking Peyton, another new secret project I’m announcing soon (!!!) and trying to have something close to a social life. I have two options. I can:
Neither option works for me.
I cannot justify helping one individual person at the expense of not being able to create content for this site (and thus helping many). It isn’t fair to everyone else…that means you! My family time will always come first and with my limited free time I need some grounds for cutting out on one of them. That justification comes in the form of private, one-on-one premium coaching.
Me, and a lot of other editors, like to say that knowing an NLE is just another tool in your tool belt. I like to take that analogy and go a step further. Every effect you learn to apply, software trick you implement, skill you acquire, connection you make, value you create for others and anything else you can think of that works towards improving yourself is a tool. Your tool belt consists of all of these. Each tool preforms a certain action whenever you are working on a project.
With your fully loaded tool belt you can build all sorts of things. The majority of time we tackle two types of projects. The first project is something simple, let’s say a chair if we can turn my analogy into something physical. We know there are four legs, a seat and a back to it. We have at least a rough blueprint we can follow or can easily find someone (or a YouTube video) to guide us. The other type of project is to build more tools! We build ourselves another screwdriver or a hammer or drill bit. These two types of projects pay our bills (barely) and (we hope) make our bosses happy. Are you happy though? If you are anything like me then you might not always be satisfied with the things you are building and their outcomes. Do they have enough reach? Do they improve my life or someone else’s life substantially?
Sure, we’re content after we sell off our chair or put away our screwdriver. We sold enough to pay off the mortgage this month or make ourselves more valuable candidates for a future job by having more tools. What we built was average. Deep down that’s not what we want. That’s not why we do what we do. We want incredible. As I lay here at 11:00PM drafting this on my phone in bed with my wife and dog already asleep long ago I’m reminded about how much incredible I want in my life and how little I am doing about it. For now…
This article shares with you every Safari keyboard shortcut I know. I love keyboard shortcuts. Somewhere between 4% and 14% of all browser usage is through Safari. I’m in the small minority of the world that uses it as their main browser. However I absolutely love Safari’s bookmarks bar and reading list features. I love how they both transfer over automatically to my iPhone too. So that’s why we’re here today.
I believe in learning shortcuts not only in your NLE but also in every program you use. I bet you probably spend as much time clicking around the web as you do editing (you’re reading this right now, right??). So why not get faster with your browsing skills?
