Editor Andrew

4 years ago I was installing automated packaging machines for a massive retailer you’ve heard of. I hated it. I would be on the road constantly. During the night I would work out in the hotel gym alone. But I had Fitness YouTube to keep me company. Early on, a coworker said in the last 9 years he hadn’t learned anything new. Amazing. I knew I couldn’t stay there. I moved across the country and worked for free to learn YouTube editing. Since then I’ve worked with channels like Vigorous Steve, Will Tennyson, and Jeremy Ethier and helped generate 35M+ views. Here I share the editing problems I solve to make the videos the best they can be, even if they’re being watched from a hotel gym.

This next video goes hard. Releases on YT tomorrow, March 8

@nocontextmemes Some people cannot be helped

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of editing work that involves creating clips or shorts out of longer content pieces. Slowly digging through hours of footage, I realized my usual sifting method was eating up too much time. I would often get distracted and forget what I was even watching the footage for! So I started letting AI generate chapters for the raw video. Then I imported those chapters into Premiere Pro as markers right above my footage. Now AI isn’t good at keeping a story intact when a chapter is straight up clipped and taken out of context, but it does create a roadmap that helps me a lot in finding those key moments.

If you have a bunch of audio tracks you need to make mono, not stereo, here’s a cool trick: Make a new track in premiere pro, and set it to mono-only. Then just drag your audio clips onto that track and you’re good to go! Much faster than converting them one by one.

One of the hardest things to fix in audio is Reverb. It’s super apparent when the talent doesn’t have time to set up a proper recording studio. If you have struggled fixing it with built-in audio tools like EQ, then you can save so much time by using this plugin called Waves De Reverb Pro. Not sponsored by them or anything but I can’t tell you how many times that 99% of the problem in an audio file is the reverb and this plugin has been the only thing that can noticeably fix it. waves.com/plugins/clarit…

As an editor, do you find yourself spending the majority of your time on the final, polish stage of a video? One thing that helped me was having an end-state defined. Like a target runtime for example. Let’s say that runtime is 30 minutes. If you’ve cut the video down to 29, don’t overthink it. Go through each part of the video and do the polish once, labeling each section as 100% complete or not as you go. Then don’t ever go back over those sections. This has helped me save so much time.

Just finished a new Will Tennyson video (4.3M subs) At first I was a little worried about getting it under 40 minutes since we had so many great B-roll shots to go through and work with. So I tried an idea I’ve been working on: I grouped all of the A-roll first, used that to build the story and get the pacing right for one segment, and only then go and look at using the B-roll to support what’s already there. This worked out really well because my mind only had to focus on one type of task at a time, and I was able to put together a rough cut rather quickly and efficiently that people seem to be enjoying! I Tried Fast Foods Unhealthiest Items; youtu.be/Wtx3rb2ij8I?si…

For my last video, I was really struggling with building tension. An idea that helped me a lot was of think of Tension = Clues. How could I give relevant information to the audience without giving away the punchline? How could I narrow down what the answer could possibly be without making it obvious? Murder mysteries do this really well when they give you clues that eliminate suspects but you still want to watch because it still isn’t 100% obvious who the killer is. Thinking about it in this way made writing my latest YouTube video much easier, and it’s also my best performing one this year.

@me_videoeditor Based in the US or EU

@editorandrewx Remote work outside US or EU?

Looking for an assistant editor for rough cutting long-form fitness YouTube videos! What you will be doing: - Cutting down 2-3 hours of footage into a 30-40 minute rough cut - Setting up the premiere pro project according to my guidelines Requirements: - 18+ - Premiere Pro / Adobe Suite User - Based in the US or EU - Experience editing fitness content - Fine with downloading folders of 100GB+ worth of footage - Ability to handle 1 video per week - Good at communication and not late on deadlines If you’re interested, post your portfolio below and I’ll DM you! Everyone will get a message of some kind, but DO NOT DM ME FIRST.

@hasnainn432 It looks like your DM's are closed

@editorandrewx Here bro.

@EditorLaJuan Yeah like 60% of the calendar time is spent on actual 100% focused work

What do you mean by above 60% effective? 60% of the time from 9am to midnight? I like Cal Newport's idea of deep work. I time block two 4 hour sessions for work and one 4 hour session for personal work. In each of those 4 hour sessions are 1 - 2 "intentional sprints" with a single focus. (When I can, sometimes work is hectic and I have to skip personal work, gym and sunlight haha)

I’ve tracked every second of my time since March 2023. Here’s a few things I learned: To work more focused hours it’s more effective for me to try to limit breaks and distractions than try to just work more. You can’t make more work time, you have to trade time for it from somewhere else. It also helps a lot to know very clearly what I should work on next, otherwise I might default to a distraction or busywork. Going to the gym takes less time than you think. Going to the grocery store takes more time than you think. Packing for a move takes up more time than almost anything. If I work all day from 9am to midnight there were still probably a max of 8 good, focused hours in there. Most people just look at the time they start work, and the time they stop, and count that as productive hours. I don’t. I subtract all the time for breaks/food/bathroom and interruptions from family/friends/pets. So I take everyone else’s claims on their work hours with a grain of salt. If you’re above 60% productive that’s actually pretty good. I also don’t have meetings which adds a ton of time to other folks’ “work hours”.

I was gonna build a B-roll library for a client, but Adobe’s Media Search is actually insanely good

This is the best, most reliable tool I've found to download YouTube videos. cnvmp3.com/v35 What do you use?

@Ecl1psedits Yes

@editorandrewx But is also true that in the beginning is normal to spend lots of time. As you get better you also get faster

I used to think the more time I spent on an edit, the better it was. The more valuable it was. But being fast is also valuable. To you and the client. As the time you spend working goes up, the value they’d receive from you being fast goes down. I recently spent 50% of the time I normally would on a video. The client said it was fantastic. It’s performing better than the previous one. And I got ~10 hours of my week back. I’m trying to remind myself: Time and work input does not always equal value. Being faster always equals value. (Just don’t cut corners obviously.)

After a year of good results you can tell them that after working together so long you believe you’re providing more value than when you started, plus inflation is going up, so you’d like to be paid more. If you feel like you can’t sustain the current rate and survive though you have to have an honest conversation that you can’t make a business case for working at the previous rate and need to be paid more if you want to keep working together. That’s a little more uncomfortable though.

@editorandrewx Heya one more q. When you want to increase the current quote for existing customer, how do you go about it?

I recently reached out to an old client I haven’t spoken to in 8 weeks. Last time we spoke, I quoted a price 4x my usual. My schedule was packed and it didn’t make sense to be working 24/7 unless the pay was insane. They understandably said no. Today I’m more efficient and was able to reach back out to them and get a positive reply. I realized if I charge too much I can always go back down from charging more, but if I always charge too low I’ll get stuck working all the hours of the day at a low $/hr because I have no time to get new work.

Here it is: 5 Ways I Edit Workout Reps (for Big YouTubers) youtu.be/rmC84CvdIv4?si…

The timeline of my latest video on my channel. It’s currently my highest performing one in the first 2 days.