3 Ways to Hide Cuts In Your Video Edits

If you’ve been editing videos, but struggling to hide your cuts then today’s episode is going to help you out!

Let’s check out the video then talk further below.

For a lot of business owners - videos like these videos for ‘How to Shoot Video For Your Business’ - where it’s a quick chat to camera, we want to hide the cuts we make during our presentation. We need to remove all the incorrect things we say, the blank spaces… or find a way to break up the footage.

So in this article, I’m discussing how we can cover those cuts.

Overlay Footage

Yep, there are no surprises here. Overlay footage is our go-to way to hide a cut.

Overlay footage is when we place footage relevant to what we’re talking about ‘over the top’ of what’s being said - so the viewer hears us talking, but sees something else.

Overlay footage is a good way to not only hide cuts, but also provide a more interesting look for the viewer. So this could be to ‘distract’ the viewer, but it can also help illustrate a point. For example - if we’re discussing a product and something specific about that product - having close-ups of the product whilst you talk about it may help illustrate your point.

Punch-In / Punch-Out

Using punch-ins and punch outs are a great way to provide some visual variety for your viewer, without the need to shoot any additional footage. They can save so much time.

Using this method really helps to hide cuts, it provides some visual variety… and it can help make it look like you have multiple cameras - so often viewers feel that there’s an increase in production value.

A quick tip - consider when you are making these cuts and how they feel to the viewer. You’ll find that using a punch in can really help emphasise a point your making.

It’s also advisable to shoot in a higher-res format - so that when you punch in - which effectively stretches your image - you don’t distort your image too much. It’s one of the reasons we shoot in 4k - meaning that we can zoom/punch into the image and we don’t have to worry about losing our image quality.

Morph Cuts / Flow Transition

This is an effect in your video editing software which allows you ‘merge’ two clips together… however like many effects it has degrees of effectiveness - and this is really based upon how similar the two clips are.

So why would you want to use this effect? Well, usually it’s because you want to stay in the moment as you watch the interview or script.

For us - we typically use the effect when we’re interviewing someone and we want to stay with their interview, we don’t want to cut away - typically this is because they are saying something really important or emotional.

Some tips on how to get this effect working properly - 1) try and use two clips that are very visually similar - if someone has dramatically moved - either their position in the frame or say tilted their head to one side, it unlikely to work. And 2) if the effect is almost working, but not quite - try adjusting/fiddling with the amount the effect is analysing from the two clips. Often reducing the effect’s time will help.

And don’t forget…. Do you need to hide the cut?

My final thought is around whether to consider whether you actually need a cut.

I think a lot of the time, business owners can use the excuse of the hiding cut, that they need to shoot more footage so they can hide it, that they overthink hiding the cut instead of getting videos out.

So we need to consider if the value of the content needs us to hide a cut, or whether we could still provide a great video, and sure it’s a little rougher, but the content will ‘outsell’ that small missing part.

Let’s wrap this up

So that’s it - my thoughts around how you can hide a cut… even if you might not need to.

As ever, I hope this episode has been of use - I would love to hear your questions and thoughts around this topic or something that’s burning to get answered.

Until next time,

Beard Out