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How to EDIT your first video (feat. VN Editor) // Getting started on YouTube in 2021 (Pt. 3)
In this third episode of my series on getting started on YouTube in 2021, I teach you how to use you iPad, phone or computer to edit your first video. This is meant for beginners and can be applied to any editing software. I will use the VN Editor app as it's cross-platform.
👩💻 VN Video Editor https://geni.us/vn-editor
📕 Complete Script https://geni.us/dji-mavic-air-script
📹 Final Video https://youtu.be/_l3gIrggkIY
1️⃣ How to plan https://youtu.be/KvBZXJtZJPI
2️⃣ How to shoot https://youtu.be/KvBZXJtZJPI
3️⃣ How to edit https://youtu.be/2-GDwy4Y-gg
🎞 Original Footage https://1drv.ms/u/s!AohbiZbX_aR5pu8xhqT_PyiPoloplA?e=0HglgH
✋ COME SAY HI!! ✋
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford (http://bit.ly/lba_instagram)
- TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@loic.bellemare.alford
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/loic294
- Facebook: https://fb.com/lbaphotographie
📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Introduction
00:23 - Why use VN Editor?
01:25 - Editing in steps
02:35 - Editing the A-Roll
06:11 - Editing the B-Roll
12:10 - Adding graphics and text
14:48 - Music and audio correction
18:19 - Learn when to stop!
19:11 - Exporting the video
19:54 - Conclusion
🖼 SHOP FOR PRINTS 🖼
- My online store: https://store.lbaphotographie.ca
🎶 MY MUSIC 🎶
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/iu5gau/
📸 GEAR I USE ON YOUTUBE 📸
https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo https://geni.us/dji-pocket-2-combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card https://geni.us/sandisk-extreme-128gb
- Canon 6D Mk https://geni.us/canon-6d-mkii
- Google Pixel 4a https://geni.us/google-pixel-4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM https://geni.us/canon-lens-24-105
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-16-35
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-70-200
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD https://geni.us/vanguard-veo-265cb
- DJI MAVIC AIR https://geni.us/lba-dji-mavic-air
🌍 MY PERSONAL WEBSITE 🌍
Welcome to my third episode, in my series on how to create your first YouTube videos. In the two previous ones, we planned the video and shut the video. Now in this one, we're going to talk about how to edit it. Let's roll the intro. For those of you who are new to this channel, I'm like Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on a journey to become better at this art. Before starting, I wanted to quickly talk about which video today we're going to be using in this video and why it really doesn't matter if you're using something else. So I'm going to be using the VN Editor on my iPad, but I decided to use this app because it's completely free and works on whatever device you have. So whether it's an Android phone, it's an iOS device, it's a Mac or PC. It works everywhere. And a really good thing about this app is that it's completely free. And when I say free, it's even free for things like 4k exports, and doesn't even include a watermark inside of the video. So it's a really great option for anybody that is starting out. I personally use Final Cut Pro or Premier Pro for my more advanced edits , and sometimes use Luma fusion on my iPad, but everything I'm going to talk about works in whatever it is, editor you're using. So really concentrate on the concepts I'm talking about and don't concentrate on exactly how execute them inside of this video deter. Okay, so now let's get started. So we're going to come here, open our VN editor app, go on the plus icon at the bottom here and select new project. So it's going to right away, ask us to import some files. So I already have an album here that I created to be a little bit more efficient, and we're going to start by talking about a thing that is really important. So when I started making videos and video editing, I really wanted to do everything at the same time at the beginning. So there was a huge probelm, so you don't want to be editing everything in one pass. So you really want to be doing things in steps. So the first thing we're gonna do is edit our A-Roll. Then we're going to add it our B-Roll. Then we're going to add power music or our graphics. And finally, we're going to add the final touch, like color grading and things like that. The reason that we're doing this is that the more of the things you add to your edit, the harder it becomes afterwards to be able to change things afterwards. So it's also harder after that to render your files. If you have color grading, if I have multiple graphics and things like that. So it might slow down quite a lot. Your video editing programs, it's much better to create things a one step at a time and really go step-by-step. So we're going to go right away and select our clips right here for our tech. So you have this first one right here. Okay. So I think I selected all the clips in the right orders. We're going to come here, click on next. And now we have our clips ready to play. And now we're going to come here and start cutting these down. So these are only the talking shots that we have right now. So we can start playing and find where I start talking everyone. And I actually know that I had to retake this one a few times. So if we look at the waveform right here, we can see, I took it once too. And I think this is the one where I got it right. Just by looking at the sun, we can really quickly find different parts of the clip and where we should be cutting our clips. We fill this out here today. We're going to be doing a long-term issue at the DJ. So this is our clip, the right one. So we're going to come here. We're going to click on split. And this is where VN editor is really great to remove a clip. All you have to do is swipe up right here. So now we can come here. We can scroll to the end. Oh, I realized actually I had an editor take here so we can see, I had took it a few times. So we're actually going to remove this one. Come here. It should. This is the end. Okay. This is the end credit. We moved the next one here and we're good to go. So I'm not going to bore you with this process. I'm going to go through and cut the beginning and ads of all these clips. And then I'm going to talk about, I think, okay. So just like you saw, it was actually really quick cutting the in and out points by only looking at the waveform of the audio. It's a really great way to quickly go through all the clips without having to listen completely to them. And this is a really important thing because the less time you pass listening to the videos nonstop, the faster it's going to be to edit your video. So next thing we're going to look at is right here. So I have a pretty big pause . See it in the audio here, or I take a pause when I'm talking. So if you listen to the clip, we see I had a little as a hesi tation and took a pause inside the video, and we're going to create what we call a jump cut. And this is very typical of YouTube videos. So we're going to come right here at the beginning of the cut. We're going to click on split right here. We're going to go at the end of the clip, click on split again. And we're going to remove this part of the video. And I've looked back at this video. We're going to see it creates a cut. That is really rough and not the best type of cut, but this is typical in this type of videos because you want to keep the pace going pretty fast. One little trick here. If you want to make this cut a little bit better is actually to come here and go into the second clip right here. And now you can select the clip and you can see there's a yellow border that appears here, and I can use your finger to make it bigger. And by making your second clip a little bit bigger, it's going to make it look as if you zoomed in instead of that shot. So it's gonna make the cut a little bit more natural. So if we come back here, click on play video we see the cut now it looks a lot more natural. And this is why in a lot of videos actually see the people jumping forward and backwards because it makes the video a little bit more entertaining to look at and also hides the cuts that you're adding inside of your video. And everything I want to talk about is if I come here, I'm actually talking about noise inside photo was and realized it's not really that much of a problem. So this is a part of DV. I'm actually come here and cut it out. So this is very important when you're making a YouTube video is to cut out every part do you think is not necessarily the best one instead of the video. So it's really hard sometimes, cause you worked a lot. You pass some times from the video, but it arrives. Sometimes that I cut out half of the things that I filmed outside. And this is just normal to get a bit of video in the end because you don't have something too long. And if you're repeating yourself in the video, definitely don't want to leave that inside of the video. So I always cut down as much as possible, but now we're ready to go for the second step. And this is going to be adding our transition bureau inside of the video here. So first of all, we're going to come right here and then we're going to click on the plus icon here to add more videos. And here at the beginning, I had my intro. So I'm just going to add my intro right here. Then after this clip right here, we're going to go in search for some audio, uh, video. I filmed for the transition right here. So this might take a few seconds for me to find the right clips I want. Okay. So yeah, we're going to go with these three clips and now we're going to add these ones right here and now we're going to add them. We're going to see that they're pretty long. So I'm just going to scroll through, try and find or getting removed this, see where I get out. So I turn right here. Could it do this thing for the second clip here. So this is actually the one I want to have. And so I get in right here. Cut it, this is where I turned around, so I wouldn't have it right before I finished turning around. So do we arrange a clip inside of being editor is actually really simple and pretty similar to what are other software allow to do. So y ou simply long, press it here, and then you can move it around to somewhere else. So if you look back at this, it's a little bit slow and a little bit boring. So one thing we're going to do is come back and really cut it down to be as quick as possible. So the clip should not be more than one or two seconds. So we're going to come back here. We're going to keep this one. I'm going to get in here. Probably just going to keep one step, remove it right here. Then we're going to come in this one here. I'm just going to keep when I'm in the middle here. So we're going to go here to here could again here and finally the last one here, we're going to keep, when I'm having a step right here and turn around here. It's not for look at this. We're going to see it's much faster and it's much more snappier. And that's what we want because when the video to be fast and don't want to be boring people with our transition between the different shots, somebody continue editing all the other different, uh, transition b-roll but it's the same idea that applies for each of them. [ music]. Because I quickly want to talk about the last little sequence I have right here. So in this one, we're going to see that. If we look at it, we have a closeup of the drone. Then we have some drone shots. We have some shots of me walking, drone shot, again, some shots of the drone. And we consider first thing we have here is that all the shots are varying a little bit. So of having the drone shot, then me walking, then that's it. We have very different shots that are one after the other, and I've cut them to get her, to make it a little bit more entertaining. The second thing is that it's very tempting when you have a drone shot, especially to live it for longer because it looks really good. But even if a shots, it looks really good. You really need to cut. Learn to cut, cut and cut again. That's probably my best advice I can give is to always cut down as much as possible to have a pretty quick pace and the pace at least that you think is entertaining, then I'm ready to look at our whole video. So up to now, I haven't watched the whole video just to save some time. So I'm ready to go back to the beginning here and rewatch it completely. So let's do it. Okay. So next step is pretty important. One, it's adding our overlay b-roll and for this, it's actually pretty easy. So if you listen and the clip right here So we will here I am saying it a drone that goes easily inside of a backpack. So we're going to actually come back here. Then we go an option with here to add a sticker or picture and picture in this can allow to overlay some clips above the clip that we have right now, okay I found the clip that I wanted right here. So if we put it on top here, we can see that we have it here. Now, if we click on it, we can resize it to have it start at the right time and we're going to cut it down. So it's not as long as we can just peak through right here. And we want to align about at the same time, I'm seeing it. So if you look at the clip right here, we're going to see, okay, So right when I'm saying it's a drone that goes easily in the backpack. I showed the same visual that goes with it. If you didn't know it, it's pretty cool technique here. If you have a footage like this, drone shot is quite long. It just want to speed it up. It's actually to use what you call speed ramp. So you can come inside of here, click on the clip right here. Then we can go on the speed option instead of VN editor. And by default, if we go on regular here, we can speed up the clip by four or five times, which already makes the clip better looking. But then we've come back to curve here. We can go on the presets. They already have here and use, for example, the montage option here. And we're going to see it's going to slowly start going faster. Then it's going to slow down quite a lot. And it's going to go faster again. This is a pretty cool effect to get an, a more dynamic shot, but here I'm going to speed up the clip again, speed it up quite a lot more because I want everything to go faster. I do like the fact that it does slow down at some point here, but I think this looks just a lot better. It's a lot cooler shot and it was easy to add with the presets inside a VN editor. This can be done in pretty much all the other editors too. Uh, but it's definitely a feature worth checking out. If you have some drone footage, I finally completely any other b-roll on top and just like you saw it actually takes some time to do it. So now we're ready to add, I'll do graphics here. So the first thing we're to come and do is go on top here. And I actually have some graphics that I saved inside the library in VN editors. We could, if we go on stocks here, go in my own assets. We can add right here. We're just going to check it's direct ones. So we're going to have my social media accounts here. We can add it right here and here. If we see now we have a problem here because it's a green screen that is here. So we don't see the image underneath, but this is not a big problem. We can actually just go inside of the chroma option right here, then select our colors so we can move around this little toggle, just like the color, then change the intensity. We can bring it up quite a lot because when image make sure there's no spill and just bring up the spill here and we're all good. Now we can have our little animation on top here. Okay. So this is one customer animation that they made. We can actually go on YouTube and find quite a lot more animations like this. And the little trick is to screen, record your screen window, watching the video to video, to get these, uh, animations. Just make sure that they're on the green screen and that you have the rights to be filming them on YouTube. And another thing that we could add our titles and actually neat how you can add titles inside a VN editors here. So when I said it's cheaper, we could come in here. We could add a title. We're going to add a line title right here, and we're going to add the price. So I'm actually not sure how much to drone costs right now. So we're going to come in here and we're going to change the title right here. So we're going to call it, let's see it's a $500, but I'm not actually sure if that's the price or not. And then we're going to bring the title right here. You can resize it to make it bigger. We're going to put in the corner right here. And what is really neat is that now we can go in the motion option right here and we can add it in animation. So we're going to reveal it from this side. So simply by clicking it a few times, actually I want to slide it from the side. So we're going to slide it from this side. Then we're going to go onto, out animation at the same animation for sliding out. And now if we play this back, we're going to see that we have a nice little animation here that appears with your title and then goes out. So this is how easy it is to add a multiple titles. Those you can add as many as you want, or as little as you want, it's really for you to see what do you want to add to make your video more interesting. What is it pretty nice rule that you can keep in mind is that you should have something that visually appears at a maximum of ten second interval. So you shouldn't have more than 10 seconds. We're talking the video without having anything on the screen appearing to keep the attention of the people watching your video, okay. So now let's talk about the last step and this is adding sound or music to our video and also fixing the sound that we have. And the reason I keep this to the very last is that I want to make sure that everything else is set in place before adding music. Because if you added music before and start changing things around, it makes it a lot harder to fit, change things afterwards. So that's why I prefer fixing the audio at the very last step for the music we're going to be using epidemic sound. This is my preferred service to get some music, but really use whatever you want. Just know that you're not allowed to be using music from probably your preferred artists or anything that you found online that isn't royalty free. And if you need music, you don't want to pay anything. YouTube actually has a library of music. You can go on and get some free music for your videos. So definitely go check that one out. If you're interested to get some free music for your videos, but I'm going to go on and put a mic sound because it usually has better quality audio. And I'm not sponsored for this video, which is just a service I use. And I like, and I think that already here, they have a few suggestions for me from a channel. I think you've really said these. They're all pretty good. I do like them pretty much. So they pretty much know what I like the type of musics, which didn't come here and I'm going to download all of these different songs. So now that we download the music, we're ready to add it to our projects. We're going to call here and music I've imported it right here. So we're probably going to go, just can listen to the ones here. I think I like this one right here. So we're going to click on use. I don't want it very long. So we're just going to make it shorter. Let's see. 11 seconds. We're going to drop it here. So I want to align it with the beginning of my B roll right here. So my transition b-roll right here. So I want it to be about here. So that seems to be about right. So we're just going to play it. Yeah. So that seems pretty good. So then we're going to come here and make it a little bit shorter, but overlap it just a little bit here with our clip that starts and then go on option. And we're going to fade it out a little bit right here. We're just going to come inside here and check it a little bit here. So now if we play it again, it's going to start when our bureau starts and fade away when we're starting to talk again. So I stopped putting music behind my voice when I'm talking, because it was a little bit distracting for some people. So now I only put some music over the different parts of b-roll. I'm going to repeat the process for the other b-roll sequences. And we're going to talk about the last step we have to do with volume and to fix the audio instead of video [ inaudible]. So we have a last step to do for the audio. So the first one is, if we listen to some of the overlay audio right here, we're going to hear the drone quite a lot. So we want to go through all your overlay, audio, simply click on it and then bring down the volumes for the ones that are a little bit annoying. And the second thing is, if we listen right here to the audio of me talking and the music starting up, the music is actually louder than my voice. So again, you want to come here, go on the volume of the music and probably bring down the music. I'm pretty satisfied with the results we have here of our edit. And there's a really important thing that I want to talk about and it's to learn when to stop. So it's really easy when doing video editing to always want to fix something else. And there's always something you can fix, but you need to learn that when you're at 90% there, that the 10% is left is just not worth it to pass hours and hours trying to perfect it. And sometimes when you try to over edit your video, you end up making it worse instead of making it better. There's also a saying that says it's better done than perfect. And I really believe inside of the saying because instead of passing hours and hours, trying to perfect your edit, you might be better to go outside, film another video, then come back. It did again, learn more and repeat the process because by repeating the process, you actually going to learn more than trying to make your video right now. Perfect. So now we're ready to export the video and for this is actually pretty easy. So come here on this little icon and what is neat is that you have full control on your export options. And here we're going to put it at four key. So even if our video is at 1080P this is a little trick to get better quality on YouTube. You export it at 4k. And then when they are going to recode in 1080p is going to be better quality than if you exported it at 1080p and left it on YouTube at an 1080p. We're going leave different rates at 30 frames per second, because that's what we use. And we're simply going to click export and it's going to start exporting our video while this video is exporting. Let's wrap up this video. I also realize I only have two minutes left on my memory card. So it's really time to wrap up this video. If you enjoyed this video, please let me know by hitting the like button below and definitely consider subscribing. The next episode is going to be on how to publish the video and how to grow your YouTube channel. If you haven't seen it too first episode on planning your video and filming the video, I highly suggest you go check them out. There's going to be a link in the description down below. See you the next video bye-bye.
Video Links
- 👩💻 VN Video Editor
- 📕 Complete Script
- 📹 Final Video
- 1️⃣ How to plan
- 2️⃣ How to shoot
- 3️⃣ How to edit
- 🎞 Original Footage
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- TikTok
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
- http://bit.ly/loicba
What is this video about?
Welcome back to part three of my series on starting a YouTube channel in 2021. After we planned and shot the video in the first two episodes, now we're diving into the actual editing process. This is where your footage becomes a real video, and I'm going to show you how to do it using the VN Editor app—my choice because it's completely free, works across all platforms (Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows), and even exports 4K without a watermark.
The core approach I use is editing in distinct steps rather than trying to do everything at once. Here's the workflow: first, I edit the A-Roll (your main talking head footage), then add the B-Roll (supplementary shots), then overlay graphics and text, and finally handle music and audio adjustments. This staged approach keeps your computer from slowing down and makes it much easier to revise later.
For the A-Roll, I use the waveform to quickly identify where to cut—this means you don't have to sit through entire clips. I also introduce the concept of jump cuts, which are standard on YouTube. A small trick here: if you zoom in slightly on your second clip when making a cut, it looks like you zoomed in rather than jumped, making the cut feel more intentional.
When it comes to B-Roll, the golden rule is cut, cut, and cut again. Just because a drone shot looks beautiful doesn't mean it should stay in for ten seconds. Keep things tight and snappy. I also show how to use speed ramps to make footage more dynamic—VN Editor has some nice presets for this that work really well.
For graphics and overlays, I demonstrate how to add titles with animations, use chroma key to remove green screens, and layer B-Roll on top of your main footage. The rule of thumb here is to have something visual appear at least every ten seconds to maintain viewer attention.
Audio comes last, and that's intentional. I use Epidemic Sound for music (though YouTube's library has free options too) and only layer music over B-Roll sequences, not under my voice. I then do a final pass to balance volumes—bringing down any distracting background noise and ensuring the music doesn't overpower the dialogue.
The final piece of advice I want to leave you with is learning when to stop. Video editing can become a rabbit hole where you're constantly tweaking tiny details. But there's truth in the saying "done is better than perfect." Once you've hit around 90%, that last 10% often isn't worth the time investment. You'll learn more by finishing a video and making another one than by obsessing over perfection. Export at 4K if you can—YouTube will re-encode it and the quality will be better than exporting at 1080p directly.