… and I am talking about myself here!
If I wanted to do video-editing and wasn’t doing “this U3A stuff”, I’d use Apple’s iMovie which is a “really nice and easy lemon squeezy” way of producing videos, but I can’t because for the Group it has to be cross-platform, and it has to be FREE!
I have suggested using YouTube for simple editing and indeed with the new YouTube Studio that may be your best solution – especially if you’re intending to share the video on YouTube through your Google Account; Google provides some Help & Assistance on how to do some basic video-editing and provides a useful help page with a short video on how to do video-editing using YouTube Studio, and there’s a load of other YouTube videos on the subject as you might expect.
However, not all of you have Google/YouTube accounts, and not all of you would want to “edit in the cloud”, so we need to find another solution that ticks all the boxes.
The one I found that does just that, and which also has a substantial amount of Help and Support documentation and video tutorials is Shotcut.
It’s a bit daunting when you first start it up; so many controls, icons, sliders, windows, options – but don’t let that put you off. Just try the basics to get started and then go back to learn more as you need it.
Here’s a link to a “Getting started …” video, and here’s one to a “manual” which tells you more about video-editing and using Shotcut. If you want to print something out to have beside you as you learn how to navigate the interface, you might find this short (3-page) guide useful.
Having created your video masterpiece you’ll want to save it in a format that is playable on most online services and applications – choose MPEG4 from the Export option – and then decide what you want to do with it. You can of course upload it to Google Photos – there’s no size limitation on videos you upload apart from the 15Gb per week that you get against your free storage limit – which is 15Gb!!!! You could use YouTube of course (see above) – but the quality of the video may be downgraded as you upload it; but I’d recommend you also look at Vimeo as it’s a more privacy-orientated platform for sharing videos and has a better-quality of video playback too. You can do quite a bit with a free subscription, but if you’re into video-production in big way it might be worthwhile paying £72 for an annual subscription. Alternatively, you could decide to host your own videos, on your own website – but that’s for another day!
… and that’s about it – except for the dreaded live-demo!
Recorded from Zoom, my first attempt. Not all the panes were showing, so I’m afraid the Timeline pane is not to be seen – it’s at the bottom of the screen. I’ll need to see if I can record the whole screen – not just the Window.
[PS: I’ve now found out how to share the Desktop, rather than just a Window, so there’s no stopping me now. Next time, next time …]