If you are a creative person who works with digital design applications, you can expect that there will be talk about how AI is going to impact your profession and how it will serve as a useful tool for your future projects. With the technology constantly evolving, it is important to keep track of what it is capable of and how it can be utilized, particularly if your field, like video editing, is poised to be one of the next major industries to integrate AI.
Best AI Classes for Video Editing
If you are looking to learn how applications like ChatGPT, Adobe Firefly or Dall-e can be utilized in the context of a video editing project, consider enrolling in a course like Noble Desktop’s AI for Video Editing and Motion Graphics course. In this course, you’ll receive training in the use of AI applications, how to write and refine prompts to ensure that it is producing the content you are looking for and how to make sure that you are actually saving time on any given project by adding an AI application to the mix. This is a practical course focusing on the use of AI tools, so it assumes you have an understanding of the basics of video editing beforehand, meaning you’ll want to have taken some training in the use of Premiere Pro, After Effects and other post-production procedures.
Students looking for training in those fundamentals may wish to consider the Video Editing and Motion Graphics Certificate program, which aims to provide professional skills training for a range of post-production career opportunities. This course covers the use of Premiere Pro, After Effects and Cinema 4d, providing students with a hands-on, practical education in the process of video editing and motion graphics design. This is a career-focused program, so the lessons will focus on providing students with the tools they need to start searching for editing and animation jobs immediately after completing the course and it will lay the groundwork for future training in utilizing AI for video editing. In addition to vital skills training, students will also spend time preparing their own demo reel to include as part of application materials and they will have the chance to work one-on-one with an instructor for personalized training and mentorship.
Another option for students looking to learn more about AI is to take a class that offers a more generic, high-level overview of AI and its potentials, such as the Generative AI with ChatGPT course. In this class, students will receive an overview of how generative AI works, how to write and refine prompts and how to create sets of rules to make working within the system easier. This course will also cover things like the various laws and ethical concepts surrounding AI and how it can be utilized in relatively universal workplace settings. The course won’t cover concepts specific to video editing or motion graphics, but it will give students the training they need to be comfortable working with AI in later courses and in their daily lives.
In the event that you are looking for a more granular approach to learning about AI, you can enroll in the Generative AI Certificate program, which combines introductory training and more specific training in all of the major subjects covered in AI training programs. This means that in addition to learning how to utilize generative AI, you will learn how AI can be used in video editing, graphic design, data analytics, digital marketing and financial contexts, all of which leverage the applications in different, but powerful ways. This course aims to give students a broad-scope understanding of AI and its applications across a range of different fields, making it ideally suited for professionals who want to make AI integration a major part of their careers.
What is Video Editing?
Video editing is the technical art of taking raw footage produced for a video project and assembling it into a finished releasable copy. In the past, this involved literally cutting film strips and reassembling them in different orders using complicated machines, but today it is done almost entirely on digital applications like Adobe Premiere Pro. Video editing requires a keen attention to detail and is far more technical than most creative projects because there is a significant amount of standardization work that goes into most editing jobs. A great deal of the work of being a video editor is ensuring continuity between shots and scenes and making sure that cuts are placed at points that feel organic. Editors are often the most unsung members of a film staff, since their job is to be invisible.
At the same time, video editing offers creatives a chance to tell a story within the edit. At the end of the day, without an editor, a film never really comes together, it just remains raw footage. Per Lev Kuleshov, the juxtaposition between two images, their appearance in sequence, creates more meaning that those two images do apart and this is, at its core, the nature of film. Learning the art of film editing can be a rewarding creative experience, and there are plenty of jobs available in the industry, particularly as more and more studios emerge to create content for the ever-increasing number of digital platforms that make up the modern entertainment ecosystem.
What Industries Use Video Editing?
Video editing is, for obvious reasons, most commonly associated with the film and television industry (particularly in LA, but also in places like Atlanta and Vancouver) and most of the jobs that are primarily focused on video editing will be in film and television. Working on a set as an editor will involve working alongside directors, actors and other members of the pre and post production teams to collaborate on a finished project that can be released to the public. Given that film and television editing is such an important part of the history of those industries, they represent an important guild in the entertainment industry and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives out a number of yearly awards for outstanding excellence in the field editing (though it will take a while to get to the point where you are in Oscar conversations).
In addition to film and television, online content creation is growing exponentially each year and this means that more and more job openings will be available for anyone who understands how to edit video. This includes traditional content productions like those produced by online studios as well content being produced by smaller or even individual creators who hire freelance editors to finalize their releases. Here, professionals are more likely to be working on tighter deadlines with less raw footage, so the challenges involved in the editing process are different (and they have different audience expectations since A TikTok video will have a different editing style than Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022)).
Video editors are often hired to create internal video productions for various companies and institutions. Whether this includes training videos, disability assistance videos (such as adding closed captions or splicing picture-in-picture) or creating in-house videos that can be used as promotional content or in lieu of other common reports, this style of video editing is significantly different in terms of the content being produced and the end goal of the video producers. Since these tend to be more informative and practical in nature, the editors will have to approach the project differently than they would a video project whose primary goal was to entertain or persuade.
Finally, video editing is an important part of any individual digital content creation project. While the internet has made the field of content creation more accessible than ever before, it has created an incredibly crowded marketplace and new creators need to do a lot to stand out from the crowd. Learning how to edit videos and how to use editing techniques to improve viewer retention and engagement can massively increase your chances of being discovered by new audiences who will begin to regularly return to your platform for new content. These skills will only be able to supplement the quality and focus of the content you are creating, but even just a few hours learning how to work with Premiere Pro can go a long way to making your output look significantly more professional.
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses a large category of different software applications and programs all of which are designed to allow a computer to “learn” on its own and utilize that learning in future applications. While this has previously been thought of as the process of creating thinking machines (often within the realm of science fiction), recent developments in AI technologies have led to the development of machine applications that can “create” on their own. These tools, like ChatGPT and Dall-e, were trained on massive amounts of data and can respond to prompts from users with new content that has never been seen before, up to and including the creation of text and images. These tools are poised to significantly alter a number of different professional fields, and it is important to consider how they are used and in what contexts they provide the most support for creatives and programmers.
These models, most commonly known as generative AI or Large Language Models, are designed to use complex computing power to create images and textual responses by drawing on their training archive and associating common images and ideas that tend to cluster together. Thus, asking the application a question about film editing will result in the algorithm drawing on all of the training it has received about film editing to provide what it assumes to be the most likely answer to your question. This can be as simple as reproducing a Wikipedia article based on keywords or “reading” hundreds of archived journal entries to synthesize an answer based on weight and proximity.
Why is AI a Useful Skill to Learn?
While the future of AI is uncertain, both in terms of its capabilities and its integration into various industries, it is poised to, at the very least, have a significant impact on the way we approach aspects of our daily lives. While this impact will vary from field to field, learning how to use AI will help you work in a more efficient manner and can assist in cutting down on some of the more rote and tedious aspects of work. For some, this will simply mean synthesizing information they have already produced, drafting a succinct progress report or even writing a basic, formal email to a colleague. Others might find themselves using it for more elaborate or time-intensive projects, such as writing thousands of lines of copy or doing simple programming work.
Learning AI is also a useful skill for anyone looking to stay on top of the newly emerging technologies that may impact them in the future, even if they aren’t of immediate use at the moment. For example, a few years ago, Dall-e was barely able to draw something that looked like a convincing person and, recently, OpenAI announced that they are working on a model that will be able to create short, 3d films. The direction that AI technology will take is still up in the air, so learning the basics of it now can help you lay the groundwork in the event that it does end up having a significant impact on your daily workflow.
Finally, in a similar vein, more and more first-party developers are beginning to integrate AI functionalities directly into their applications. For example, Adobe has been working on perfecting their Firefly model for Creative Cloud applications like Photoshop and Lightroom, and if successful, it is very likely that they will continue to expand the algorithm’s training to give it greater functionality for applications like After Effects and Premiere Pro. This means that if you are interested in a career that uses these applications, learning how to integrate AI tools will be useful and it will demonstrate to prospective employers that you are invested in staying on top of the latest trends in the field.
How Can AI Assist with Video Editing Projects?
In terms of video editing projects, AI is still in its relative infancy, even compared to other LLM and generative AI tools. Companies are working on creating models that can handle 3d motion video and create raw footage from nothing, and this has the potential to significantly shift certain aspects of the industry, particularly those that are smaller in scope. It is impossible to tell what the future will hold for AI video editing and content creation tools, but these functionalities are very close to being publicly accessible realities (as select users and institutions are currently accessing working models).
At the present moment, artificial intelligence applications don’t have the same level of immediate practical uses they have to Video Editors as they might have to some other creative professionals, but they are still good supplemental tools for easing some of the more tedious or challenging aspects of the process. For video editors, they can be used to check on precise times for cuts, organize different files and curate the content that they have to work with. More advanced models can be used to help brainstorm organizational ideas and review different editing options, giving editors more opportunities to experiment with different possible sequences in a much shorter period of time.
AI is also increasingly becoming a useful research tool for creatives looking to synthesize large amounts of information and interpret editing theory. For example, AI can easily provide you with a list of different types of edits and provide you with examples of those edits in popular films so that you can track them down and view them. It can also, for instance, look into complex film theory readings and provide succinct and approachable summaries so that you can leverage editing theory without needing to first learn an entire film studies degree worth of jargon and theory.
What are the Limitations of AI for Video Editing Projects?
The most obvious current limitation of AI when it comes to video projects is that most models aren’t yet capable of generating or working with moving images, making it impossible to shortcut some of the animation or editing tasks. In addition, since motion graphics AI tools are incredibly new, even when they are publicly accessible, they are likely to have many of the same problems and limitations that early generative AI had with image creation (and still does in many cases), with the compounding issue that they not only have to figure out what human hands look like but also how they move and grasp 3d objects in motion, for one example. While it is very useful to learn AI as a video editor or motion graphics artist, it is still worth considering that the technology is very much in its earliest stages of practical development.
However, learning to use AI as a supplemental tool will greatly improve your productivity and efficiency and, even if the technology develops at the pace of generative AI for images, it will still be uncanny enough that you’ll only want to use it sparingly, if at all, in real-world editing jobs. That said, it is impossible to tell what direction the development of these applications will take, and it is equally likely that there will be new use cases for generative AI in video editing that are simply not yet publicly available, meaning that learning the basics now will pay significant dividends in the future.
In addition, for creatives, it is important to understand how AI interacts with various laws concerning copyright and fair use. You won’t need a law degree, but you’ll need to understand when you can legally use certain kinds of content, especially if you are going to be training your own AI as the systems become more and more user-friendly on the training end.
What Other Skills Will You Need for Video Editing Projects?
Since AI is a supplemental skill set, it is only really useful to Video Editors who already understand the ins and outs of professional video editing applications. This means that if you want to learn how to use AI for a video editing project, you’ll need to learn the skills that it is supplementing, since even if the technology improves significantly, you’ll still want to be doing most of the work on your own.
The most important technical skill you can learn is how to use video editing applications like Adobe Premiere Pro. This application is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, and it offers users an easy and efficient tool for making non-destructive edits to video footage. While there are a number of different applications available, Premiere Pro is one of the most well-established commercially available programs and an ideal place for students to start learning how to work with video editing applications. Students may also want to consider applications like Final Cut Pro for Mac users or one of the more limited, but still free applications available online.
In addition, students looking to work on more complex video editing projects or looking to be more involved in the post-production process will want to learn additional, complementary tools, like After Effects, Cinema 4d and Audition (if they are working with the Adobe Creative Cloud, for example). Learning these skills, as well as broader post-production skills related to animation, audio mixing and motion graphics, will help professionals expand their career opportunities, open up new doors for freelance work and help them find work at smaller studios where they will be expected to handle more aspects of a given project.
Finally, since editing is a technical art, you’ll need to learn the basic theories and principles that are fundamental to the modern editing process. This means understanding concepts like continuity editing, shot-to-shot and scene-to-scene editing, montages and jump cuts, among a host of other concepts. While you won’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of film editing, a basic knowledge of how shots interact and how audiences read film as a language are important if you want to explore the creative and professional side of video editing as a field.