Recommend beginner-friendly video editing tools
June 3, 2021 2:33 PM Subscribe
I'll be teaching an online, asynchronous three-week intensive course later this summer to a mix of undergrads and community members. I'd like to pre-record a few dozen mini-lectures on video, probably no more than five minutes each. What are the best tools with the lowest learning curve to use for this? (Bonus: point me toward great examples of videos like this, in any field!)
In my imagination, these little videos will be short and punchy, kinda akin to Instagram Stories crossed with PowerPoints: a little bit of me talking at the viewer; a fair amount of on-screen text (the course is on poetry and poetics, so I'd like to be able to mark up a poem "live" on-screen, circling rhyming words for instance, or demonstrate how line breaks work by editing a stanza or two on the fly); maybe some random stock footage or animated .gifs spliced in. I'd also love to be able to use stock off-the-shelf effects, or the occasional sticker or animation.
I should also say: I'm fairly tech savvy (if dulled by the pandemic), but I've barely ever edited video in my life! (So if you happen to know of great tutorials for the tools you recommend, send them my way too.) The closest I've come to this type of project in the past has been asynchronous tutoring for a college writing lab, where I'd often record short responses to student essays using Screencast-O-Matic, talking about the essay while doing a bit of live editing/demo'ing on it, usually with the bulk of my typed notes already inserted into the Google or Word Doc plus a handful of bullet points on scratch paper that served as a loose script for my main points. I also really appreciated the way Screencast-O-Matic allowed me to wing it, realize I sounded like an idiot, then back up 23 seconds and try again a couple more times with roughly zero learning curve. For these short lectures, I'd like to have slightly higher production values and plan on scripting things more—but still using loose bullet points and a casual visual style more common to Instagram or YouTube than a formal online lecture.
I have: a Macbook with iMovie and an Android phone. I could easily have access Adobe Creative Suite (though I'm not sure if I'm up to Adobe Premier, but maybe Premier Rush?), and I'm glad to throw a little bit of money at other interesting/useful apps or subscriptions. The school I'll be teaching at, a large, well-resourced state school, is plugged into the Google ecosystem and uses Canvas as its LMS, if that's helpful to know. (But I also envision linking most of these videos on a private YouTube channel or something.) The caveats: like everyone else, I'm exhausted and my capacity to learn new technology is limited; unfortunately, I'm also afraid my capacity to *try out* a dozen tools over the next week is pretty limited, so I'd like to narrow down to the most useful ones! Some additional caveats: my internet bandwidth is pretty limited for the next month as well; I'm away from home, sharing a DSL line with six other folks, so let me know if your tool recommendation is cloud-based or otherwise demands a steady, always-on internet connection.
Also, feel free to let me know else I ought to be asking, or be aware of! Tips for creating a seamless workflow, advice on making videos or doing this sort of thing for asynchronous online teaching, etc, are all very welcome!
In my imagination, these little videos will be short and punchy, kinda akin to Instagram Stories crossed with PowerPoints: a little bit of me talking at the viewer; a fair amount of on-screen text (the course is on poetry and poetics, so I'd like to be able to mark up a poem "live" on-screen, circling rhyming words for instance, or demonstrate how line breaks work by editing a stanza or two on the fly); maybe some random stock footage or animated .gifs spliced in. I'd also love to be able to use stock off-the-shelf effects, or the occasional sticker or animation.
I should also say: I'm fairly tech savvy (if dulled by the pandemic), but I've barely ever edited video in my life! (So if you happen to know of great tutorials for the tools you recommend, send them my way too.) The closest I've come to this type of project in the past has been asynchronous tutoring for a college writing lab, where I'd often record short responses to student essays using Screencast-O-Matic, talking about the essay while doing a bit of live editing/demo'ing on it, usually with the bulk of my typed notes already inserted into the Google or Word Doc plus a handful of bullet points on scratch paper that served as a loose script for my main points. I also really appreciated the way Screencast-O-Matic allowed me to wing it, realize I sounded like an idiot, then back up 23 seconds and try again a couple more times with roughly zero learning curve. For these short lectures, I'd like to have slightly higher production values and plan on scripting things more—but still using loose bullet points and a casual visual style more common to Instagram or YouTube than a formal online lecture.
I have: a Macbook with iMovie and an Android phone. I could easily have access Adobe Creative Suite (though I'm not sure if I'm up to Adobe Premier, but maybe Premier Rush?), and I'm glad to throw a little bit of money at other interesting/useful apps or subscriptions. The school I'll be teaching at, a large, well-resourced state school, is plugged into the Google ecosystem and uses Canvas as its LMS, if that's helpful to know. (But I also envision linking most of these videos on a private YouTube channel or something.) The caveats: like everyone else, I'm exhausted and my capacity to learn new technology is limited; unfortunately, I'm also afraid my capacity to *try out* a dozen tools over the next week is pretty limited, so I'd like to narrow down to the most useful ones! Some additional caveats: my internet bandwidth is pretty limited for the next month as well; I'm away from home, sharing a DSL line with six other folks, so let me know if your tool recommendation is cloud-based or otherwise demands a steady, always-on internet connection.
Also, feel free to let me know else I ought to be asking, or be aware of! Tips for creating a seamless workflow, advice on making videos or doing this sort of thing for asynchronous online teaching, etc, are all very welcome!
Hey there,
Pro video editor here. While I think it's great your interested in helping your students learn through a video medium, I'd just temper some of your expectations about a few dozen videos. That is a LOT of work. A general rule of thumb is about an hour of work for a minute of video. The biggest issue is trying to make something that is engaging - if the students get bored or the information isn't presented in a logical way, it's going to feel like wasted work.
I'd say your best bet is to try and put yourself in a producer role - write the audio scripts, record them, find the passages or scan them, pick music you'll want, photos/images/GIFs you need - and contact the school you'll work for to see if a student in the media department is interested in improving their editing skills.
If this route doesn't work and you need to DIY, I'd start with the most important topics and try and make three videos at first. iMovie will probably be fine, but start watching tutorials ASAP. Also, you're gonna have to do a lot of script writing and revising to get it right, but it will really help. Write what you want to say out in a decent sized font, record it on your phone as an audio note while reading from the computer, then drop that into your timeline. That will be your foundation. Try using a timer to get an estimate of how long they'll be, but remember you can always chop it up.
Good luck! It can seem like a lot, but just take it in small chunks and Google what you need.
posted by packfan88c at 4:47 AM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Pro video editor here. While I think it's great your interested in helping your students learn through a video medium, I'd just temper some of your expectations about a few dozen videos. That is a LOT of work. A general rule of thumb is about an hour of work for a minute of video. The biggest issue is trying to make something that is engaging - if the students get bored or the information isn't presented in a logical way, it's going to feel like wasted work.
I'd say your best bet is to try and put yourself in a producer role - write the audio scripts, record them, find the passages or scan them, pick music you'll want, photos/images/GIFs you need - and contact the school you'll work for to see if a student in the media department is interested in improving their editing skills.
If this route doesn't work and you need to DIY, I'd start with the most important topics and try and make three videos at first. iMovie will probably be fine, but start watching tutorials ASAP. Also, you're gonna have to do a lot of script writing and revising to get it right, but it will really help. Write what you want to say out in a decent sized font, record it on your phone as an audio note while reading from the computer, then drop that into your timeline. That will be your foundation. Try using a timer to get an estimate of how long they'll be, but remember you can always chop it up.
Good luck! It can seem like a lot, but just take it in small chunks and Google what you need.
posted by packfan88c at 4:47 AM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Best answer: High school teacher here teaching online during the pandemic. For simplicity's sake you might look at a Chrome add-on called screencastify. It lets you record whatever is on your screen with audio, cursor highlighting, and some very basic editing. It might be good for multiple, short videos to be used in an online course.
posted by kaymac at 9:31 AM on June 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by kaymac at 9:31 AM on June 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
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