Sorry idk if you're accepting questions rn (I don't use tumblr much) but your Les miserables ytp has been like the cultural focus of my humour, my family has it engraved into their brains it's taken hold and it won't let go
I just wanted to ask, I'm pretty into video editing (both ytps and amvs) and I primarily use premiere, odd question but do you have any tips with either performance or workflow? I find myself getting burnt out pretty fast when working on a project, or getting discouraged whenever I can't think of a good joke lol
Performance wise - Do you use proxies? a lot of the time the footage I use gets super choppy and makes it hard to use
Proxies are a good idea for performance and I mostly use them for editing stream highlights that need to be rendered in 1400p or higher. It'll save you some headache if you convert your source footage into a separate, low-fidelity file that your computer can handle (I do 720p 30fps) and edit using that. Then right before you render the final thing, use Replace Footage with the full-res version. Your proxy footage and full-res footage should be perfectly identical save for the difference in fidelity - otherwise your cuts won't line up correctly.
Most of my workflow is in Premiere itself, but I also keep a number of other programs handy like Photoshop and Reaper. I used to not have much of a workflow at all for my YTPs - I used one timeline and just kept progressing through the footage, editing jokes as I went. These days I keep three timelines handy - Source, Jokes, and Assembly.
The Source timeline is just the whole source video all laid out. Here I watch the source, get inspired, and crop clips out with the razor blade tool to copy into other timelines. Often I'll color-code "chapters" of the video with Premiere's color labels to help me remember when certain things happen, identify clusters of edits later, and if I have a script handy I'll color-code that to match to make searching for sentence-mixing words easier. Otherwise this timeline is left untouched.
The Jokes timeline is where I do the bulk of the editing. To begin with it's a bunch of moments pulled from the source that I think could be exploited/used for something. A funny word, a weird face, a sentence that be changed, etc. Then I expand on and combine some of these moments into "segments" - i.e. a bit of sentence-mixing, visual effect, or a setup-punchline progression.
Once a segment is finished it gets locked as a Group and put into the Assembly timeline. Once I'm satisfied with my work on a source and I have no regrets about what remains on the proverbial cutting-room floor, I put all the segments together like a puzzle. I consider what context is needed to make each bit land well, which ones will punctuate the video nicely, and if there's any natural synergy between them. Sometimes during this phase I think of additional jokes or add "buffer" segments (like reverse jokes) to aid the overall pacing.
After that I put together things like the CW and the credit roll, polish the audio by fine-tuning the volume levels and adding tiny crossfades, render, check for issues, and go back to make fixes if needed.
Once I'm happy with the video, I create the caption track with Subtitle-Horse, make a thumbnail, render a preview joke for social media, fill out the upload data on YouTube, write a pinned comment with my support link, draft all my posts for tumblr, discord, and ko-fi - Then once I'm fairly confident it's all in place I hit publish and quickly send all those posts out at once. If I actually remember to, I'll also put the new YTP into appropriate playlists on my channel.
For stream highlights it's a much more simplified workflow. I still have two timelines, Source and Highlights.
I find it very important to never make any alterations inside the Source timeline because I want to be able to quickly access all parts of the video, even if I don't find them highlight-worthy on the first pass. Sometimes seemingly nothing-moments get called-back to later, or sometimes my client wants me to include bits I had initially glossed over. It's much easier to make those changes if you have the entire source accessible in front of you.
My goal with highlights is to show off what's important, interesting, or funny and quickly move onto the next thing with as little dead air as possible. Since these videos are expected to move chronologically and editing gags are infrequent, I can do all that cleanly in the Highlights timeline and there isn't a need for a third.
I check in with my client to make sure any grand ambitions I have for the edits will be appropriate and welcome, and let them see each draft to give me feedback. But otherwise I just do my thing with the source, send off the highlight edit, arrange for payment, and they do the rest on their own.
