And would you look at that?

I've got headphones on. So we've got music down.

Next thing is we're gonna try to fine tune our pacing.

And the way that we're gonna do that is with one

of the most important editing techniques you will learn in

this course and in your your lifetime.

Okay? And I'm talking about j and l cutting.

If you're already familiar with this, fantastic.

If not, one of the most common questions I get is

how do I make smooth transitions or, or smooth cuts,

and there's a lot of different answers to that.

But my go-to is teaching people how to do j and l cutting.

So what I'm gonna do is show you a quick demonstration of

what it is and then how we apply it to our own videos.

Cool. Cool. Let's do it.

This next bit is purely for demonstration.

You guys do not have access to this footage.

I would just like you guys to watch

and follow along as I explain what a j and l cut is.

We have two clips here.

I have an airplane flying

and an airplane landing as is.

The transition from this left flying clip

to the right landing clip is a standard cut.

Sometimes this is called a jump cut.

So if I were to hit play, it sounds and looks like this.

Now the transition as is isn't awful, but we can apply a j

and l cut to strengthen this transition.

So what I would like to do is I would like

to preview this landing audio

before we actually cut to the plane landing.

And the way that we do that is as follows.

Now there is more than one way to do a j and l cut,

but this is the simplest approach I have found.

I'm gonna take the left clip and drag it up one track.

Oh, but let me get rid of this, uh,

subtitle track real quick.

I forgot I had that.

And now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the landing clip

and slide it underneath the other clip.

Now what's gonna happen when I play this?

Well, we are going to see the flying video all the way

through to the end of the clip,

but we're gonna preview the audio

before we transition to this scene.

And that's gonna look something like this.

Now this audio getting cut off abruptly makes this feel

a a tad bit jarring.

So what I'm gonna do is on the music track when I hover at

the edge in the upper corners,

and I can do this on any video,

you'll see these little white tabs.

If I grab that, I can fade out the audio.

So lemme go ahead and replay that.

As viewers, our mind is being primed for some kind of change

that's happening in the next scene.

We don't know what it is yet,

but we're beginning to hear audio from something

that's happening in the future.

So now when we make this cut,

this transition going from flying to landing,

we're already primed

and geared to see the plane landing again.

If I were to go full screen, that's gonna look

and sound something like this.

Isn't that pretty cool? It's much smoother than if we were

to just go from A to B with nothing in between.

Now, in traditional forms of editing,

what this ends up looking like is something like this.

I'll grab this video track up here, pull it down.

If we were to look at this cut point, we form a J.

So this is a J cut,

a J cut in video editing is when we preview

and lead in with audio from the upcoming scene.

An L cut is the, uh, the opposite of this.

So if I were to hold down the alt key

and drag our cut point over here,

so now what's gonna happen is we're not gonna preview the

audio of the upcoming scene,

but we're gonna lead out

with the audio from the previous scene.

And that looks and sounds something like this.

And again, if we were to look at this transition point,

we have an L that forms here.

When and where do we use j and l cuts?

Well, let's go ahead and talk about that.

So we're now back on our main working timeline here

with our music and our talking head footage.

And, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna begin

to introduce j and l cutting to help with the pacing

of the video here.

You don't have to follow along,

but you can choose to if you'd like to.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drag

and select these first two clips right here.

And all I'd like to do is hit control C scrub my playhead

to head to any random point outside of our main working area

and hit control V to paste them.

So control C is copy control V is paste.

I'm gonna move my playhead over here, hit D to zoom in,

and then use my horizontal scroll wheel

to bring these two things in.

What I'd like us to do is to begin

to string together these different sentences

and thoughts so that it feels more cohesive

because as is there's noticeable gaps in between.

So if I were to play this, a lot of beginners make

so a mistake that a lot of beginning again, hey,

let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of it is okay

to have natural pauses and dialogue.

However, we do wanna keep things moving along.

There shouldn't be a moment in the video

where there is a hiccup, right?

There's like a noticeable, ugh, like a lull in the video.

So what we can do is drag up this left track,

drag the right track

and pull it underneath where well,

lemme click my play it here so I can zoom in.

Remember how we were saying that after every sentence

or break in words, there's a little tail, right?

There's a little tail in the audio.

And again, I'm hitting shift in the scroll wheel

to expand my, uh, music tracks.

We wanna keep this audio tail because

otherwise if we cut it off, the audio will feel,

uh, it'll feel cut off.

So what I like to do is try to line up the head

or the beginning of the next audio phrase so

that it sits somewhere on this tail where, well,

it's very dependent on the flow of the dialogue.

But let's go ahead and play this as is.

Hey, let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot

of beginning editors make, that's not bad.

What if I were to bring it even further?

Hey, let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of begin, ooh,

little bit more punchy, uh,

it's sounding a little bit more intrusive.

What if I were to bring it out a little bit?

Hey, let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of beginning editors interesting.

So where should you put it? I don't know.

It's time for you to start making some decisions on

how you want the pacing

and the feeling of the video to sound.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring it

forward just a little bit.

So if you were looking to imitate me, the head

of this audio is sitting somewhere in the tail of this one.

It's kind of kind of middle point.

So again, it's gonna sound something like this.

Talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of quick pop quiz.

What kind of transition is this?

Remember we're leading in with the audio from the next scene

before we're seeing it give you three seconds.

Two, uh, j cut. This is a J cut.

A J cut in particular is a very,

very powerful tool when working with dialogue.

It's how we can maintain the audio sanctity

of the previous clip while also pushing along

what's being said next.

From here I'm gonna show you two techniques that we can use

to fine tune this kind of transition, this cut,

and then we'll begin applying it to our working timeline.