How to Edit Viral Videos

I'm a 17 year old YouTuber and professional video editor with millions of views and years of experience to my name here's how to edit videos that go viral and make you a ton of money in the process whether you're editing for yourself or even somebody else to start you'll obviously need a video idea script and voiceover depending on the type of video you want to create I'll assume you had that already which means now we have to gather a bunch of footage to edit with there are two main types of footage that you'll likely use

a-roll and b-roll a-roll is just footage where the voiceover is inside of the video for example in a clip where somebody is talking directly to the camera b-roll on the other hand is footage that goes on top of the voiceover which can be in the form of stock videos footage shot with a camera and even screen recorded Clips off of YouTube to name a few examples A good rule of thumb is to gather enough a-roll to last the whole video and at the same time get enough b-roll to cover the whole length of the video

two to four times over maybe it seems Overkill to you but trust me you can never have too much b-roll depending on the type of video you're making you'll get your b-roll in a variety of different ways for example on my gamedev channel most of the b-roll that I use is directly taken from the game and just screen record if your video is more cinematic you might want to go out and film some stuff and really you just have to get creative with this maybe if you're editing for somebody else they've already given you stuff

which is great if you end up not having enough b-roll though stock footage is great to fill the gaps and lucky for you stock footage is actually really easy to find on the internet many times it's even free our list.io envato elements and storyblocks are some of the most popular paid Solutions if you sign up for any of these using the affiliate links in my description then I'll actually get a small commission and it helps support however some people can't or won't pay for stuff like this and I understand that so I just recommend you

use pixels.com in that case in fact one of the editors on this channel actually uses pixels remember to use my links in the description to sign up for any of these when you've gathered all your b-roll and a-roll if you decide to include it then lay down the footage for your intro don't even worry about the rest of your video yet as an editor the first few seconds of your video are easily the most important part as they usually dictate whether the viewer stays for the rest of the video or not the average person today

has severe undiagnosed Ada HD and the attention span of a goldfish so it's important that you blow up their screen with stimulation in the opening shots of your video if you have a-roll with your face in it then it may be beneficial to start with that footage as it creates a personal human connection with the viewer if not no worries as you lay out the rest of your intro make sure you have about three times as much b-roll as a-roll or just don't include a-roll at all try to make Cuts every one to four seconds

as well so that you keep your viewers hooked if you have a voiceover or honestly even if you don't just try to keep your intro as concise as possible because when an intro drags on it's really just so easy to click off the video also don't worry about crazy visual effects or Motion Graphics quite yet as for now we just want a rough edit to work with when you've got your intro lay out the rest of your footage across the entire video once again if you have a-roll make sure you're including about three times as

much b-roll as you have a-roll as otherwise it's really boring just to look at your face the whole time no matter how attractive you are and believe me I know you are no need to go as crazy as you did in the intro but still try to keep your Cuts quick and try and not you know lose the viewer this especially applies if you have a voiceover and video a half second pause in between two parts of a voiceover may not seem like much but when you have it throughout an entire video it becomes definite

if you have two parts of a voiceover back to back and they sound rough literally just overlap them like this on two separate audio tracks and it'll sound really smooth then when you get to the outro just like the intro make sure it doesn't drag out or your retention graph will have a ton of viewers dropping off in the last 15 seconds either keep your outro short and simple or just don't include one at all just make sure you leave at least five seconds for an end screen now on to the fun stuff let's start

by spicing up our video with subtitles subtitles are a great retention hack and actually aren't that hard to make in your video editor of choice write out some text and send it recognize font scale it down and move it to the bottom of the screen so that it's not too distracting if you don't want subtitles that are animated then great just duplicate it a bunch of times and you're done otherwise start by making a keyframe for the current scale of the text and move it about 5 frames out from the beginning then scale it down

a little bit but not all the way and add that keyframe to the beginning finally scale it a little bit bigger than your last keyframe and stick it about three frames out from the beginning if you play you should get a really nice pop-in subtitle effect now as I said before all you have to do is duplicate this and use it wherever you want obviously changing the text though I like to always include subtitles in my intro because like I said it's a great retention hack but otherwise use them sort of sparingly throughout the rest

of the video it really all comes down to personal preference whatever you do though just make sure they're not too distract I like to think they're a nice supplement to whatever's going on the screen and really shouldn't be there just to overtake everything next I'm going to show you how to make all those crazy Transitions and motion effects that you see other YouTubers use it's honestly not too difficult to make all of these ourselves but most YouTubers work smarter instead of hard what I mean by this is they really just use other people's presets to

get it done quickly I'll leave links to a few popular preset packs that I use in the description depending on your video editor of choice otherwise literally just look up like free preset packs for whatever editor you're using you might have to sign up for an email list or something but it's totally worth it trust just like subtitles wherever you use these in your video they really shouldn't be too distracting there's no one size if it's all rule for this so you really just have to experiment and see what looks good and what does here's

another cool editing trick in my videos I like to have a bit of fun and do a lot of motion tracking for example I don't show my face so sometimes I'll just have my profile picture track the head of somebody in a stock video to make it look like it's me to do this you'll first need the image and then a video to go in the background line them up and then scroll to the beginning of the video and the image then move your image to wherever you want it to track and make keyframes for

position and scale next scrub forward a couple frames and move it again and make two more keyframes keep doing this for the rest of the clip and when you're done you've just motion tracked an image successful go to editing is all about being creative so really just have fun with this one last thing I like to do in editing is to take advantage of scale for example if the voiceover says something stupid then I'll scale the clips down on screen to about 80 percent like this this creates emphasis and really just makes it funnier for

some reason scaling things up is cool too like especially when it gets all grainy and low resolution it's really all up to your Artistic Touch but just have fun with this just like anything else scaling also doesn't have to be stagnant especially in your intro but wherever you have something still try making keyframes for the start and end of Clips to have it scale up over time like this especially if you have still images in your edit this just adds some motion to it and makes it a lot more interesting once again you really just

have to figure out what looks good and experiment now that we've polished up our video with all of these cool effects we now need to add sounds to bring the video to life sound design may seem like a small part of the edit but honestly it's the single biggest thing that turns a decent edit into an incredible end I just read most of my sounds off of YouTube and a couple other platforms that I'll talk about when we get to music I've also found it useful to go just ask other YouTubers for the sounds that

they use and it usually works as for actual using sound effects just use them anywhere it makes sense I know that's helpful but for example if an image slides onto the screen use a whoosh sound effect or some kind of rock slide because that's what would happen in real life I guess whenever you do just keep building up a large catalog of sound so that when you do need to actually use them you can vary it up as well like don't use the same pop sound effect five times in a row or it'll be boring

depending on your style of editing you may also want to tone back or lean into sound design more which is fine just never ignore it trust me up next is music you're going to want to start by sectioning out your video in some form or fashion basically anytime you change the subject or whenever the mood changes or when you go to a different place Etc it really all depends on what's relevant to your video but figure this out and Mark each section of your video in your video editing software after that go find music to

use in your video but don't describe any using copyrighted music comes with a ton of risks that you really don't want so make sure you're actually able to use whatever music non copyright music on YouTube is usually pretty bad cheesy or all of the above so I personally use a couple different platforms for music first is thematic the Matic has a really generous free plan giving you five downloads per month and a humongous catalog of free music to go through if you want unlimited downloads and even more music you can either give songs ratings or

pay eight dollars a month for a thematic premium this video isn't sponsored but if you buy thematic premium with the link in my description I take a pretty significant cut I used to rely on thematic quite a bit but nowadays I use epidemic sound epidemic sound has a way bigger catalog of music and more advanced Discovery tools it costs nine dollars a month for the personal plan and also includes sound effects once again this video isn't sponsored by them but if you sign up with the link in my description I also take a cut of

the sale of course there are plenty of other platforms out there for you to use or honestly you can just use Nintendo's music as they allow creators to use their music and their content as long as they provide quote creative expression on top of them whatever you do just be careful when you've got your music lay it out on your timeline underneath all of your footage based on the sections that you made earlier it's gonna be really loud at first so I keep the volume in between negative 20 and negative 10 decibels so that you

can still hear the voiceover if you ever need to cut the music for a second like when you say something funny and want to isolate the voice over don't just cut the ends like this because it could sound rough instead still cut both ends but add little Fade Out and fade in transitions to the start and end of the Snippets to make it sound better and not so harsh similarly if you ever have songs back to back and they sound rough we can just have them fade into each other or you can even take advantage

of sound design and use a riser or something to kind of mask the transition between the two songs when you've got all of this done polish up any loose ends in your video and you're finished if you like this video and want to learn how to start making money off of your edits and come up with viral video ideas go watch my video about how I monetize my channel in only 30 days [Music]