Video Editing 101: 13 Creative Techniques

VIDEO
EDITING 101
Everything You Need to Know to
Start Crafting Professional Videos
13 Creative Editing Techniques
01 Every Video Editor Should Know
A-roll and B-roll

02 Two Types of Footage You Need to Tell a Great Story
5 Basic Audio-Mixing Techniques

03 for Editing Video
5 Editing Techniques Guaranteed

04 to Create Emotional Impact
Video Compositing
05 How to Work With Alpha Mattes and Alpha Channels
Working With Multiple Frame Rates

06 and Aspect Ratios
Color Correction Basics
TABLE
07 Using Adobe Premiere
Tips and Tricks to Enhance

08 Your Video-Editing Work
OF CONTENTS
01 | 13 CREATIVE EDITING TECHNIQUES
Every Video Editor Should Know
Picture the quick-cut transitions and comedic editing style of any Edgar Wright movie such
as Baby Driver or Shaun of the Dead, the flash-bulb cuts and freeze frames of Martin Scorcese
films (editor Thelma Schoonmaker) or the frantic and fabulous opening scene in City of God
(editor Daniel Rezende). These are all different types of edits and cuts that one can make
when putting together a story.
Once you master the edit types and learn why

each one is important in different circum-
stances, you can make your projects more
entertaining and your editing more efficient,
and you can create a whole editing style of
your own that reflects your creative side. Here
are the different types of cuts (and a couple
of transitions) you should know.
NEXT CHAPTER » | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE 3

01 13 CREATIVE EDITING TECHNIQUES Every Video Editor Should Know
STANDARD CUT
This is the basic cut (also known as a hard cut) that puts
two clips together, connecting the last frame of one and
the beginning frame of the next. This is the most com-
mon cut, and doesn’t really invoke any meaning or feel-
ings, as others do.
JUMP CUT
This is a cut that pushes forward in time. It’s normally
done within the same frame or composition, and many
times it’s used within montages.
MONTAGE
A montage is an editing technique that,
again, signifies the passage of time or
helps to give an overall context to the
story with quick cuts. You will often see
athletes training or preparing for a big
match in montages (Rocky IV has EIGHT!),
but it can really be used for almost any
transformation by any character(s), and
is normally underscored by music.

SCENE 1 CROSS DISSOLVE SCENE 2
Don’t use cross dissolves for

standard editing. There needs
to be motivation behind the
dissolve, or else it might seem
CROSS DISSOLVE confusing.
A cross dissolve can serve several purposes and motivations within the sto-
ry. It can signify a passage of time or it can use the overlapping “layers” or
dissolves to show multiple stories or scenes happening at once, but shot at PRO TIP
different times. The most famous example of this is probably the powerful
one in Apocalypse Now.

01 13 Video Editing Techniques Every Video Editor Should Know
WIPE
A wipe is a transition that uses an animation (mostly digital these days) that
“wipes” the first scene away into the next scene. There are basic wipes (like
those in Star Wars), and there are more complex ones (the 90s TV show “Home
Improvement” comes to mind), but they can be seen as corny or cheesy. Star
wipes should really only be used as a joke.
FADE IN/OUT
Fading out one clip and fading in the oth-
er implies a passage of time most often,
like a night-to-day switch or someone fall-
ing asleep. It can be a bit jarring if not used
properly, so you don’t really want to use this
type of cut for standard applications.

J OR L CUT
J and L cuts are incredibly common, and they get their names from how the clips line up
in the editing software. An L cut is used when you want to have audio from clip A contin-
ue when clip B comes in. The J cut is the opposite, where the audio from clip B comes in
when we’re still seeing clip A. Pretty much every documentary interview you’ve ever seen
uses J and L cuts throughout.
Primary Video 1 B-Roll Primary Video 2
Primary Audio 1 Primary Audio 2

CUTTING ON ACTION
This is exactly what it sounds like. You
cut at the point of action, because
that’s what our eyes and brains are
naturally expecting. When someone
kicks open a door, we expect to see
the change in angle when the door is
kicked, not after it’s flown open and
swaying for a moment. The bath-
room scene from Pulp Fiction is an
example of pretty much every cut
being on the action (other than the
cutaways).

CUTAWAY SHOTS
Cutaways are shots that take viewers away from
the main characters or action. They give extra
context to the scene, and can create more ten-
sion and foreshadowing. A good example is cut-
ting away to a clock.
CROSS CUT (AKA PARALLEL EDITING)

This type of editing is when you cut between two different
scenes that are happening at the same time in different plac-
es. It can be great for adding tension, and heist movies use
a lot of parallel editing when they show someone breaking
into a safe while a security guard walks closer. The quintes-
sential cross-cut example these days is Inception, since there
are four levels of (un)consciousness all happening at once.

MATCH CUT
A match cut is an edit that gives a context and continuity to the scene and
pushes it in a certain direction, without disorienting the viewer. You use it to
either move between scenes or around a space, while keeping everything
coherent. A very basic version is shooting someone opening a door from be-
hind, and then cutting to the opposite side as they walk through it. The most
famous examples of match cuts are 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of
Arabia (coincidentally, when he blows out a match).

SMASH CUT
If you’ve got a loud scene that immediately goes to a quiet scene or vice versa, this is where you’d use the smash
cut. You want to use it when you’re transitioning between two completely different scenes, emotions, or narratives
and you need to make an abrupt transition. This is used a ton when people wake up from dreams, and it’s also used
quite often in comedy — it’s also referred to as a “Gilligan Cut,” because the television show “Gilligan’s Island” often
employed this edit. A Gilligan Cut is when a character vehemently disagrees or is 100% confident about their stance,
and then you cut to them doing exactly the opposite.

INVISIBLE CUT
The goal of these types of cuts is to
keep the shot looking like one con-
tinuous take. You can replicate this
by filling the end of one frame en-
tirely with something black or low-lit
(or of a similar color in general) and
blending it with the beginning of the
next clip. Another way to create in-
SCENE 1 TRANSITION SCENE 2
visible cuts is by using something
like a light leak or lens flare, or by
using a foreground object to fill the
frame and transition to the next clip
or scene.
When it comes to editing, it’s a great idea to experiment by using multiple cuts at the same time. You can use a match
dissolve (someone turning into a monster or creature), a matching cross cut (twins experiencing a feeling at the same
time in different places), smash cut j cut (someone wakes up from a dream and their partner off camera asks them if
they’re okay), etc. The possibilities are endless!

02 | A-ROLL AND B-ROLL
Two Types of Footage You Need to Tell a Great Story
When it comes to basic video terms, “A-roll” and “B-roll” are among
the ones to learn first. While it’s possibly the easiest and most fun-
damental distinction you’ll ever make, there is a big difference be-
tween how each one functions in video production.
A-roll and B-roll are terms from the old days of linear film editing,
when editors would use two rolls of identical footage — an actual
A-roll and a B-roll — to create transitions between shots. With mod-
ern non-linear editing tools, there’s no longer a need for two sepa-
rate rolls, but the terms are still used today — albeit with different
meanings. Now, you’ll often hear these terms used in journalistic
filmmaking, as in the case of documentaries and news stories.

02 A-ROLL AND B-ROLL: Two Types of Footage You Need to Tell a Great Story
A-ROLL
A great way to think of A-roll is media that
“tells” the story, such as an interview or a
news segment. It’s the primary audio and
video that often consists of one or more peo-
ple discussing a topic or relating a narrative.
A-roll is the driving media in most documen-
taries, news broadcasts, talk shows, and re-
ality shows.

A-ROLL KEEPS IT INTERESTING

With the A-roll alone, the story is communicated clearly. The problem is that A-roll by itself
tends to become extremely boring, making it harder for the audience to remain engaged.
Remember, the audience is watching the video because they expect to have the story shown
to them, not just told.
A-ROLL KEEPS IT CLEAN

Another problem with using the A-roll
media alone is that since A-roll footage
is usually of people talking, there are of-
ten fumbled lines, coughs, sniffles, and
stutters that need to be edited out. That’s
where B-roll comes in.

B-ROLL
B-roll is supplemental footage used to visually support the
A-roll. Think of it as video that “shows” the story. If the A-roll
narrative talks about residences, then the B-roll might show
a house. It just needs to complement, and if possible, con-
firm the story told by the A-roll media. Using B-roll footage
helps break up the monotony of a common A-roll interview
shot, making the whole thing much more engaging.
B-ROLL MAKES IT COME ALIVE

The term “B-roll” tends to make the supportive footage
seem secondary and less important, but it certainly isn’t.
Without the supporting footage showing the action, all you
have is an interview. The B-roll footage is really what makes
a story come alive. For the news segment A-roll, we would
probably want to capture B-roll footage of people using
their phones and tablets to access mobile websites, a few
customer interactions, and a business transaction. Then
we could use those shots to help the anchor show the story
in a more visually engaging way.

CUTAWAYS
B-roll is also used as a “cutaway.” Cutaways
give an editor the opportunity to remove PRO TIP
parts of the A-roll undetected. In the same
Whatever B-roll footage you choose to use,
way, an editor may use a quick cutaway to
make sure each shot supports the narra-
combine two portions of the A-roll. Since the tive being driven by the A-roll media.
audio from the A-roll usually acts as a voice-
over on top of the B-roll footage, the editor
can then cut out or edit parts of the A-roll
audio as needed. Cutaways are perfect for
when you would like to remove a portion of
an interview, or when an interviewee sput-
ters, coughs, or says “um” too often.

A+B ROLL
Using editing software, A-roll and B-roll media can be mixed and merged to tell a much more engaging story. In this
example, we have our B-roll shown playing over the A-roll. It starts with the news anchor in the studio delivering his
news segment. Then, while the anchor’s audio continues to tell the story, the B-roll footage is cut in to help support
what he’s talking about.
Although this is just a basic example, you can see how A-roll and B-roll are used together to not just tell, but show
a story. If you’ve ever filmed an interview and used supporting-action footage to supplement it, then you’ve already
used A-roll and B-roll together properly. When you do, you tell a better story, and telling a better story is what it’s all
about.
A-ROLL B-ROLL B-ROLL B-ROLL

03 | BASIC AUDIO-MIXING TECHNIQUES
for Editing Video
For a video producer, so much time and attention can be paid to the camera, lighting, subject,
and background — the mise-en-scène, if you will. Audio can often be an afterthought, but
bad audio has the ability to sink your project like a lead balloon. The most commonly bungled
discipline for film students and novice filmmakers alike is audio recording and mixing, and
it’s an aspect that tends to be more objective than the visuals. If the audio is bad, everyone
knows it.
So, for any production involving multiple

microphones and subjects, it’s best to have
an audio recordist and mixer on set. And once
you’ve captured your audio, it’s important to
process it correctly in post-production, so
here are some basic techniques for mixing
audio in your video project.

03 BASIC AUDIO-MIXING TECHNIQUES for Editing Video
ADJUSTING GAIN
Once you’ve imported your audio clips into your project, take a look at where they’re peaking. Nothing should pass or
even approach zero; going above zero will result in distorted audio. All sound levels should stay in a range of about
-24 to -6. Often, dialogue sits between -18 and -9.
First, listen to your A-roll audio — your interviews and on-camera dialogue,with the footage that drives your narrative
— and start by adjusting the gain. This can be done in either your project panel or directly in your timeline.
Once these A-roll tracks are set, adjust

all the other audio track levels to match
them. Both gain and volume refer to the
loudness of the audio; however, gain is
the input level of the clips, and volume
is the output. But remember, increasing
the gain will also increase the noise.

KEYFRAMING LEVELS
Once your primary audio is adjusted using gain, you’ll want to move on to your secondary audio, which is often your
music. Again, preview your track and adjust the gain accordingly. Insert the music into your timeline and listen, then
work with the levels by inserting keyframes. You can figure out the levels by adjusting the clip keyframes, or adjust
keyframes on the entire track — whichever makes the most sense for your clip lengths.

AMBIENCE/ROOM TONE
When filming, you’ll often pick up some room tone or background noise in addition to your A-roll audio. Maybe the
air-conditioner or refrigerator kicked on and off during your interviews and there’s an inconsistency in the ambient
sound. Hopefully you’ve recorded some room tone on location that you can use to lay under your audio to keep the
sound consistent. You can then copy and paste “band-aids” of room tone in places where it should exist and doesn’t.
(You probably only need to do this if you don’t have a music bed underneath the dialogue that would dampen or en-
tirely cover the room tone.)
You’ll sometimes need to go through

the process of de-noising, as well, which
will remove ambient buzz or hum re-
corded during production, or noise in-
troduced when increasing gain in post.
Apply the “de-noiser” audio effect to
your clips and adjust the reduction slid-
er as necessary. If you slide too far, you
COPY & PASTE ROOM TONE can distort the tone of voice, so be sure
to find that middle ground in which the
background noise is removed but the
original sound of the speaking voice is
preserved.

CROSSFADES
Pretty much every audio clip in your timeline should have a crossfade on either end. These
crossfades are usually only a few frames and cover subtle pops that occur when audio clips
cut in or out; sometimes they just ease the transition from one clip to another when “frank-
en-biting” multiple sound soundbites together. Longer crossfades are more common in music
tracks, especially when turning corners within the piece or at the beginning or end of a piece.

PANNING
Finally, pan your mono audio channels. You might prefer to track your audio as dual mono and individually pan the
tracks as the action in the video dictates. This gives you creative freedom in customizing the sound of your video. As
action moves from one direction to another, you can track it sonically by panning the audio track in that same direc-
tion.
This process can have significant psy-

chological effects on an audience. Try
it by playing a clip with action moving
across the frame and listen to it with
balanced audio channels, then again
with audio panning in the direction of
the movement on screen. It feels much
more natural and your eyes will tend
to move not only in the direction of the
action, but also in the direction of the
audio pan.
DUAL MONO

04 | 5 EDITING TECHNIQUES GUARANTEED
to Create Emotional Impact
No matter how great your cinematography is — or how great an underlying story is — your
finished product will ride or die in the edit. Fortunately, there are a handful of storytelling
techniques we can employ with no After Effects-level learning curve required. Humans are
designed to experience a great range of emotion, so here’s how to tug on those heartstrings
and play them like a fiddle.

04 EDITING TECHNIQUES GUARANTEED to Create Emotional Impact
OBEY THE THEME

Whenever starting to edit a project, the very first question you should ask yourself is, “Is there a strong theme?” A
strong theme will allow each scene to constantly remind you and your audience why you’re watching, whose perspec-
tive you’re telling the story from, and what the story is talking about (a person, a product, an idea).
With a strong theme comes the delicious storytelling cocktail that builds the narrative to drive an emotional impact.
This particular recipe, in this order, is a great starting point when designing your story:
1 2 3
THE MARKETING PARALLELS
TO FILMMAKING
Many trailers and

MYSTERY commercials plow through
WONDER / TEASE (THE HOOK / “FIVE SECONDS POSSIBILITY
these elements in short
(IMAGINATION) OF WEIRD”) (TARGETING THE DEMOGRAPHIC)
periods of time. In unscripted
television, we build each
sequence (the building
4 5 6 blocks of acts) around these
six ingredients. Using this
formula, we ensure that very
episode, act, sequence, and
CONNECTION / IDENTIFICATION scene asks, “’What is?” and
(WE CARE ABOUT YOU / CONTRAST ENGAGEMENT ‘What could be?”
YOU’RE JUST LIKE US!) (NOW VS. FUTURE) (CALL TO ACTION / ROI)

As you layer these six components into your theme, your story will create powerful connections between your theme
and your audience, which will create both an emotional impact and a return on investment. Most arcs will follow this
recipe, from starting with a hook, asking, “what if,” and contrasting that with “what is.”
For example, let’s look at Star Wars. We combine “spaceship,”

with the question “What if the evil Empire takes over the en-
tire galaxy?” Then we contrast that with “The last hope for our
salvation is the Jedi, and they’re pretty much gone,” creating
an emotional tension that pays off dividends. Similarly, “Peo-
ple would like me if I had that incredible new iron,” contrast-
ed with, “My clothes are always wrinkly and people think I’m
weird,” can’t help but make you wonder what life would be like
on the other side.
The editor is often the final authority on creating an emotional

impact. When bringing your scenes together, make sure you’re
checking your work against the six elements by continually ask-
ing yourself how what you’re working on relates to the theme.
Remember also to not give away too much. Our brains want to
solve problems that come from not having enough informa-
tion. Since film is a temporal medium, you can control how and
when you layer in story points.

LAYERING SOUND DESIGN

Sound puts us in the place, and the tiniest
sounds can have big impacts on believability and
emotion. Try watching a dramatic scene you’ve
never watched before without any sound. How
silly does that scene look without any of the am-
bience, sound effects, and impacts?
Sound can foreshadow or show us things that

are happening offscreen — it expands the world
to more than just what we’re seeing, lends itself
to performance, and improves the scene by jus-
tifying cuts.

Layering can mean combining many sounds to

create one sound, but layering can also mean
how you combine your discreet tracks — music,
foley, SFX, ambience, and dialogue — to create
maximum emotional impact. The point is, you
want to create authenticity, which helps your
audience feel like they’re living in the world of
your story, to drive the experience. You need to
create this artificial world for your viewer with-
out tipping your hand.
As with editing, sound design should be invisible.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of sound effects
available online to experiment with. Something
as simple as a “whoosh” below a cut can go a
long way toward helping your viewer understand
what’s happening, especially when graphics or
animation are involved.

MUSIC: GIVE AND TAKE

Choosing music is often the hardest part of
an edit. Music can tell us how to feel in a cer-
tain moment, and provides important infor-
mation for viewers. It can be a challenge to
hit the right tone when you’re working from
pre-existing tracks, and it pays to know when
to use music and when to avoid it.
Ask yourself: how often have you let music

alone carry a scene? Clearly, music drives
emotion in a very big way. The ultimate point
here is not that music is important, which
is self-evident, but that layering music and
sound design creates a one-two emotional
punch that can amp up your story incredibly.

FAKING CAMERA MOVES: PUSHES AND PANS

Big impacts can come from small pushes or pulls by keyframing the “scale”
parameter in your NLE. “Push ins” ask the viewer to pay attention to a par-
ticular element in a scene; they can also connect two disparate frames by
mirroring movement between shots. For example, pushing in on a shot of
one character, then cutting to a push on a shot of another character helps
audiences link these two characters (or moments) together.

Reversing the “push in” to a “pull out” creates an entirely different

feeling, depending on the context of the scene. Fortunately, both are
possible (and easy) to do in post. Of course, if you’re not shooting
higher resolution than your delivery, you’ll lose some resolution,
but the moves in or out don’t have to be big in order to convey the
meaning you seek. In fact, most often they should be subtle. When
making pushes in post, you won’t get the optical changes you would if
the camera were actually dollying in or out, but most audiences won’t
notice.
You can also create pans and swooshes in post by using pre-made PRO TIP
transitions or creating your own keyframes. No surprise: pushes

While you’re editing your
and pans can have even more impact when accompanied by a bit pushes and pulls, take this
of sound design. If you’re not sure how to do any of this, tutorials opportunity to fix uneven
abound on YouTube. horizons (typical in gimbal
and drone work), or uneven
compositions.

L CUTS AND J CUTS

Audio plays a crucial role in emotional impact. Layering in music and sound design takes on another level of com-
plexity with “L” cut and “J” cuts — the audio edits that allow specific audio from a previous scene to linger over the
next scene, and conversely, from a future scene to the current scene. L and J cuts allow you to further drive home the
impacts you’re looking to make by clueing the audience in to things that are happening outside of the frame.
L and J cuts are subtle, but can deliver an emotional punch when the time is right. The rest of the time, it’s just good
filmmaking.

BONUS: EMOTIONAL DELIVERY SYSTEM

Don’t forget that the best way to convey an emotion is
EKMAN’S SIX UNIVERSAL EMOTIONS to see or hear someone else (a character) experiencing
that emotion. According to renowned psychologist Paul
Ekman’s theory, any human can recognize any one of six
emotions. There’s a psychological phenomenon known as
“mirroring” that causes us to reflect back emotions or be-
havior that we’re seeing — so, if you are trying to convey a
theme that’s happy and uplifting, you should be showing
characters when they’re smiling and happy.
ANGER FEAR DISGUST

This may seem self-evident, but it’s critical that, as an ed-
itor, you’re finding the performances that speak best to
your themes. When creating their footage, for example,
many Pond5 artists will design a scene in which the talent
portrays many emotions. As the editor in charge of emo-
tional impact, footage like this gives you free rein to find
and assign the best possible performances for your scene.
SURPRISE HAPPINESS SADNESS Even if you’re working with a director and cutting scripted
content, always remember that your audience will be in-
clined to feel what they see.

05 | VIDEO COMPOSITING
How to Work With Alpha Mattes and Alpha Channels
If you’ve spent any time working with green screens or green screen footage, you’re
aware of how much you can do when you have an isolated subject to work with.
This goes doubly for clips with alpha mattes or alpha channels, because you don’t
need to worry about keying out or removing anything, as it’s removed already. Part
of your work is finished before you even put it into your project!

05 VIDEO COMPOSITING: How to Work With Alpha Mattes and Alpha Channels
ALPHA CHANNELS
An alpha channel is a mask that determines
how pixels are blended with another. It rep-
resents the degree of transparency/opacity)
of a color. But how is it removed? The key is
in the channels. Three main channels contain
all the color information: red, green, and blue
(RGB). There is also a fourth channel that’s
invisible and contains transparency informa-
tion, called the alpha channel. This allows you
to have transparent information that doesn’t
affect any of the colors in the video.

(ALPHA) MATTES
(Alpha) mattes, on the other hand, are lay-
ers that tell the software which layer or area
within a layer is where the transparent parts
are. Many mattes are displayed as black and
white, with black being the transparent area
and white being the opaque area. A lot of
times, the alpha channel is the matte, but not
always — that’s why “alpha” is in parenthesis.
You can make a matte in place of the alpha
channel in situations where a matte works
better, or if the file doesn’t actually have an
alpha channel built in.

There are many image-file types that contain alpha channels, and a few video codecs that
contain an alpha channel. If you see the bit depth has a 32-bit option, then you can usually
check a box or select the option to include an alpha channel.
IMAGE FILE TYPES VIDEO CODECS

CONTAINING ALPHA CONTAINING ALPHA
CHANNELS CHANNELS
█ EPS █ PNG
█ PNG █ ProRes 4444
█ TIFF █ Animation
█ TGA █ AVI
█ PSD █ Certain Quicktime
█ AI Options

HOW TO WORK WITH ALPHA CHANNELS AND MATTES

IN ADOBE PREMIERE
Place the file in your canvas or drag it onto your timeline/sequence, and splice/edit
1
the clip where the matte starts. Most clips are cut perfectly in half, so if the two halves
don’t line up, check your edit point and try again.
Place the matte (black-and-white sec-

2
tion) on V1 (or V2, it’s not super im-
portant, and you’ll see why in a sec-
ond), then place the “regular” footage
on V3 or any higher layer than your
alpha matte.
Now place your footage (or whatever

3 you want to be revealed) under the
“regular” clip, on V1 or V2. It can be
above or below the matte, but it can’t
be under the regular clip.

Go to your effects panel and find the effect “Set

4
Matte.” Place it on your regular clip on V3, then
set the “Take Matte From Layer” to whichever lay-
er has the matte on it (in this case, it’s V1).
Set the “Use for Matte” to “Luminance,” since it’s

5
black and white, (or “grayscale”), then turn off the
matte layer with the eyeball tool. The reason you
turn off the layer is because the effect just needs
to use the clip’s information for the matte, and V1
doesn’t need to actually be visible.
Scrub through your timeline to make sure it works

6
the way you want, and presto!

HOW TO WORK WITH ALPHA CHANNELS AND MATTES

IN AFTER EFFECTS
Drag your clip into your sequence, cut it at

1
the correct moment, and place the alpha clip
on layer 1, with the regular clip on layer 2.
Render Queue 025427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov
0:00:00:00
Then place your footage layer on layer 3. 1

2
025427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov
025427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov
3 025427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov
No Track Matte
Alpha Matte “025427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov”
Make sure your “Modes” column is visible, Alpha Inverted Matte “025427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov”
2 Luma Matte “0254427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov
then on layer 2, click on the “TrkMat” drop- Luma Inverted Matte “0254427019-cracked-and-shattered-black-gl.mov”
down. Select layer 1 as a “Luma Matte” (again,

since it’s black and white), and you’re already
done!
Scrub through to make sure it looks the way

3
you want, and you’re all set.
Getting a basic understanding of mattes and alpha channels is a great entry point into the world of compositing,
which can open up many new ways to create. You can utilize these techniques to blend real footage and VFX together,
helping to keep your projects fresh and interesting, while improving your skills.

06 | VIDEO EDITING
Working With Multiple Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios
Stories can be told in many different ways, using

many different media types and image-capturing
devices. Sometimes you may want to incorporate
still images in your project, or the producer may call
for a piece of smartphone footage to be cut into
your edit. Chances are that these types of additions
won’t match perfectly within your 16:9, 24-fps time-
line and you’ll need to adjust your clips and settings
so that it’s not too jarring of a departure visually or
emotionally.
To do this, you’ll need to be wary of the problems

that can arise when you’re working with different
file types and frame rates, like image cropping,
black bars/letterboxing, dropped frames, image stretching, and other things that aren’t
coming across correctly in your vision for the piece. You also need to know how to fix them
appropriately — especially if you’re working with tons of different types of files.

06 VIDEO EDITING: Working With Multiple Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios
TO CONFORM OR NOT TO CONFORM

The first thing you need to figure out is if you actually want to have everything match within your edited sequence
(frame rate, resolution, codec, etc). If you convert everything to identical settings before you start, you won’t have to
worry about any aberrations in your footage, or any performance issues from your editing software.
You can use any video-conversion software (MPEG Streamclip works well for most projects), or you can do a batch
export from After Effects, Premiere, or Final Cut to get everything* to match perfectly.
Adobe Premiere, for instance, will

let you add multiple file types, frame
rates, and aspect ratios all in the same
sequence. Upon importing, iit will ask
if you want to change the settings to
match the clip, but you’ll want to select
“Keep Existing Settings” until your final
export. Then you simply export out the
settings you want, and it conform ev-
erything automatically. However, if you
have a lot of different files in there, it
can cause some lag, so if you experi-
ence that, try doing it in smaller batch- *Doesn’t include vertical, 3D, and VR video
es.

SETTING UP A SEQUENCE
Your sequence’s settings will determine how your project
looks and how the added media will react, so you need to
decide what your piece’s final look will be when you create
your sequence. Usually, you can create a sequence from a
single clip, so keep that clip’s settings in mind if you go this
route, because it may not be the same as the rest of your
files.
Choose a file that best illustrates the settings you’re

1
going for.
Once you start importing other clips, keep an eye on

2 the program window to make sure nothing looks off
and that there aren’t black bars or a cropped image.
Premiere will ask if you want to keep the existing set-

3
tings or change them to match the new clip (if it’s dif-
ferent than your current sequence), so select “Keep
Existing Settings” if you want to keep the sequence
the same and adjust the new clip around it.

DETERMINING FRAME RATE
Options for your frame rate while shooting include (but aren’t limited to):
23.976 24 29.97 48 59.97 96 240
23.98 25 (PAL) 30 50 (PAL) 60 120
In editing, however, you hardly see anything over 60 fps. All frame
rates have their drawbacks and benefits, but the differences in the
PRO TIP look of the video are pretty noticeable even to untrained eyes, so
keep that in mind when making your project.
Most feature films are 24 fps and have
been for decades; most web video is 30
fps. It’s fairly rare to see a sequence or Once you’ve picked your frame rate, start importing your footage. If
video that is playing back at anything you’ve selected “Keep Existing Settings,” the clips will be adjusted by
over 30 fps, so give it some thought
dropping, adding, and/or blending frames together to make them fit
when you’re picking your frame rate
(because it does matter). together in the sequence. If you haven’t conformed them, watch out
for anything looking off.
Dropped frames can look like a sudden jump or lag at an edit point,
so watch your video thoroughly and see anything catches your eye.

CHOOSING AN ASPECT RATIO

Aspect ratio not only affects the aesthetic, but the feel of a 4:3 ASPECT RATIO
video, as well. Wes Anderson famously used three differ-
ent aspect ratios for The Grand Budapest Hotel, all noting
different time periods and having different styles. And in
big, epic films, 2.35:1 aspect ratios are often used to show
the, well, big, epic scope of things.
However, since most video is 16:9 these days, and almost

all televisions and monitors are 16:9, that should be your
baseline, and you can work from there. Here are the basic
16:9 ASPECT RATIO
issues and solutions. (For this example, imagine that we’re
on a 16:9 project.)

CROPPING
Any time you bring in a different aspect ra-

tio than that of your current sequence, pix-
els outside of the 16:9 frame are going to
get cropped/cut off. For instance, if you’re
using 4096×2160 footage but your project is
3840×2160, you’re losing 256 horizontal pix-
els in the frame and may cut out important
details. You’ll need to position the clip the
best way possible by scaling or moving its
position to where it works best. You may get
black bars, however, which I’ll go over next.

PILLARBOXING
This is the official term for those vertical

black bars you see on the side of a video.
This typically happens when the clip’s aspect
ratio is 4:3, and especially when the video
is vertical. For vertical video, the standard
method is to duplicate the layer, put a blur
on the “bottom” layer, then scale it up to fill
the empty space on the sides. However, in
the case of normal 4:3 video, the best bet is
to leave the black bars (think of The Grand
Budapest Hotel), or put a graphic overlay on
the sides to cover the empty space.

LETTERBOXING
This is the term for black bars on the top and

bottom of a video. This usually happens when
the footage has a larger aspect ratio than the
sequence. Widescreen, 2:35:1, 2.40:1, and
21:9 are all going to have black bars when
put into our baseline 16:9 sequence. Some-
times it’s not really that noticeable, and is of-
ten intentional, but other times, it can cause
the footage to be scaled too far. Your only
option really is to scale it up and cut off the
side pixels, or conform it from the start. Ei-
ther way, you’re losing pixels, so be prepared
to adjust accordingly.

RESOLUTION
When working with different resolutions, your main caution should be going
from lower resolution into a higher resolution project. A 1080p clip in a 4K
sequence is much smaller, and an SD clip in a 4K sequence is even smaller.
Trying to scale those up can have disastrous results, so you may want to try
converting them beforehand.
If you’re doing the opposite, however, then you won’t have much to worry
about with losing video quality. Just scale it to fit.
4K SEQUENCE
4K SEQUENCE
480 p (SD) CLIP

1080 p CLIP

CODECS AND CONTAINERS

Another couple of things to consider are the
codec (h264, ProRes, etc.) and container (mp4,
mov, m4v) of your files. Mixing up files with
different codecs and containers can use a lot
of your computer’s horsepower, and some
programs can’t even use multiple types. The
best thing to do here is to save often and be
on the lookout for any workflow issues. Most
of the time you shouldn’t have much trouble,
but if things get crazy with multiple codecs,
just conform them and re-link them to mini-
mize the risk.

EXPORTING
When your video is ready to go, the final thing to do is export it. With all these file types and frame rates and aspect
ratios together in one place, you also still have another chance to make final adjustments here.
If your entire sequence has been edited in 4K

but you need to deliver in 1080, you can do that
here without having to conform your media. If
you need the whole thing to be in 24 fps but all
the footage is different frame rates, it will change
that in the export. The export function allows
you to set all your parameters for the final out-
put, so at the very least, it’s the simplest step to
making everything match in your sequence.
There may still be some clips that look funny,

but take note of them and see why they’re not
working. You may have to convert them prior to
exporting.

07 | COLOR CORRECTION BASICS
Using Adobe Premier
Did you forget to change your camera’s white balance? Is your footage three stops
underexposed? Are you trying to add a unique tint to your video? Have no fear, some
quick and basic color-correction techniques are here!
COLOR CORRECTION
The process by which you fix footage
that is improperly exposed or balanced
through a combination of technical
adjustments and creativity.
COLOR GRADING
Enhancing the look of your footage
to achieve a certain style, usually done
after color correction.

07 COLOR CORRECTION BASICS Using Adobe Premier
Below is an overview of some of the basic color-correction tools available in Adobe Premiere, along with a
video demonstrating how to use these tools to color correct your footage.
SETTING UP YOUR STUDIO

Before you start, it’s wise to create a color-correc-
tion-friendly working environment. Color correcting
your footage on a laptop on a fluorescent-lit airplane
will achieve vastly different results from color correct- Choose a room without windows so that you
1
ing on an in-home editing suite on a cinema display. have no light affecting the color temperatures
Your footage is going to look different on virtually on your screen; there should be no ambient
every screen, but this is about how your audience is light leaking or glares on the screen whatsoev-
going to see it. er.
Make everything in the room neutral color. If

2
your wall color is yellow or blue, your eyes will
try to adjust, resulting in you adding too much
of that color when grading. Neutral gray or
black are the best wall colors to have. It’s also
good to keep all the furniture in the room a nat-
ural color too.

Calibrate your monitor. This will ensure that your colors and blacks are accurate.
3
There are a few different ways to go about doing this. The most convenient is to use
your computer’s built-in calibrator assistant. To find this on a Mac, go to your System
Preferences > Display > Color > Calibrate. Don’t forget to do this in your color-correc-
tion-friendly working environment. If you want
to take it a step further and you have the bud-
get, you can purchase a high-quality calibration
system like a Spyder5 or an X-Rite i1Display Pro.
Last, but not least, check to make sure you

4
aren’t color blind. This will sound a bit much,
but there are different degrees of color blind-
ness, and some people might not know that
they have a mild case. This might not be a big
deal outside of the world of color correction,
but it can make a big difference when you’re
grading your footage. (There are lots of online
color blindness tests out there if you’ve never
taken one before.)

CHOOSING YOUR TOOLS

There are many different tools, filters, and plugins in Premiere that deal with color correction. Some of these tools
overlap, meaning you can achieve the same results in different ways. Choosing which of those tools to use really
comes down to your workflow style and preference.

PREMIERE COLOR CORRECTION FILTERS
FAST COLOR CORRECTOR THREE-WAY COLOR CORRECTOR

With the fast color corrector, you can use the The three-way color corrector is similar to the
color wheel to shift and boost a certain col- Fast Color Corrector, but with more controls.
or’s hue. You can also use the eyedropper to Instead of one color wheel, you have three,
quickly set your white balance, and you can each one affecting a different tone (shadows,
add or subtract saturation and adjust your midtones, and highlights).
levels all in one panel. This is one of the most
useful tools for on-the-fly color correction.
SECONDARY COLOR CORRECTION
The secondary color corrector allows you to
LUMA AND RGB CURVE
create a mask over a specific part of your
With these filters, you can adjust your glob- footage so that you modify just that part of
al luma levels and the levels of the individual the image. For example, if you’d like to bring
red, green, and blue channels. This is where out the color in a blue sky without changing
the term “S curve” comes into play. To create the rest of the image, use this filter to create
contrast in your image, you would raise your a mask of just the sky and then adjust the lev-
highlights and lower your shadows, creating els, hue, and saturation.
an “S” curve. The more dramatic the curve is,
the more contrast your footage will have. Use
the waveform to monitor your changes.

PREMIERE LUMETRI FILTERS
THE LUMETRI COLOR PANEL

This color-correction tool was
brought over from Speedgrade,
offering a powerful and intuitive
workflow for those who want the
features of an advanced grading
software without having to leave
the Premiere interface.

GET FAMILIAR WITH YOUR SCOPES

Scopes are a critical tool to use when monitoring your color-correction adjustments. They’re even more useful if you
happen to have a color blindness or if you’re grading in an unfriendly color-correcting environment. Most important-
ly, scopes will help you keep your footage within the IRE limits. (IRE is a scale set by the Institute of Radio Engineers
that measures luminance levels.) If you plan on sending your video to broadcast, you must stay within the IRE limits.

WAVEFORM
The waveform scope displays the luma, or
brightness, levels from left to right on your
image. The IRE scale starts at 0 (black), and
goes up to 100 (white). Everything in between
40 – 60 IRE represents your midtones.
Anything beyond 0 or 100 will either be un-

derexposed or overexposed (aka “crushed”),
and broadcast entities might not accept your
video if you have levels that go beyond these
limits. Unless you’re going for a specific look,
you don’t want to crush your blacks or whites.

RGB PARADE
Video has three channels — red, green, and
blue. In the RGB parade, each color has its
individual waveform representing the in-
tensity of that color from left to right on the
image. The closer the three channels match,
the more balanced your image will be. This
scope is useful when adjusting the tempera-
ture and color balance of your footage. You
can see the two RGB parades above, one
where the red channel is pushed, making the
footage look more red, and one where the
color is more balanced.

YUV VECTORSCOPE
This scope is a different representation of
your red, green, and blue channels that fo-
cuses more on the hue and saturation. Hue
is your color balance and saturation is the
amount of color. Notice in the images above
that the further these pixels are spread out,
the more saturated the image is. The red,
magenta, blue, cyan, green, and yellow larg-
er squares on the vectorscope represent the
HD limits. Again, if you have pixels that pass
these limits, then broadcast entities might
not accept it.

08 | 7 TIPS AND TRICKS
To Enhance Your Video Editing Work
Here are some tips and tricks that work not

just for entire clips, but for the overall tone
and feel of your video or film.
Of course, you need to focus on your style

and what kind of story you want to tell be-
fore you start throwing some of these in, but
once you experiment enough and become
well-acquainted with these tips and tricks,
you’ll start to get really dialed-in and learn
how to best utilize them for your projects.
TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE 64

08 7 TIPS AND TRICKS to Enhance Your Video Editing Work
LEARN THE SHORTCUTS

1
Learning your shortcuts is the best way to
streamline your editing process. Once you
figure out that the “L” button speeds up your
playback, you’ll never want to sit through an
interview in real time ever again. It might
take a little while to get used to it, but it’s
worth consciously trying it out until you get
the hang of it.
ADD MUSIC AND SFX

2
If learning shortcuts is the easiest way to
speed up your editing process, then the ad-
dition of music and sound effects to your
project is the easiest way to add depth and
layers to your project. When it comes to mu-
sic, make sure you choose something that fits with your visuals. A metal song doesn’t
usually work with a glorious shot of a field of tulips, and a slow motion shot of a car-
chase explosion doesn’t really warrant an upbeat disco track. Make sure to cut to the
beat of the song, because it matters. A well-timed cut to the beat can be iconic and
memorable.

For sound effects, subtle crowd noises, background sound effects, and other audio cues
help the audience feel like they’re really experiencing what they’re seeing on the screen.
If you’ve ever seen any behind-the-scenes videos of productions, you’ll notice that there’s
rarely music or sound effects being played in real time; it’s all added in post.
For post-production, you should

also always properly mix the music
and sound effects with your foot-
age audio to make it sound as nat-
ural as possible. As something of a
side note, all of Pond5’s music and
sound effects are available within
the Adobe Premiere interface with
a free Adobe Add-on, so you can
plug temporary tracks into your
project directly and see how they
fit before you decide to purchase.
RAMP IT UP… OR DOWN

3
Speed ramping is used for action
scenes where something needs to

be emphasized in either slow or fast motion, but starts in real time. It can also be used to finesse your
clips so that they fit together better within your sequence. If you’ve got a three-second hole in your
sequence, but your clip is currently 3.5 seconds, experiment with ramping up the speed to the right
duration to make it fit. Conversely, you can slow it down if the gap is longer than your clip. Just make
sure it fits and looks realistic!
PREMIERE: You can ramp your clip by right-clicking on your clip in the sequence and
selecting Show Clip Keyframes > Time Re-mapping > Speed. The line on the clip will
Pr now represent the timing, and if you create markers (Command-click on Mac or Con-
trol-click on PC), you can move those markers to increase or decrease the duration
between them.
FINAL CUT X: You can ramp by selecting your range within your clip (or the whole clip),
clicking the Re-Time menu popup below the viewer, and selecting > to 0% for slow mo-
tion, or > from 0% to speed it up.

WHEN IN DOUBT, COVER IT UP

4
If you’re editing an interview, or if your subject is telling a sto-
ry and it seems to drag, the best thing to do is to add some
B-roll (or a+b roll) to keep it interesting. Cut back to the per-
son who’s talking if they’re saying something powerful or im-
portant, but don’t linger too long before cutting away just to
break it up. If you’ve shot a lot of interviews, you’ll know that
some subjects say “um,” “uh,” and “you know” a lot, and may
ramble at times. You can cover up all these cuts while keep-
ing the story moving. It also doesn’t hurt to go away to some
live audio (a+b) of them to re-set, transition, or introduce the
audience to another setting.
SPACE IT OUT
5
By adding footage to either cover up cuts, make your video
flow more authentically, or transition to another location or
idea, you’re making for a better piece — but these may not add any drama or tension. Make your sub-
ject’s impactful statements stand out more by giving them some breathing room and letting the view-
er reflect on what they’ve just seen and heard. Keep the visuals going, but stop the A-roll and let the
music and/or visuals aid the pause by increasing the volume or putting in the perfect visual cap on the
soundbite. This video is a great example of letting the statements breathe while showing the wonderful
visuals to enhance the story.

STABILIZE IT
6
In addition to poor-quality audio, having shaky footage can be a
death sentence for your project. The good news is, there are great
plug-ins and tools that will help you stabilize your footage that are
out there, and even built-in to your editing software. These can be a
game-changer: Warp Stabilizer in Adobe Premiere/After Effects and
SmoothCam in Final Cut X are the big ones, but there’s a powerful
third-party plugin called ReelSteady that also works well in After Ef-
fects. You can find apps that stabilize your phone video, as well, such
as the well-reviewed Emulsio.
The goal here is to make your footage as coherent as possible with-

out overly distorting your image. Tweak your settings and experiment
with every parameter possible to get the best result. If it’s still looking
rough and you’ve tried everything, either trash the clip or be happy
with your progress and understand you need to be more stable when
filming, which will eliminate the problems in the first place.

RE-FRAME, IF YOU CAN

7
These days, cameras are shooting higher and higher reso-
lutions, which has created the ability for editors to re-frame
and push/pull the footage to interesting effects. Since 1080p
is still the standard delivery resolution across many jobs, you
have a lot of space to explore with 2K-and-above resolutions.
Try adding a subtle push-in during a tense scene, or position
your subject in the center of the frame if their eye-line was off.
You can possibly even get two shots out of one clip if you’re
shooting ultra hi-res and downscaling it.
The MAJOR caveat to this is to not go overboard, and try to

avoid scaling up beyond 110% — especially if your camera
isn’t that great. Pixelated footage is very noticeable, and a
re-positioned clip doesn’t work if the actors or subject look
out of place.
Try out some of these tips to see what you like and how it ex-
pands your editing style. You may find that your filmmaking
becomes much more improved or inspired when you know
what you’re capable of in the editing process!

At Pond5, we believe video is essential for
marketing, creative projects, and more. While
there are many ways to go about video editing,
we hope this ebook helped you to get started.
For additional help finding and licensing

the perfect stock media for your campaigns,
visit explore.pond5.com/enterprise
or contact enterprise@pond5.com

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VIDEO

A-roll and B-roll

5 Basic Audio-Mixing Techniques

5 Editing Techniques Guaranteed

Working With Multiple Frame Rates

Color Correction Basics

Tips and Tricks to Enhance

Once you master the edit types and learn why

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SCENE 1 CROSS DISSOLVE SCENE 2

Don’t use cross dissolves for

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Primary Video 1 B-Roll Primary Video 2

Primary Audio 1 Primary Audio 2

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CROSS CUT (AKA PARALLEL EDITING)

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A-ROLL KEEPS IT INTERESTING

A-ROLL KEEPS IT CLEAN

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B-ROLL MAKES IT COME ALIVE

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A-ROLL B-ROLL B-ROLL B-ROLL

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So, for any production involving multiple

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Once these A-roll tracks are set, adjust

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You’ll sometimes need to go through

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This process can have significant psy-

NEXT CHAPTER » | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE 25

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OBEY THE THEME

Many trailers and

NEXT CHAPTER » | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE 27

For example, let’s look at Star Wars. We combine “spaceship,”

The editor is often the final authority on creating an emotional

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LAYERING SOUND DESIGN

Sound can foreshadow or show us things that

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Layering can mean combining many sounds to

As with editing, sound design should be invisible.

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MUSIC: GIVE AND TAKE

Ask yourself: how often have you let music

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FAKING CAMERA MOVES: PUSHES AND PANS

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Reversing the “push in” to a “pull out” creates an entirely different