Editing on a Timeline

Editing is where the video gets written. You shot raw material; now you decide what the story is, in what order, and what the viewer sees while they hear it. The order of operations matters more than the software, and most beginners do it backward: music first, transitions second, story whenever.

Do it in this order: organize, radio cut, pictures, joins, pace, then polish. Captions, color and export get their own lesson next.

Pick a tool

Two free tools fit this course.

• VideoStudio runs in the browser and keeps files on your machine. It trims with in and out points, splits at the playhead, applies basic color and audio adjustments, and exports per-segment platform presets. Use it for single-clip jobs: trim a long meeting clip down to the two minutes that matter, export a quick vertical.
• AVPrep3 is a desktop timeline editor with multiple lanes, razor and trim tools, ripple delete, crossfades, titles, audio ducking, captions and export presets. Use it for anything with an interview, B-roll and music on separate tracks. The AVPrep3 help walks through each feature.

Any timeline editor works the same way in principle: tracks stacked vertically, time running left to right, video tracks above audio tracks. What follows applies to all of them.

Organize before you cut

Make one folder per project. Inside it: footage, audio, music, graphics, exports. Copy everything off the phone into those folders before you open the editor, and leave the original files alone. Editors point at files on disk; move or rename them later and the project opens with red "missing media" blocks everywhere.

Then watch everything once and take notes. For each interview, write down the time and a few words of every usable answer:

INT_Resident.mov
01:12  "My bill went from 48 to 59 dollars"  (great, clean)
02:40  story about the burst pipe last winter (long, could trim)
04:05  "Nobody asked us"  (strong, slight stumble at start)

This log feels slow. It saves you the far slower job of scrubbing through 40 minutes of footage five times looking for that one line.

The radio cut: story first

Go back to the purpose sentence from lesson 1. Now build the story with sound only. Drag the interview clips you logged onto the timeline in the order that tells the story, plus any narration you recorded. Ignore what the picture looks like. Jump cuts, wrong framing, a cat walking through: does not matter yet.

Listen to it with your eyes closed. Does it make sense? Does it start with something that makes you want to keep listening? Does it end on something, not just stop? If the radio cut does not work, no amount of B-roll will save it.

Notice the strongest, shortest bite opens. The first five seconds decide whether anyone watches. The AV chapter When to cut has more on that and on judging your own edit.

Lay in the pictures

Now put the interview video on the main video track, under its own audio. Then put B-roll on a video track above it. A clip on a higher track covers what is below, so the viewer sees the B-roll while still hearing the interview.

Rules of thumb:

• Show the speaker's face for the first few seconds of each bite, so viewers know who is talking. Then cover with B-roll if you have something that shows what they describe.
• Every place you cut words out of an interview needs a picture over it: B-roll or a cutaway. That is why lesson 5 kept nagging about them.
• Match pictures to words. Bill on screen when she says "bill." Pump house when the narration says "1946."
• Narration almost always plays over B-roll, never over a black screen.

J cuts and L cuts

A straight cut changes picture and sound at the same frame. It is fine, but when every cut is straight the video feels like a slideshow. Splitting the audio from the picture by a second or two makes cuts feel smooth. The two shapes are named for what they look like on the timeline.

• L cut: the resident is talking on camera; at "my bill went up," the picture cuts to the bill while her voice continues. This is how almost all B-roll gets laid over interviews.
• J cut: while the narration finishes over the pump house, you hear the board member start: "We have been patching that pump since..." Then the picture cuts to her face. Hearing the next scene before seeing it pulls viewers forward.

In most editors you make these by trimming the audio and video edges of a clip separately (often by unlinking them or holding a modifier key). Check your editor's help for the exact method; in AVPrep3, the help covers trimming and lanes.

Use them at most joins between scenes. Use them gently: one second or so is plenty.

Pacing

Your rough cut is too long. Everyone's is. Cut in this order:

1. Remove whole sections that do not serve the purpose sentence. The interesting tangent about the 1980s flood? Save it for another story.
2. Trim inside bites. Cut the "so, um, basically" at the start of answers. Cut the second example when one does the job. Cover each cut with a picture.
3. Tighten gaps. Breaths between bites shrink to a few frames. Keep a real pause where a statement needs to land.
4. Vary shot length. A row of four-second B-roll shots feels mechanical. Hold the meaningful shot (the rusted pump) longer, flick through the minor ones.

Cut on action when you can: as a hand reaches, as a door swings, as the shovel goes into the sand. Movement carries the eye across the cut.

Transitions: use cuts. A dissolve means time has passed; a wipe means you are making a 1990s local car ad. The chapter What a transition says explains why the cut is the default.

Music, if any, goes in last and goes under. A bed at low level under narration, ducked further when people speak. AVPrep3 lists ducking music under voice among its audio features. Never pick music first and cut the story to its beat, unless the piece is a montage.