How to edit SO good your viewers get addicted to your videos

imagine your editing is so good that your viewers can't resist watching until the end I want that for you so I've boiled down my years of editing experience into a four pillar formula by the way you'll have to take notes today because we are going way deeper than basic things like cutting out Dead Space editing is so much more than that and let's be real your video deserves so much more than that a great editing style may get you perfect watch time and millions of views but it may also leave you with terrible view counts

and Broken Dreams to figure out why let's start with this it's just this guy Sam in his car talking and then working out the video lasts 26 minutes but has just 17 cuts and no other form of editing how many views how many subscribers do you expect him to have so this means that editing is optional right wait slow down that's not what's going on here Sam did edit he cut out all the boring parts that the viewer didn't come to see but he left it at that because his viewers aren't looking for a super

stimulating experience they just want to feel like they're spending time with someone a bunch of Quick Cuts and flashy animations would ruin that authentic experience that the viewer wanted and guess what A disruption of what the viewer came to the video for is the best way to make them stop watching and while Sam edits with an average of 90 seconds between cuts Mr Beast does quite the opposite so if both editing Styles work what should you do start with considering what experience your viewers want Sam's editing tells us that millions of people come to YouTube

to feel like they're hanging out with someone Mr BEAST's rapid fire style shows that a ton of people go on YouTube for entertainment all your editing choices contribute to that experience for example cutting out all your pauses so that you're speaking constantly is is easily the most important thing for entertainment but it takes away from authenticity an effective editing style takes all these choices into account so as I reveal the reasoning behind my editing for my first three uploads take notes on what you should add to your own videos based on what suits your audience

the best this video is not a bunch of tutorials it's a handbook to addictive editing think of it as a foundational starting point to know what tutorials you should even watch in the first place I want you to look at this there's a problem here this is the timeline of a typically edited YouTube video a couple cuts have removed the unnecessary bits there was a tangent here that wasn't really relevant to the video's greater purpose these Cuts removed pauses and these removed bad takes but in its current form this video is doomed to fall short

of its potential the reason is this video isn't using its visuals to maximize attention think about this when you see a change in your vision like something moving abruptly it gets your attention the same is true for watching a video and here there's only three different things to look at in the span of a minute kind of boring but if the video were to switch between a roll b roll and other types of footage every few seconds it would keep attention much better however there is a drawback to changing what's on screen too much try

to notice it as we go over how different types of footage should be used to maximize engagement a roll this is when you can both see and hear the subject at the same time it feels personal and holds attention really well if you're speaking with confidence use it for short periods of time when you're saying something important b-roll this is extra footage recorded separately from the audio it creates a visual depiction of your words letting the viewer see what you're talking about instead of just having to look at your face this lets you get things

across much more clearly and faster too it's more interesting than a-roll so use it as much as possible some variants of b-roll are stock footage which is just a lazy version and Motion Graphics these improve explanation times a ton look at how quickly a complicated thing was explained in this dude perfect video did you find something nope I found a suspicious looking math problem over by the pool table and it appears that I need to use the pool balls and the numbers on them to form some kind of solution you really need to understand how

crucial that editing Choice was that was an essential but boring moment in the video story any attempt to use a roll or a normal b roll in this moment would either be too slow slow or terribly confusing both of which would lose viewers but an animation explained it crystal clear and fast that's the sort of editing choice you need to make to create an addictive video if you've been following my channel then you've probably noticed I've only uploaded three videos and with that I've gotten over 300,000 views and like 13,000 subscribers what makes it crazier

is that I haven't promoted these videos anywhere I just uploaded them on YouTube and they did great completely by themselves because of all the YouTube knowledge I've gotten over the years I got a channel last year that I got to like 60,000 subscribers and over 24 million views so naturally I've been getting a ton of comments and emails of people asking me to help them out so I want to let you know that I'm releasing my calendar below but it's for serious creators only if that sounds interesting to you then you can book a call

below to learn how to grow your YouTube channel and by the way the spots are extremely Limited at the moment so don't miss out now you probably remember from earlier there's a drawback to cutting between different clips a ton all of this visual variety can quickly become visual mush if you're doing it wrong let's say you want to be engaging so you're trying to cut between different clips literally as much as possible you risk making things confusing which hurts engagement to avoid that don't minimize shot duration just for the sake of minimizing shot duration it's

okay to leave the same clip on screen for for 10 seconds if it's interesting for 10 seconds and often times adding some engagement spice to your video doesn't even require cutting to another clip instead use some of these tricks to make things way more immersive first give some movement to any boring still Clips you have make either the scale or position slowly change or even better make things Fancy by changing their perspective you can also do more abrupt scale changes to draw attention to certain things for example when I say something important and an a-roll

segment I'll zoom in close to my face to subtly communicate to the viewer that they should listen up you might also make wiggle key frames that's when you see images or text or maybe the whole video shaking around you never see me doing this because I don't like the way it looks but if you want to do it then go ahead next throw on a bunch of visuals on top of your footage many people make the mistake of adding captions just to jack up the visual variety but don't forget that drawback that we talked about

using captions to fill in Dead Space can quickly become obnoxious and ruin a great opportunity to use a more engaging visual so I only use captions when I want the viewer to understand and pay closer attention to certain words but if there's really nothing else to put on screen captions are often still better than nothing also keep them the three words or less at a time because it makes them easier to read now let's say you're showing an image to the viewer if you plainly show the whole thing like this it's boring and more importantly

it's confusing to make things crystal clear and create some visual variety guide the viewer's attention to the focus point of the image here are six ways that I do that which go beyond just scaling and positioning take notes cuz this is what gives you professional looking timelines like these animate the most important piece of text or area of the image being highlighted darken or blur the area that surrounds the focus point of the image shift the Hue of the image to make it red and it gives the image a negative connotation you can also shift

it to yellow or green to make it seem positive circles arrows and underlines also work oh and one extra make the subject glow another immersion hack is to just make the video look good this could be color grading adding a v yet or some subtle particle animations on the topic of making things look good let's bring our Focus to make things feel good this next pillar literally makes your video a digital morphine stream so we've talked about visual variety but now let's talk about visual continuity if you manage to create a seamless feed of visuals

then there's no rough edges no areas for distraction to build up there's no point where the viewer loses immersion the goal for this pillar is to make every moment blend into the next seamlessly the editing should be invisible The Experience mesmerizing anytime a graphic comes on screen it can't just magically appear there that doesn't make sense it needs to somehow move into the frame check the description for my free presets now you don't have to animate things you can also let something magically appear on screen but then explain how it got there using a sound

effect I like to use the shutter sound effect but a pop sound or something like that also works now this is super important look I just made a cut but I messed up the most crucial rule of doing a cut in the last frame of this first clip the viewer is looking right here in my eyes then a tiny fraction of a second later in the first frame of the second clip the viewer is now expected to look here that's a little jarring and it breaks some of the immersion that your editing should be providing

imagine if every cut the viewer had to keep changing Focus from one side of the screen all the way to the other this right here is a pretty unimmersive viewing experience another way to make cut seamless is using a full screen transition there's plenty of free packs out there but if you like my subtle style of them then I got something for you in the description and don't be afraid to break visual continuity every now and then cuz remember it jolts the viewer it'll get their attention look at this timeline we've been talking about all

these ways to make the video visually addicting to watch but we've been leaving out the other half of the video there is a whole another sense for your viewer to experience the video in pillar four immersive audio sound design makes the viewer experience every cut transition animation and piece of footage through a second sense it's literally double the stimulation and it can be used to influence the mood that the viewer has which is an engagement superpower that we'll talk about more once we get to your music choice but for now the first step of sound

design is to gather a bunch of sounds to work with I already got that for you start with that free sound design back of copyright free sounds that I made for you in the description if you need more check out freesound.org or get epidemic sound next go through your video and basically just add sound effects wherever it makes sense when something moves you should add a whoosh sound and when something's highlighted a highlight sound now comes the engaging part these next three types of sound effects literally hijack your viewers emotions and suck them into the

video first are risers they build tension and anticipation because they communicate to the audience that something really important is about to happen but only use them if something important is actually going to happen or else they will lose their reputation and won't be effective next are hits these release tension and emphasize moments making them feel important you can use these on their own or place a riser before them it depends on the situation and again don't overdo them finally drones these create a feeling of mystery and Intrigue they reserved more for darker moods creating a

lot of underlying suspense these sound effects are so good because they kind of manipul ulate the viewer's emotions which is so powerful because the more emotionally invested the viewer is the more engaged they are and these sound effects are just the tip of the iceberg to achieve this below the surface is a massive potential for emotional investment your music choice for example I like to find songs that create a feeling of anticipation which makes the viewer constantly believe I'm about to say something super important then during a segment where I'm giving groundbreaking advice I use

a song that gives an Innovative feeling which creates a ton of excitement over what I'm saying this is super straightforward to pull off separate your video based on subject changes and then decide the mood the viewer should have for each subject by the way you should spend a lot of time finding the right music because it is really important that it fits you can find some good copyright free songs on the YouTube audio library and there's the occasional gem artist like let me know which offers free songs but to be honest subscribing to a licensed

music platform is the best choice if you're going to take YouTube seriously I'm not sponsored but I saved like 4 hours with them last time and I found way better songs I have an affiliate link for them in the description okay this is going to sound crazy but there's even more you can do with your music choice to immerse the viewer like what do you think happens if you pause the music abruptly the sudden change will jolt the viewer getting their attention also the lack of music brings attention to other parts of the video so

for special moments try pausing the music to elev at that moment now what if you instead let the music slowly fade out once the viewer notices that the music is going away they'll understand that the segment they're watching is coming to a close this realization gives them anticipation of something new coming okay let's get even more advanced Beyond just making the mood of the song match the tone of the segment it's in upgrade your music by sinking the hits and dips of the song to the video for example in this segment I introduced the problem

here and began teaching the solution here I line things up so that at this exact moment the music picks up doing that marks a clear topic shift from problem to solution and also makes the solution segment more exciting and if you're wondering why I have four music tracks playing at the same time it's because I downloaded the separate elements of the song that's another feature of epidemic sound which is super helpful all right I hope that helped now there's a lot more to retention so click here for a video on that and then you're interested

in that call thing there's a link below