Training: WeVideo

Today’s Training: WeVideo

Today’s Reflection Question:

• • Reflect on the experience of learning how to use WeVideo for video editing. How would you feel about helping someone else learn how to use it? What did you find most interesting? What did you find most frustrating? What questions do you still have, and what parts of the tool do you want to explore more deeply?

In today’s reflection, I practiced using WeVideo by creating a 30-second video explaining the majors and concentrations students can pursue at Grinnell College.

WeVideo has all the basic features one would want to produce a video, including importing external media (videos and images), captions, audio (VoiceOver or music), as well as a wide variety of stock videos. This would be a simplified version of other video editing software I used in the past (iMovie, Filmora, and DaVinci Resolve) that is best for producing simple videos for education purposes. Since I am familiar with the commands and functions, I feel confident about assisting someone in learning these tools.

What I found most interesting and surprising was the wide selection of stock footage available through WeVideo, which was not included in other software I am use to edit with. Stock footage is mostly educational and archival, and I can see them being very helpful in storytelling and educational videos. I feel that this resolves the common concerns for editors of being able to access and afford copyrighted materials like stock videos.

While the upside of WeVideo is its simplicity and ready-made templates (of captions, audio, and transition), its shortcomings would be a lack of customizability and precision with editing. While making the practice video today, some of the transitions and texts had prefixed durations. They did not allow me to customize the duration to match the duration of the video it should correspond to. Positioning and customizing the looks of the text was also not possible. I feel that tools like iMovie make it easier to customize the length of audio and video to adjust to the exact length and transition you like. It was difficult to insert the voiceover after having edited the rest of the video (perhaps WeVideo assumes you work on a video in a chronological manner without a lot of going back and forth), and I ended up needing to export the draft video (without the voiceover at the beginning), create a new project with audio imported, and add in the video with rest of the contents and a longer duration text.

Overall, this training makes me think of the importance of knowing the tradeoff between knowing a simplified and easier-to-use platform like WeVideo while having to use upper-level tools for precision and customizable experience. WeVideo’s tools may be limited, however, it is particularly strong in its wide selection of source materials. While iMovie allows for sophisticated techniques, it may be too complicated to learn to use for creating a simple short-form video.

I feel that learning both is important for my role so that I am able to assist clients depending on their experience level, purpose, and intended outcome for using a video editing tool.