There’s nothing more frustrating than taking too long on a video project. In the video world, time is money and every extra second wasted on a video project is money lost. In the following post we’re going to take a look at a few different ways to power up your editing speeds.
1. Learn the Shortcuts
The fastest way to increase your editing speed is to simply learn the keyboard shortcuts inside of your favorite video editing application. Every professional video editing application (Premiere Pro, FCPX, Media Composer) has it’s own set of keyboard shortcuts that can be used to perform shortcuts.
While it may not seem like a big deal, saving a few seconds here or there can add up to hours saved over the course of an entire project. A simple web search will yield hundreds of keyboard shortcuts that can quickly take your speeds to the next level.
One of the best ways to increase your rendering speeds inside of your video editing application is to upgrade your RAM. By default your computer probably has 4 to 8GB of RAM, but it’s not uncommon for a professional editor to have much more.
I recommend at least 16GB of RAM if you are serious about taking your video editing speeds to the next level. Even if you’re not a computer expert you can install RAM in only a matter of minutes. Plus, it shouldn’t cost you more than a couple hundred dollars.
On a side note when you are looking to buy a new computer, specifically a Mac, be careful to not overspend on upgrading your RAM by the manufacturer. Many companies like to overcharge to install more RAM onto your machine.
3. Get an SSD
Unlike and HDD, an SSD doesn’t have a spinning disk on the inside that has to speed up. As a result, you will find that your assets and applications load incredibly fast when you make the switch over to and SSD.
While you could physically install an SSD onto your machine, they actually sell SSDs that plug into your computer like a passport hard drive. This means you can take the lightning fast speeds of SSD on the road with you.
4. Work with Proxies
A proxy is simply a small video file that takes the place of a larger video file. While RAW footage is beautiful, it can take a lot of computing power away from your machine.
Instead most of the major video editing applications allow you to edit with smaller proxy files then replace the proxy files with the original, larger files once you’re ready to export.
This technique can literally save you dozens of hours on your video projects. This helpful tutorial from ‘Chinfat’ shows us how to use proxies in Adobe Premiere Pro. Notice how organized you need to be when working with proxy files.
5. Update Your Software
Developers are constantly upgrading their software to optimize export speeds and user experience. As a result you will greatly benefit from making sure you have the latest version of your software.
In the past this would have been an issue because the price of each software edition was cost-prohibitive, but because most major video editing applications use a subscription service you can very easily update to the latest version of your software when it becomes available.
Pro Tip: Before you update your software be sure to finish any projects you are currently working on.
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