Q: I’m just finishing up my final year of school, and I’m just starting my first major edit project (we’re talking a lot of edits!).
I’m having a little problem I’m hoping you can shed some light on.
I keep making these edits, hitting play, and they sound fine.
But later when I go back and listen to the whole thing, everything sounds like the edits were made out of context.
I know that I’m a little green behind the ears in general, but is there anything I can do to make this easier?
A: Making a lot of edits does, indeed, take practice. However, as you’ve found, sometimes the best thing is to preview your work in context.
A fast way to do this is to set up a pre-roll time of, say, two seconds.
Now, when you want to hear an edit, simply hit the option-left arrow (Mac) or alt-left arrow (PC).
Playback will now start two seconds (or whatever your pre-roll is set to) and play up to the selection location or the current time location.
Now you’ll be able to hear your edits with a bit of context, hopefully saving you from countless additional edits down the road.
As always, we welcome input from the PSW community and would love to know your thoughts on editing. Feel free to let us know in the comments below.
For more tech tips go to Sweetwater.com
