Hello Loves! Welcome to my bookish corner of the Internet! Today, I thought I would talk about my booktubing editing process.

When I was an undergraduate, I was a part of the film and video club, enrolled in a documentary filmmaking class, and had to know how to edit videos. For my documentary film class, we had to utilize Final Cut Pro. There was one computer lab on campus with the software and they had hours that did not really correlate to my schedule at the time. For my birthday, my parents gave me the money to purchase Final Cut Pro. Thank you, mom and dad! With the software on my computer, I could work from my dorm room and get my editing done on my own time. It was perfect. 

When I was in middle school and high school, I was also involved with filming. Editing was not a new skill for me. I learned how to somewhat professionally edit videos at my local television station for a project when I was a freshman in high school. From there, I simply built on that skill set. One of the reasons I felt comfortable joining YouTube was because I knew I could edit my content. There was no pressure. If I made a mistake, I could start again and edit out the part where I stumbled over my words or my dog barked at the neighbors. My background and experiences with editing made me more at ease.

I edit my videos. A lot. I add music, text, images, and more. I take the time to enhance my videos with extras. These are things I enjoy as a viewer, so I wanted to include that type of content in my own videos. You do not have to add these things to be successful or find your YouTube voice, this is just what I personally like to do.

I live in an apartment building in the city, background noise is out of my control. I can turn off the heat or air conditioning to eliminate noise from my apartment, but the outside world does not have an off switch. I add music as a way to cover up those sounds, just in case they made it into my video.

I talk like a Gilmore Girl when I get excited about books. I talk quickly. That’s how I talk. Plain and simple. That’s just me. I know this about myself. To be on the safe side, I will include website links and names of products or brands on screen (usually in the upper right-hand corner or at the bottom of the screen in the middle) just in case I said it too quickly for some people. I want to make sure that I give people the proper shout out. Gilmore Girls had quite the fan following, so I know people don’t mind a little bit of fast talking. I just try to ensure for those people who might be familiar with that type of quickness that they catch what I’m saying too.

When I’m editing, I watch the unedited version once and make minor edits as I go. I will eliminate pauses or instances of background noise. For instance, if my dog, Max, barks and I lose my train-of-thought or a police siren blares, and I stop talking for three minutes while it passes, I edit those scenes out. I then go back and see what else can be edited. I will go through the footage a handful of times before I’m happy with it. Once the footage is edited, I add in the special effects; images, text, sound, etc. I add the special effects at the end because timing is key. If I add them at the beginning, and I move something around, it is more than likely that things won’t align when I go to play the footage back. Special effects are one of my last editing steps.  

Once I have the video the way I want, I watch it twice. I watch it in Final Cut Pro with the video at the top, allowing me to pause and make edits. Then, I play it full screen to see what the final version will be.

From here, I will save the video to my external hard drive (which can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour) and then upload it to YouTube. If you haven’t uploaded anything to YouTube, then you may or may not know about the upload process. Well, my five to ten-minute videos take, at minimum, an hour to upload, usually longer. I simply leave the YouTube window open and let it take its time. While the video is uploading, I will create the thumbnail image and then upload it to YouTube. From there, I will title the video, write a caption, and add key/search words. Once this is complete, the video is still uploading. As a reward, I might go to Starbucks or something, while YouTube continues to work.

Once the video is uploaded to YouTube, I schedule when I want it to go live and then presto, I have a brand-new video. I try to be consistent. I post my new videos Friday(s) at 12:00 PM EST. YouTube makes this easy. All I have to do is know what day and time and they do the rest. Easy, right?

From there, I just wait until the video goes live and then I get to interact with all of you.

I hope this post illuminates some of the behind-the-scenes work I do. If you have any additional questions, please let me know in the comment section.

Thank you so much for reading! Please stay kind + creative and be sure to make today a great reading + writing day!

Love,

Angela