
Anyone else make their own templates?
Posted October 28, 2021
in

Changing the world with video
I've found making templates for folders in Finder, and Premiere/AE templates have saved me a lot of set up time.
I have a template folder that has all the parts of post production I need, along with a premiere file already loaded with commonly used assets.
Do you guys have any other tricks for templates/repetitive tasks for post-production?
I have a template folder that has all the parts of post production I need, along with a premiere file already loaded with commonly used assets.
Do you guys have any other tricks for templates/repetitive tasks for post-production?
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Have a folder of background music ready to rock. Music stays in there (not in the project folder) so it never gets unlinked which saves time in itself.
I used to spend at least 15-20 mins per video finding music and that kinda stressed me out.
Instead, I took like 4 hours one day and just downloaded a bunch of music and now it takes me 2 minutes.
I also make proxies beforehand. It usually takes up all my computer’s processing power. While that happens I usually write scripts, make a rough animation, etc.
This is more of an editing style, but I always make a stringout sequence and then make highlighted selections from that. Then I take those into a select sequence, delete everything that isn't a select, parse that down more. I use the J and L keys to fast forward and rewind in Premiere. Then I add music, motion graphics. It saves more time that way instead of building a video from scratch.
That being said, we did end up buying the Speed Editor, which is a neat little control surface that can save a ton of time on quick-turnaround projects, if you learn how to take advantage of it. It's only $300, and includes a copy of the Studio version of DaVinci, which is normally $300 by itself.
In terms of templates, I made a "Social Ad" template which consists of a big 1920x1920 comp where we do the animation, taking into consideration the borders of different output resolutions (wide, square, vertical) so the critical content always remains within the visible area. This has allowed us to export different resolutions without having to reformat the content significantly.
I also used expression controls to guide where our logo is positioned (or if it's hidden), thumbnail selection (gets exported as a single frame at the beginning of the video), and exporting stills to go with the social post :)
Looking forward to hearing other template stories, and happy to share further info with anyone who is interested.
I want my YouTube videos to make the viewer feel good and look forward to my next video, and feel expanded and inspired. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with LUTs yet, but I know color grading is going to be important to me. My guess is that the music and LUTs will pull things together into a cohesive unit.
This is a brand new YouTube channel, and I'm really looking forward to creating the best template that I can so that I can quickly and easily create videos for frequent posting. So, yes, a well-defined template and workflow is very important to me... before I even start to create videos. Once I start, I won't have time to create videos from scratch, the template is a must.
Plus, you should be able to look at any of my videos and realize that you know the channel that the video came from, because of the template, and yet still be a bit surprised and amazed at each individual video.
As far as on-going, I'm using Clickup to handle project management of the YouTube channel. I chose it above Asana and others because I can make it do more and it is inexpensive. It will especially be helpful once I have the money to hire others.