My New Favorite Video Hack

The most annoying part of creating YouTube videos is editing them.

I actually enjoy editing, but it takes WAY TOO MUCH TIME!

For me, the longest portion of the task is putting together the “A-Roll”

That’s the part of the video that is just the “talking head” or when you just see me on the camera.

There are a few things that need to be done to that footage to “make it look good” for the recipe for your channel.

This is what I do and time estimates for each…

1. Take Content from The Video Card

This is the easy part, you have to take the video from your camera and upload it to your computer so you can manipulate it.

This takes about 10 minutes, depending on the length of the video.

2. Combine audio and video clips

This used to be a headache in itself, but now the video editing software I use (Final Cut Pro) can do this automatically for you.

But you just need to put the audio and video files into a project and have the software combine them.

This takes about 5 minutes.

3. Color Grade

Color grading is just a fancy way of making your videos look more polished in terms of color.

For example, have you ever noticed how movies vs TV Shows vs soap operas all “look and feel” different?

It’s because of the frames per second it’s shot, but also because of the color palette being used.

Once you do this enough times, this step takes maybe 3 minutes, assuming the lighting conditions of your setup are always the same.

4. Cut out the bad takes

This is where the headache comes….

If I have a video of about 15 to 20 minutes, that might also include 40 minutes of bad takes and me trying to get my thoughts together.

Even if I script everything word for word, it still runs that long. Which means I have to edit 80% of footage that will never see the light of day.

This is tedious and annoying and can take 1 to 2 HOURS to do, and we haven’t even gotten into editing the actual video.

I’ve done this manually for years, but now there is a new tool I stumbled on called Gling.

My solution:

Now at the risk of this sounding like a commercial (it’s not) but it’s actually something I use and it’s free, so there is that.

But Gling allows you to upload your video footage and it will transcribe it using AI and remove the bad takes for you.

It does it all in about 3 minutes. Then, you can export it and put it back in your editing software of choice.

If you are using Adobe Premier Pro, I believe it already has something built in for that, but for anything else, you should be using Gling.

It has transformed a task that usually takes me 2 hours into one that can now be completed in about 15- 20 minutes.

The software isn’t perfect, and you still need to watch what it has cut out to make sure your video still makes sense. I was skeptical of that when I started.

But it worked… remarkably well.

Check GLING out right here and let me know what you think.

Chat soon,
Chris Myles