How to Edit Video in Photoshop CC

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In this how to video tutorial we’re going to learn how to edit video in Adobe Photoshop. We will take these clips that I shot and explore how to edit and trim footage, how to fade clips together, how to work with audio, how to mix levels so the audio works well together, how to edit the color and style of your video, and even how to get great quality video when you export your video at the end of the project. This is your foundational starting point for editing video in Photoshop!

1. Importing Video into Photoshop

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There are a number of ways to import your video into Photoshop. For this tutorial, we’re going to begin with a new Photoshop document and set the size to 1920 x 1080 pixels. Go Layer>Video Layers>New Video Layer From File and choose the .mov clip you want to import.

2. Finding the Timeline

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To open the timeline you need to go Window>Timeline and you will see any/all of the video layers that you’ve created and here within this panel we will be able to execute some fairly impressive edits to our video (considering the fact that we’re inside Photoshop right now.)

3. Trimming Video Clips

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I want the total finished video to be not longer than 45 seconds so I’m going to drag each of these video tracks down onto the same line in my timeline. This will create a Video Group over in our Layers panel (no worries!) We can then hover the mouse over the start/finish ends of each clip and drag inward to short the clips to our desired length. TIP: You can drag the playhead and watch the time stamp in the bottom left of the Timeline panel to get set right at 45 seconds so you know how long your clip(s) should be. PRO TIP: You can double click that time stamp and manually punch in the exact time you wish to jump to on your timeline. SUPER PRO TIP: Don’t worry if your footage runs a little longer than 45 seconds, because when we add our crossfade transitions, the footage is going to automatically be shortened a little by that and we may even have to stretch it back out a little.

4. Adding/Working with Transitions

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There is a little half-white, half-black box toward the upper left part of the Timeline panel. This is the transition icon. Click this and drag a cross fade transition and drop it on each of the places where the video clips meet each other. Trim the end clip if needed to ensure we’re at 45 seconds of total clip length.

5. Knockout Clip Sound

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We don’t want the sound that was captured with these video clips so right click on each of your clips and select the music note icon and tick on “Mute Sound”.

6. Add Adjustment Layers to Change Mood of Video

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Now that we have our video visuals in place. Add a few Adjustment Layers via the Layers panel to create an effect or color change, or really anything you want for your video. TIP: Watch the full video to see me apply this retro/vintage effect to the video.

7. Add Music Tracks

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To add our music (and intro sound effects) to this file click on the little downward-facing arrow next to the Audio track in the Timeline panel and choose “Add Audio” choose your sound file and it will import. I’m going to do the same for any sound effects I might have too. Drag the end of the sound track back until it snaps to the end of the video. We want our video and audio to stop at the same moment.

8. Add Voiceover Track

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I’m going to add a second sound file which will be the retro radio guy voiceover (done by me, pretty happy with how it turned out too!) but we need to add a second audio track before importing it. Select that little downward-facing arrow again and choose “New Audio Track” then repeat what we did earlier to import our music track.

9. Adding Sound Effects and Mixing the Tracks

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Do all of what you just did for the voiceover for our sound effect track. Here we’ll have one of those old film projectors starting up and running for as long as the clip runs (a few seconds, but you can right click and fade it out at the end too.) We want to right click on each of these tracks and adjust the track volume until it all sounds right. Voiceover should be loudest, then the sound of music, and then the subtle projector ticking away in the background.

10. Exporting Your Video

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Once you have created your video, go File>Export>Render Video and choose to export using the h.264 codec at the 1080p HD size. There is even a great 1080p YouTube preset built right into Photoshop for you to use. Choose to export all of the frames and choose where you want to save the file. That’s it! Check out the end of the video tutorial to see something close to what we created here so you can see and hear the effects that I was able to apply to my video.

Be sure to watch the video at the top of this article tutorial for even more detail and info on how I used this technique and really finished this effect and got great results!

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