If you’re here, you’re probably interested in video editing as a career. After all, the best movies, tv, and internet videos all passed through a video editor’s lens at some point.

As a video editor, you’ll manage material such as camera footage, dialogue, sound effects, graphics, and work closely with the director.

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Although employment tends to be freelance, you’ll likely have a contract with a studio or corporate employer for certain projects.

Here’s a little bit of what to expect as a video editor as well as how to optimize your workflow.

Workflow and Process

What is the workflow and process like for a video editor in the industry?

Video editing takes a good amount of time.

For a simple rough cut two minute video, it might only take you 10 to 20 minutes. For a fully edited video with graphics, cut-aways, and sound mixing, you could see the project take an hour.

Depending on whether you’re CPU rendering or GPU rendering, as well as if you’re on PC or Mac, the actual video production could take awhile as well.

General Demands

What are the general demands of working in the video editing industry?

Aside from skills, experience, and deadlines, one financial demand for a video editor is your computer. Without an appropriately powerful device, you’ll find Adobe Premiere Pro lagging while you edit, and exporting a video will be slow.

Even if you’ve found Adobe Premiere Elements works well on your laptop, that program is primarily for casual editors and not for professional work.

Instead, try investing in a more powerful computer that can handle video editing.

Image by Donald Tong from Pexels

Video Editor Benefits

What are the benefits of working in the video editing industry?

A career in video production means you’ll be in demand. Video editors are needed in almost every industry, either in marketing, the entertainment industry, or other video editing niches.

Regardless of your industry, video editors get paid well. Median annual wages for film and video editors in 2008 were over $50,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So yeah, there are benefits!

Potential Drawbacks

What are the drawbacks of working in the video editing industry?

One of the drawbacks, as mentioned earlier, is how resource-demanding the software is to video edit. Even on a Macbook Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro will slow it down to a crawl. On a lesser computer, it might even crash.

As such, expect the career to be an investment at first, including the costs of the software.

Starting a Career

How does one start a career in the industry?

You don’t need a degree to be a video editor, but you need proof of your experience. A video editing demo reel helps, as well as developing contacts who can hook you up with freelance jobs.

Past that, send out a lot of inquiries to production companies, ad agencies, and others and hope for the best!

Optimize Your Workflow Today

Does your computer is not good enough to create stunning videos?

Interested in learning more about being a video producer? Check out some of our other articlesfor more content, or try out Vagon to improve your computer rendering times with a few simple steps!