Film Composition for Beginners
Shot composition is another of those seemingly “unseen” factors that determines how your audience will respond to your videos.
When I say “unseen,” I mean unseen by the audience although possibly unseen by you the creator as well!
Your audience will not be thinking to themselves that your video has poor composition!
In fact they will probably be thinking nothing at all apart from having a strange sense of something not being quite right about what they are looking at and an urge to click away.
It is your job to take away that feeling by composing correctly and as appropriate for what it is that you are shooting and trying to achieve with your video.
Stable Diffusion vs FLUX vs Nano Banana vs GPT Image vs Z-Image Turbo: Text-to-Image Comparison
Like most of the video editing software programs these days PowerDirector is providing access to various A.I. models through the user interface.
Although the marketing tends to suggest that the software “has A.I.,” the truth is that the software is connected to exterior A.I. engines and that is actually where the work is being done.
The basic problem with this is that unless you know exactly what the purpose is of each of these models is or know their respective strengths and weaknesses are… it’s a bit of a crap shoot!
Fortunately CyberLink have have started to address this problem with some tutorial videos outlining why you would choose to work with one model for a projects over another.
This week they are covering Text-to-Image and in the video below you can get a concise rundown on each and what projects they are more suited to.
For a look at a similar comparison on the Image-to-Video models on offer you can see it in a recent Friday Roundup HERE. https://diyvideoeditor.com/the-friday-roundup-gear-envy-and-speed-ramping-tips/
AI Video Rescue in Filmora: Fix Bad Audio, Remove Objects & Save Your Footage
One thing I really can get onboard with as far as A.I. goes is the ever expanding range of correction tools that are becoming available to the average user.
I would like to say that I am always well prepared to shoot all my videos perfectly with every contingency anticipated and compensated for.
As I say, I would like to say that but it would be an outright lie!
Sometimes I don’t notice that dog taking a poop in the background or that the distant building site is creating sound that my mics are going to pick up!
Here’s a few of the tools I use in Filmora to get things back on track and make it look like I had it under control the whole time.
Convert Horizontal Video to Vertical in Seconds
Well I guess Movavi is a little late to this party but as they say, better late than never!
Movavi have just added an “Auto Crop” module to their video editing software and after testing it out for myself it works very, very well.
It can take horizontally shot video and automatically convert it to vertical video completely automatically.
Just as a little tip from me as well, if you know you are going to convert something ahead of shooting then do this.
Work out your intended framing so that you are quite generous about the space to are leaving in the original 16;9 footage.
That way when it comes time for cropping programs like Movavi have greater leeway for adjusting the cropped frame to convert to vertical.
Creating the Back to the Future Hoverboard Effect
I am not really convinced anyone reading this blog is actually going to go out and replicate what’s shown in this video!
However there is an important point to note about the post production side of things after the original footage was captured.
You will notice in the video the results on an almost no budget shoot are very good and the reason for that is only a couple of little things done in editing.
The actual separation of the final objects is something any of us can do with a reasonable consumer level video editor.
You could use masking, green screen or even A.I to get that done cleanly.
The second point is the addition of subtle shadows in the shots he gets.
It is a tiny detail that really sells the effect and again, you and i have those tools.
What To Do When Your Content Feels Repetitive (Live Channel Review)
If you are starting up or have already started a YouTube channel then there should be at least one undeniable fact that you are aware of.
That fact is that your channel must have a relatively tightly focused subject that you are making videos on.
If you don’t do that then YouTube has so much difficulty finding an audience for you that ultimately it gives up.
So given that a channel has a focus subject and an audience is building or had been built, that channel will hit the next big problem.
That problem is that you simple can’t keep producing content on and on forever without it ultimately starting to get repetitive.
Not only will your audience begin to notice but let’s face it, it will start slowly sucking the life out of you over time.
The question to be answered here is how to pivot to another subject to breathe life into the channel and you without alienating your existing audience.
It’s a fine line and in the video below a couple of guys with proven track records on the platform cover this subject in depth.
Appeal Video for Reused Content Demonetization on YouTube (How to)
There are a number of YouTube video genres that involve re-working, commenting or somehow making use of existing YouTube content.
Most of those types of video are perfectly acceptable in YouTube’s eyes BUT!!!
In order to examine the vast amounts of footage that is uploaded to YouTube every day, they rely heavily on A.I. driven bots to complete that task.
The real data those crawlers are trying to determine is whether or not the content is just someone re-using someone else’s content or if it is a legitimate reuse such as a reaction video or commentary.
Unfortunately when it comes to A.I in certain scenarios there seems to be a lot of artificial and not quite so much intelligence!
The result of that is many users getting “Reused Content Demonetization” strikes that are not actually accurate.
Here’s a run-through on how to deal with that situation.
Create a Pro Audio Visualizer Effect in DaVinci Resolve (No Plugins Needed)
I always try to add any tutorial I find each week that somehow involves the Fusion Page of DaVinci Resolve.
This one of the most powerful modules within the overall Resolve toolkit… BUT!
Let’s face it, this is pro level compositing and special effects all wrapped up in an interface that makes the space shuttles control deck look like a kids toy!
So unlocking all that power whilst being desirable, is not exactly an easy process.
What I like to do is find simple tutorial like the one below to learn Fusion even though I may not actually be wanting to create that effect for anything.
Top 5 AI Filmmaking Tools 2026
Since the first A.I. services started to appear I have always held the view that A.I for video editing was a good thing provided it was treated only one way.
That “way” is that A.I is a tool. It is not some kind of replacement for content creation or video making.
So over the past year or so there has been an explosion of different A.I models claiming to do all sorts of things and from what I can see, most of them are pretty naff.
There are however a few really good models that can go a long way in helping video creators save time and effort to add to their projects in a meaningful way.
I have my own preferences but here’s a list of current services that I can pretty much get onboard with.
Stop Shooting Like This… Please!
This is a really good “hands on” walkthrough of setting up good lighting for video with minimal pro equipment.
When I look back at the early stuff I was shooting it is because of the things in this video that I had such a hard time correcting the color and getting it to look decent.
Even then the results were pretty mediocre because a universal truth in video is that you can’t polish a turd!
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