Now that you have some raw video we’re going to edit it to prepare it for publishing.

If you’ve been following along you’ll have one long take that includes all of your ums, errs and silences whilst reading the script before delivery.

Not to worry - we’re about to slice and dice all that out automatically.

1. Mind the gaps

First we’re going to process our raw video so that all the silences are removed. We shot the video in a way that means once the silences are out it’ll flow together nicely.

There are a few AI tools that can do this for you totally automatically.

Personally I use https://www.kapwing.com/ . I’ve tried a bunch of different tools and this one does the best for me. It’s a bit more expensive but that’s because it’s a full edit suite. We can use it for all the steps I’ll be explaining.

If you want a tool just to remove silences and mistakes I recommend https://www.gling.ai/.

Both have free trials so feel free to check them both out.

I’ll be focusing on Kapwing but giving alternatives for the rest of the steps moving forward.

First make sure you have your raw video file available. If you’ve used a tool like Tella or Loom download the file. I recommend as high a resolution as possible to ensure quality. Each tool you use will tend to compress the file and lose quality a bit so we start with the highest possible quality possible.

In Kapwing create a new project and you’ll see this screen:

Just drag and drop your video file into this screen and wait for Kapwing to upload the video and you see this screen:

This is the main editing panel. Looks pretty complex! But don’t worry - we’re going to keep everything simple for now. We can use Kapwing for simple, automated editing and for more complex work if we want to do that later. It’s versatile and will scale to your needs as you become more confident.

All we’re going to do is click on the timeline at the bottom:

First click on the timeline at the bottom. This selects the video.

Next click Clean Audio. This will run a process to tidy up the audio, level it out and generally make it sound more professional.

Then click Smart Cut. This is where the AI kicks in and does a lot of the work for us.

You’ll see a screen like this:

All the red areas are my silences.

This are the points at which I was reading my script and working out how to deliver the content.

Or they are simply points when I needed a break to gather my thoughts before moving on.

If they were left in the video it would be unwatchable! And if I was editing manually it would be a pain the arse to find and cut all of these bits out.

But SmartCut does the job for us, identifying and clipping them all out.

Go ahead and click Done and SmartCut will do its job. You’ll have a fully edited video.

2. Tidying up

If you were careful during recording and got all of your lines delivered perfectly then your job is done - the SmartCut will have done enough to clean your video ready for publishing.

Chances are though that you had some missteps and had to restart certain lines. No problem! We’ll now tidy up those elements.

Personally I put the whole video on 2x speed for this part. There’s a dropdown next to the main play button. Putting it to 2x will speed up this next step as it allows you to “scan” the video faster.

Go ahead and press play and watch the video. Pay close attention to the cuts between videos. In the image above there are 7 clips visible. Each square is it’s own clip and the line between each clip is where the cut is.

You may find that some of the clips just have you saying “um” and nothing else. Click on those clips and press Cmd+Backspace (Mac) or Cntrl + Backspace (PC). This will delete the “um” clip and the space itself - bringing the two clips either side together where the “um” mistake used to be.

Also look out for parts when you started, made an error, stopped and started again. When this happens delete the clip with the error, again with Cmd+Backspace and that should be enough to correct the video.

If you need to extend or shorten a clip grab the little “handles” (white vertical lines) at the side of the clip and drag them. You shouldn’t need to do this much but it’s helpful to know how.

Continue doing this until you’ve cleaned up the video. Give it another watch through at 2x speed to make sure it’s tidied.

3. Adding imagery

If you’ve watched my videos you’ll know that I’ll often bring the prompts up on screen and walk through them.

Adding imagery like this is nice and easy in Kapwing. Just drag and drop any image you want over your video and it’ll be inserted at that point in the video.

First navigate using the timeline to where you want the image to appear. This is the “in” point.

Then go ahead and drag and drop the image over the main video window. This will insert the image.

By default any image will stay for 3 seconds exactly. If you want to increase this you can drag the right side of the image in the timeline to the end point where you want the image to disappear. If you can’t “catch” the right hand side of the image then zoom into the timeline until it’s larger and easier to manipulate.

Adjust the position and size of the image by dragging it around in the main video view. One weird peculiarity is that Kapwing by default gives images non-fixed aspect ratios. As you resize it you’ll start to see bits of the image disappear. Very annoying. To fix this click on the image and then in the right hand side options make sure Aspect Ratio is set to locked.

Also I recommend adding a basic transition so that the appearance and disappearance is less abrupt. In the same options menu click Transitions, choose a style and apply to Both intro and outro.

4. Subtitles

We can also use AI to generate and add subtitles. These are super helpful for audience members whose first language is different to our own - for example non native English speakers find my English subtitles make it a lot easier to follow along with my spoken English.

To do this we first transcribe. In Kapwing click the Transcript button in the left hand menu.

Set your language and click Transcribe. Give Kapwing a few moments to perform the transcription and synching process.

You’ll see a text version of your script appear in the left. It should be fairly accurate - Kapwing has one of the best voice transcription tools I’ve used.

Let’s add the subtitles. Click Subtitles and select your options:

Generally you’ll select your original language and add the subtitles in your original language too. Then hit Auto Subtitle to add.

Give the subtitles a quick read through and edit any words that it gets wrong. For instance it (and all voice transcription!) tend to called Chat GPT “Chat GBT”. Just adjust these errors directly.

You can’t edit the transcription - only the subtitles. So make sure you are in the right section.

Play the video and you’ll see the subtitles synched up to your voice. It should be very accurate.

You can also change the style of the subtitles themselves. Click on the new subtitle layer in your timeline - it’ll be orange coloured and will contain text. Once clicked the style menu for the subtitles will appear in the right options menu.

Click View All to see the various subtitle options and choose the one you want. You can also manually adjust the font and other options if you need finer control.

Pulling it together

Whether you’ve done a quick SmartCut and left it at that or gone deep and adding images, subtitles and a more refined cut you’ll now have a complete video.

Remember this is your first video. Perfect is the enemy of good. We’re going to move onto getting everything published ASAP so you can begin to gauge reactions and improve your videos.

So don’t obsessively edit and reedit - get something decent and move on! We’ll get better at editing later!

A reminder of what we’re covering this week :

Part 1: Creating Video Scripts

Part 2: Recording High-Quality Video

Part 3: Rapid video editing

Part 4: Multi-Purposing Content

Part 5: Publishing and Promoting Video