Hi I thought I'd just do a quick behind-the-scenes video here showing you something to do with my video editing process and a change that I've made of late. not to every video, but I know videos that I deem like her important enough or I'm just bored and want to just spend a bit more time putting some spit and polish on a particular video and I think I might be seeing the results in a YouTube step which I'll show you shortly on this now. So let's take a look at a video editing of a recent video Now this is by the way, not something. The results of this may not be something that you've as the viewer have particularly noticed, but then again, please leave it in the comments down below if you have sort of noticed.

Oh yeah, your videos have gotten maybe a bit better lately and I'm not quite sure why. let me explain what's going on here now: I'm using so this is: look at my editing timeline for my latest a Synology Nass dumpster-diving video because this is a decent example of this now. Yes, I'm using For those who don't know I use Vegas Video Editing software was formerly Sony Vegas now it's like magics Vegas or whatever it is and I'm using the older version 16 because I have 17 but it's gave me some issues so I just went back to 16 and just got on with the job anyway. So don't get into the flame wars down below about video editing software.

I've tried them all and look, this is just the lesser of many evils for me. Okay, I just don't go into it. now. The reason I've got my edit in my talking head up the top here rather than in the corner because I want to show you my timeline down here.

So this is the So: this is video 1288 up here and this is my timeline and you'll notice that the video is 20.almost bang on 26 minutes long there just before the outro. So 26 minutes just keep that in mind. Now for those who don't know: I shoot and have for the last decade almost all of my videos I shoot them in sequence. What that means is that I when I get the idea for a video I you know I set up whatever I need to on the bench and then I hit record I stop yappin' away with two mouths.

Usually this is my brain, this is my mouth. often they're not connected anyway I start yapping away behind the camera. but I shoot everything in sequence. So if I'm doing a 10-hour of a product I'll shoot the intro, then I'll shoot you know, opening the thing and then which.

I don't peek by the way, I actually opened it and that's my first reaction is when I actually open the thing and then I look at each little part and everything is shot in sequence. Why do I do that? It's because it makes my life editing videos much easier. and if you're a full-time youtuber like I am video editing videos almost every day edited like fifteen hundred videos. plus more than that.

probably like two thousand videos over the last. If you count all my channels and all the different content over the last ten years. that's a lot of videos to edit and the last thing you want to do is waste your life editing. but which is ironically I am wasting more time but hopefully not wasting it.

Hopefully I'm adding value to my videos. What we're going to talk about today. anyway: a shooting sequence. So I can simply take all the clips here here.

All the clips are some I actually recorded like voiceovers for. but let's just assume I did a video that just had bench camera work. It's all shot in sequence and they're late numbered C double O triple o one through two. You know, a typical video.

This one I only had thirty, right? It didn't have many art clips at all, but you know I decent like thirty forty minute minute video. Like a teardown or something like that. might have upwards of a hundred clips. Sometimes I'll even do more than a hundred, but they might have like 50 to 100 clips.

Yeah, separate. Clips because I just start and stop the camera I don't just leave the camera running usually I start and stop and you know, oh, notice something else, turn it on and I'll start yapping on about that. So all I do is just simply take all these and drop them into the timeline. So therefore, my project is almost complete.

My video edit is almost complete right at that point. It takes me a couple of minutes and it's almost done. Or then all I've got do is then I go through and play my video straight like this so you're probably wait. you won't hear this.

But anyway, I I do all my video editing. By the way, just as a little aside, based on the audio level here, I don't do anything fancy. Occasionally I might go in here and like adjust the level of something like that. if I was much closer to the mic and I was speaking loudly or you know, something like that, but generally speaking, you'll notice that in this one.

Yeah, over here. I've just adjusted the level of some voiceover stuff and things like that. but happen that I don't do any audio processing or anything like that I should audio in camera as you should be doing so. don't to sink anything up anyway.

I'm getting way off pay off point of this video. So and then I occasionally like adding overlays and you know, text overlays and stuff like that. Yep, is that a text text overlay? There's a text overlay. There you go and I'll just drop those in.

So really simple. So all my sequences on my video editing is almost done for me because I shoot in sequence. so if I have to take my macro lens off the my macro lens off the camera and I'll do that ten times during a shoot. if I'm doing a teardown and I want to get close-ups, I'll do that rather than have to try and figure out where like do all my macro shots later and then figure out where the clips have to go in the timeline.

are you waste so much time doing that anyway? so my video edit is normally very quick and efficient. so I drop them all in and all I've got to do is then just trim the start and the end. like the silence. if if you actually if I drag that out there right I've got some that ones did I I might have actually continued talking there, but usually there'll be a bit of silence at the end of each clip and at the end of each clip.

So I simply just trim that out manually. it's usually not this finicky. usually I'm zoomed in anyway. I just trim that out I do that for every single clip in here as I go through and sometimes I all remember what I said.

so I don't like have to listen to those particular parts. but and you know, generally I'll listen to a good majority of it. and so I stream and start in the end of each clip and by time we get to the end of it, it's done. So like a 26 minute video like this might take me I don't know.

45 minutes to edit? you know, maybe an hour like on a bad day. It doesn't take what depends how many overlays are gonna do and got to go get images and do all sorts of stuff like that double-check things, stuff like that, but it generally doesn't take me too long to edit videos. Now as I said, this is my first pass. Okay, I actually saved this project 26 minutes And here's the change right: I could have just and ordinarily in the past I would have just done video, finished, upload and be damned.

and you know somebody will tell me within 5 minutes of uploading if I've grossly goofed something. usually I don't have to pull a video and re-edit very occasionally. that happens very rare, so I'll just fix it in a pinned comment or something if there's any sort of issues like that. But anyway, that's once again beside the point.

I'm yapping on Dave 26 minutes long now. The change I've made recently is I've gone I'm trying to shave time off so if an edit comes in at say an edit, came in at 22 minutes, right? my first pass usually I only do what's called a like a first pass edit. that's it. And let's say, came in at 22 minutes ago.

Oh damn could I get that under 20? Because when people go to youtube and look at videos in the list to look at, you know they wake up and they and want to watch some YouTube videos. So they look at all their list of you know all their favorite creators and things like that and which ones do I want to watch are there's a new Dave video or but it's 20 something minutes I've only got you know 15 I don't have 20 plus minutes I've only got 10 plus minutes to watch a video right? So so it comes. It's a psychological thing. if you see if you look at that time stamp, you may not even notice that you're doing that.

but trust me you are. You're looking at how long that video is I guarantee you are even subconsciously and if you see it's 10 something minutes 1 X something minutes then your brain processes that. Oh it's a 10 minute class video. or if it's 2 X 20 X minutes if it's 20 plus minutes, your brain processes that as a longer video so it makes you know it's valuable to be able to get say a 21 minute video down to 19 minutes and 58 seconds.

So if you if you see one of my videos at 19 minutes and 55 seconds or something you'll know why. It's because I was trying to trim as much as I could to get it and just under 20 minutes. Or just under 30 minutes. Or just under 40 minutes or something like that.

or just under 10 minutes per video since the days of when 10-minute videos. so I only had a 10 minute limit on YouTube I had to do two part video z' in part 1, part 2 those were the days back when you're invited to be monetized. That was a big deal. anyway.

now anyway Tom Dick and Harry gets it. you know, unbelievable when I was a boy. Anyway, so what I've been doing lately is once I've finished his first part I would have normally just done and dusted upload it I'll go write I'll actually go through it again. so I'll go through from the start of the video and I'll watch it and I'll take out little arms and eyes and it'll be more chopped up.

So let me actually show. so this is the first one I did and I actually saved it as 1288 here and then let me show you another one. Yep, here it is 1288 final. So I actually like label it something different.

so I have that back. So if I goof up this version I can go back to the older project and you know, even just release that or rework or whatever because you never know when you're going to screw the pooch. So anyway, so you'll fight. see that this is the one that I finally uploaded.

You'll notice that it's 23 minutes and just overall almost 23 and a half. You know, 23 minutes and 20 seconds or something like that. So I've shaved like two and a half over two and a half minutes off this video that I wouldn't normally have done. And yes, this does take me another 20 odd minutes to go through and you'll notice that I have added a few more overlays and things like that that I didn't add on the first one because I might have, you know decided Oh, look, I'll just do a bit more research and pull up another data sheet or do a couple of inserts and actually actually correct it.

You know I realized oh, that might be a GI Tagg header for example and things like that. So I just added some extra text and stuff there. So and then I added a little bit of spit and polish. Like adding that MOSFET things like that.

So I heard myself when I was listening to this again I heard myself say oh yeah, look like a totem pole output. So rather than just say it, I thought, oh look, I'll go to the effort I'll go get an image and I'll put a red circle around the upper MOSFET that I'm talking about and put some text in there. It's really quick and easy to do that, but but it all adds up. you know if you're doing a lot of spit and polish anyway.

So go in and take out. lots of arms and eyes. So you notice that maybe down in here down in this section here I'll have like it'll be chopped up a lot right? So my speech will be like chopped up. so I'm taking out little pauses, arms and hours.

Maybe if I'm so I don't repeat myself all that often these days at home. I've probably repeated myself in this video, guaranteed. but I'm not going to edit this one, it'll be straight upload. and I yeah, I just like take out.

like just add a little spit and polish, just taking out little arms and R's pauses. Maybe a repeat? Maybe a bit of redundant information, maybe a bit of waffle that? I think not really helping with the video and this one. And by doing this second pass editing I'm usually able to shave off say a minute or maybe two minutes in a 25 to 30 minute video and it may not sound like much. But as I said, if I can get under in this case, I didn't get under the limit like under the 20 minute mark, there's no way I was gonna take 26 minute video and get it down to 20 and under 20 that would have been I would have had to lose some technical information from the video to actually do that and I don't like doing that.

So I try and with the second pass that I did not take out any technical information, just make it a bit more tighter, make it as tight as a nun's nasty and so I hope and you probably don't notice this when you're actually watching the video. but I think in a metric here. let me go have a look. Let's have a metric for no.

this is the latest one. the audience audience Retention here. This is what we're interested in and since I've been doing this lately, this second part 7e I've noticed an increase in my audience retention time. So if you don't know what this is, all Youtubers get access to this.

It's how long how many viewers stick around and watch over your entire. In this case, this is the trolley wheel video. so this is a different one. I might show you the other one in a minute the one we were talking about.

but look even at halfway through right? it says average view duration 13 minutes and 20 seconds of a 26 minute video and that's quite common. Like my channel is no different to others longer videos. The average like maximum attention span on YouTube is like 11 12 minutes tops. So if you make any videos longer than that, you're you're never gonna get people watching.

You know, a bit like a mailbag video. For example, I might get a longer audience retention time for that because people know what they're getting. But for a technical sort of like teardown investigation video, this is really good. like halfway through I'm still getting 50 plus percent.

They said these are really good figures for any Youtuber. Look, even it, it gets to 21 minutes before 50% have dropped off. Now, these figures aren't entirely accurate because people might pause the video. they might come back.

It doesn't mean people are just going. Oh, I've had enough of that video and I'm gone. It means ah, they might have had to go to the toilet I don't know they got interrupted by their cat or whatever and oh, and they just stopped watching the video or they lost focus. Yeah, it's difficult to get metrics on that, but it's a reasonable.

You can see differences in things and I've noticed that this on videos that I've done the second pass editing on the audience retention is higher. So wondering yeah, it could be completely off. but I am you know what is it? correlation does not equal causation. Yes, correlation does not equal causation, right? So just because they're correlated doesn't mean that the cause of the increased audience retention time which is a good thing for the YouTube algorithm.

By the way, the longer the higher this figure is, the more YouTube's going to recommend your video because YouTube's all about watch time these days. That's all it's about. That's why. Yeah, if you short videos and YouTube you are screwed and kind of the days are short viral videos.

So I pity any concrete and content creator who spends two weeks making a really highly polished five or ten minute video. Geez, that's that's really tough anyway. like you know the science videos and things like that, they've been hit hard. Anyway, the audience retention time yeah it's I think I've seen a difference and increasing that which is a good thing.

Now we can go maybe over to the latest video here. Let's go here. it is my analytics here it is here. Audience retention time here you go once again.

See oh this one United Speed goes up here like it goes up to 70% It's like yeah yeah so it's these metrics Arviat how you doing? but anyway you know, look, look and yeah it's jump back up here. even at six fifteen minutes at sixty like wow it gets almost to the end of the video and half the people are still watching. That is like after twenty plus minutes. That is really good for YouTube trust me and of course it drops off the end because I've got my outro there and and stuff like that and people know I just want at the end and you know, probably plug my library Channel you should subscribe on library I'm about to hit 10,000 subscribers by the way linked down below so I might do another video I might do a dedicated video on that today.

Anyway, there you go I'm so audience retention time I think has increased so please let me know if you've noticed. No So please let me know if you've noticed a difference in my videos lately and you weren't quite sure. why do you appreciate the extra effort I put in because it it doesn't quite double my edit in time, but it means I have to go through at least those 20 you know, six minutes and watch that again and just take out the little arms and eyes. Yes, I could do it as a single pass of course I could take more care and attention to doing it the first time, but I kind of.

that's what I've been doing for a decade is that one pass Edit: I'm so used to it and it just it feels satisfying, right? I've done right, done and then I'll go add the spittin polish so that's that's just the way I prefer to do it, so please let me know if that's if you think that's worth the effort. and if you've noticed in the comments down below, Thanks! Hope you found that interesting. If you did, give it a big thumbs up and all that sort of jazz. Catch you next time.

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