Aside from video editing, i also play a lot of games and take and edit photos. Mainly animated renders but I have an interest in photography and plan to make something out of that as well. I dont really do photos of people but pretty much anything else from nature, to cars, to animals. I like close up photography more than anything.

So thats all I really had planned for this blog, was to very basically explain how to make a video. Now me not having any knowledge in how to make a blog; is probably not very informative but I tried the best i could to explain this in writing and thats pretty much all there is to it. I may talk about my other interests for the next few posts!

And just like that youve got one, well made AMV out there. Of course making videos isnt as easy as it looks and most if not all big time you tubers out there do little to no editing themselves but they have to gather the content and depending on the content thats just as hard. But most of us are just editing for fun im assuming. For work or for hobbies so its best you put all your effort into what you do to the most satisfaction!

This part is optional but recommended. Once you have the title, youre not gonna get many views assuming youre a small channel with less than 10 subscribers. So a good thing is to write as many tags as you can think of. Tags are things that; when people type in the search bar, videos with those keywords (tags) will pop up more than the videos without. So for me what I do is write down as many things as i can think of that correlate to the anime/show. So think of most main characters, attack names, the show name and all its variations (Sword Art Online, SAO, etc..) maybe even some villains, the creator of the show, anything that comes to mind because that will most likely get more search results but maybe not as fast as youd want due to the low sub count.

So, after the thumbnail is ready, youre going to want to have to title the video. Now the title is the first thing thatll catch your audience because what they type in the search bar correlates to how theyll find your video. For example, I made an AMV recently of an anime called Sword Art Online. Now I only use a specific arc of that anime known as the Aincrad Arc. Basically i only used clips where the show took place in a place called Aincrad, hence the name. And the song I used was This is War by 30 Seconds to Mars. So I like to be a little  creative and instead of naming it the generic “SAO AMV” i named it “The War of Aincrad” because it uses aspects from the song and the video. Ultimately i changed it to the generic title because Im a small channel and get no views but once it racks up some views I will change the name back. But basically name it something that means something to you, or something thats relevant. Avoid click baiting just for views,

And once you have a thumbnail, and this should have gone in the last post but make sure the size of the picture is correct. It should be 1280×720 thats the size YouTube thumbnails are. So anything bigger or outside of those dimensions will not be visible. So before you start, make sure the size is correct.

Bit of a short one here but choosing a thumbnail is very important for a video because before even seeing the video the one thing anyone sees is the thumbnail. If you have a boring picture as your thumbnail, chances are no one will take interest. Unless you have a big following. I make my thumbnails using different backgrounds and renders in Photoshop so however you can create yours will help out.

So now that you’ve finished your video and ran through it to fix any potential mistakes, its time to export! Now exporting isn’t as easy as just clicking export… well it kinda is but there are only 3 things I change. Once you’re on the export screen, (File -> Export -> Media) I change the format to H.264. I believe default is AVI. After that I change the output name and save location to whatever folder I have all my editing stuff in, then at the bottom I check the box that says “Use Maximum Render Quality”. After that make sure that the time is the right amount of time that your video is and export it. Once its exported take a look at the exported file because that’s the one you’ll most likely show everyone. Keep in mind not everything will be the same. Sometimes when exporting things can change, I’ve had it happen to me many many times. So always double check!

So after youve finished placing your clips, its always a good idea to make sure you go back and render everything so its all in the best quality possible. When I say render I dont mean export but just render the sequence so just hit Enter and it should render by itself. And every time I think im done I go back and re watch it and theres always a few things I missed. I actually didnt double check in my first AMV but luckily it wasnt a major issue but still always check and see if you have any problems to fix, even if its small, make sure you have it all ready and once thats finished theres only a few things left to do!

Once you have a solid rhythm down, its pretty much free real estate from there. You dont have to follow a pattern, you can edit when and however you want, this is all from my POV and how I edit so theres no real right or wrong way. So I typically edit for a few hours a day and leave it at that because of college and other things but as Im writing this during quarantine I have a lot of free time on my hands so I edit for the better half of a few hours more or less. Typically I like to stop after each section and finalize all the edits there so I dont have to come back to it and sometimes I just get the clips in place and then go all the way back to the start and add in all my effects at the end, either way both roughly take the same time but it depends on the person