Have you ever pressed record in Mediasite and frozen in place with the red light staring back at you? Or fumbled through a section right in the middle of your recording?
Guess what? You don’t need to include those first few seconds or completely start over. In fact, you can cut out anything you want. Just take a breath, pause a few seconds and continue, because the Mediasite editor is super easy to use.
Polish your video for better engagement
Recording stream-of-conscious, super-quick videos is perfectly fine – and you should be trying to create as much content as you can, fast. But we know sometimes it makes sense to edit out elements that don’t enhance your message.
Mediasite editor allows you to take your raw footage and create a polished product for your audience.
Fade your video in and out like a movie, insert chapters to start a new topic, create your own story with chapter breaks if you want … the sky’s the limit.
We’ll walk you through how to edit a Mediasite video like a pro.
Editing videos has never been so easy
They say never trust a video editor with a suntan (we might be making this up, but it sounds right – editing is supposed to take a long time). Thankfully, editing in Mediasite is simple so you’ll get some time outdoors.
If you’ve used other video editors, you should find our setup easy to navigate and less complex.
A quick checklist to get going:
● Log into My Mediasite, and you should see the “My Presentations” page.
● Open up the presentation that you’d like to edit.
● On the right-hand side, you’ll find the Edit Video link which opens the Web Editor.
Pro tip: Note there are two links with similar sounding titles, the Edit Details and Edit Video link. But they have different functions. The Edit Link is for editing title, description, the presenter and similar information. It’s at the top of the right-hand column of options for your videos. Edit Video is for editing videos and can be found further down the column.
Now you should be ready to edit like a Hollywood production company!
Navigating the video editor
Within the web editor, there are specific functions you’ll be using. The first is the Video Source dropdown menu at the top. If you recorded your video using a screen and video source, you can select which source you want to edit on the right or the left.
Our simple layout shows your video on the top and audio stripped across the bottom. You want to make sure your audio is turned on. Don’t worry if you have a “Is thing on?” moment with no sound — it happens to the best of us.
The other feature that will make editing easier is the toggle thumbnail button, which is underneath your video and above your timeline. This is especially helpful in videos for presentations or ones with multiple cuts within it. This will allow you to cut out sections without having to scrub through the file.
In and out cuts
Don’t be embarrassed of those moments when you are fumbling with your notes before you begin your lecture or training. They are easily cut out. Use the arrow to highlight the section you want to cut.
And just like that, it’s gone!
You can do the same thing with the end of the presentation if you have some additional seconds that don’t add value to your video.
One thing to note, the play editing feature will always snap to the play bar. It’s best to hit play and then make your cut after the video gets to the point where you want to make the edit. By doing it this way, you can go through the video frame-by-frame to get the exact edit.
Fading
The Rolling Stones faded to black and so can you. Underneath the frames of your video, you’ll see a small dot near the bottom of the screen. That’s for fading. You can fade in or out, and lengthen the fade by dragging it across your video.
Cuts and Dissolves
For cutting footage in your video that’s not at the beginning or end, you can use a simple shortcut.
Use your arrow to find where the section starts. Drag the arrow to highlight all the footage in the section you want to cut. Then use the shortcut by pressing the letter “C” key.
And if you change your mind, click the drop-down arrow at the top of the cut and delete it.
Fades and dissolves are similar. You can highlight the section of your video and select fade from the drop-down arrow.
Insert Chapters
When you cover different topics, you may want to split the video into different chapters. With Mediasite, that’s easy to do. It can be especially helpful to trainers with lots of material or for a college lecture class. If you have a video with four speakers, you can break up the video by speaker for your audience.
It helps your viewer because they will have the chapters marked, so it makes for easier navigation. They can jump right to a certain place with little effort.
All you need to do is find the place on your video’s timeline where you need to insert the chapter and click the Insert Chapter button, which is on the same line as the Toggle thumbnail button.
Saving
While you are editing, your video will have autosaves. But that doesn’t mean they are applied to the video. To have the edited video saved, you need to go to the dropdown editor and find the ‘Commit’ command. It will give you three options. ‘Commit to Current’ lets you save the current video — think of it as Save on a word processing document.
The other options save in a slightly different way. ‘Commit to New’ is like a Save As command on your word processing document. But you have the original file if needed.
And finally, there is ‘Commit to Existing’ when you want to move a file over to a blank presentation.
Test drive your new video editing skills
You don’t have to be a video editor to create professional looking videos. With Mediasite, it’s easy to make cuts, fades, insert chapters and more. You’ll love how it looks, and your audience will thank you for the effort. Start enhancing your content with Mediasite today.
Learn more in this Mediasite U training course. You can also find lots of other informative training on that site.
