How to edit online course videos
and tutorials faster
What a lesson video needs
A lesson has to be easy to follow: what you are about to do, the steps, the result. People pause and come back, so each step should be easy to find. And hesitations and long silences make a lesson feel longer than it is.
How course videos are usually edited
You record the screen and the camera. You cut each hesitation and each retake. You line the camera up with the screen and place it in a corner. You add a title for each step and captions for every word, then export. A course of twenty lessons means doing all of it twenty times.
Editing lessons in Montage
Send the recordings, mistakes included, and say what you want: “Cut where I hesitate, put my camera in the corner, and add a title for each step.” Montage cleans the lesson, places you next to the screen, and captions every word in your brand's fonts and colors.
The same look on every lesson
A course should look like one course. Save your colors, fonts and logo once as a style. Then ask for the next lesson in the same layout as the last one, and it follows. The titles, the captions and the place of your camera stay the same from the first lesson to the last, so the course feels finished.
Fix a lesson without starting over
Every lesson changes by asking, and every version is kept. When the product you teach changes, record the part that changed and ask for it to be swapped in. Each change makes a new version, so you can always go back.
Screen, camera, or both
Some lessons are best on the screen alone: a spreadsheet, a piece of software, code. Others need a face: a coach, a teacher, a cook. Most mix both. Send both recordings and say where you want to be: in a corner, next to the screen, or full screen for the introduction. Montage can remove your background, so you sit cleanly next to the screen without a green screen.
Captions help people learn
Captions are not only for watching without sound. They help people follow a technical word, a name or a number, and they help those who learn in a second language. Montage captions every word, and you can correct any word by asking or with a comment.
Tips for lessons that are easy to edit
- Write down the steps before you record.
- Record in short parts, one per step.
- Say the step out loud before you start it.
- After a mistake, pause for two seconds and say the line again. The cut is cleaner.
- Keep the camera in the same place for every lesson.
- Keep each lesson under ten minutes.
- End each lesson by saying what the next one covers, so people keep going.