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Sequence video clips and render an mp4 file
Overview
Name of explainer: Sequence video clips and render an mp4 file
Creative theme: Video editing
Software used: Vegas Pro
User level: BEGINNER
This is explainer 2 of 5 in this series
This series includes:
- Create a project, import video clips and save the project
- Sequence video clips and render an mp4 file
- Trim video clips, add fades and transitions
- Add text and music
- Putting it all together: Stonehenge!
The Software
This series of beginner explainers uses Vegas Pro. You can download a free 30 day demo version from the Vegas Website.
The Vegas website refers to ‘Vegas Edit, Vegas Pro and Vegas Post’. These are three different software ‘bundles’ / subscription levels, with Vegas Pro and Vegas Post including additional functionality and plug-ins. The core editing program used in these explainers, Vegas Pro, is included in all three options.
If you decide to purchase Vegas Pro, please review the subscription options in full first, bearing in mind different the different bundles and pricing plans available.
This month we’re also running an explainer series for Premiere Pro (which requires a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud) and a single full-workflow explainer for Premiere Rush (which is FREE on mobile devices and part of a paid subscription which includes access to the desktop version).
The final product
Here’s the simple ‘Spring is sprung’ video we’re creating as we work through explainers 1 to 4. Notice the added text, fades, transitions and music track.
The pre-requisities
This is a BEGINNER workflow explainer, so you just need to install and open the software. We’ll take it from there.
We suggest watching explainer number one in this series before continuing here.
If you’re new to IT / computing, you may need help downloading and installing the software. Start with a search for ‘how do i install vegas pro’ or speak with someone who’s familiar with downloading and installing.
Why would I do this?
Video editing is all about storytelling! It’s essential that video clips are sequenced correctly to make sense to the viewer – Imagine if we created an explainer using 26 video clips added to the timeline in a random order!
Even if you’re new to video editing, you will have heard of ‘mp4‘, the most popular video format in general use today, including for uploading to social media, YouTube and Vimeo.
Let’s do it!
Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.
Good to know
If your computer struggles to play back the Vegas timeline smoothly, use the ‘preview quality’ option above the preview window to help speed it up! Below we’ve selected ‘Good – Auto’ to see if it helps. Changing this setting won’t affect the quality of any exported videos.
As discussed in the explainer, there are lots of export codecs available in Sony Vegas, and each can be configured to your precise requirements. Have a look here for detailed information about ‘bitrates’.
Download the video clips used in this series
If you’d like to follow this series using the video clips demonstrated, you can download them below. These files are only to be used for personal practice and must not be sold or used commercially.
Where to next?
For short videos like ‘Spring is sprung’ you won’t wait too long for the final mp4 video file to render out, but if you’re creating long-form videos it can be annoying to wait many minutes for the final output. To speed up the rendering process, Intel processors include ‘quicksync‘ hardware encoding and AMD processors offer ‘AMD VCE’ encoding. Look for them in the ‘MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4’ category of the ‘Render As’ dialog as in the image below – They can cut your render time on half on many devices!
Notes and updates
There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in March 2023. This page was last updated in March 2023.
We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software gives users many ways in which to accomplish the same task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to reference multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risk.
This is number 2 of 10 explainer videos for video editing month. Make sure you check out the others!
