Video editing tips and techniques, with the shortcut for each

What is a good video editing workflow?

A good workflow runs the same eight passes in the same order: organise, rough cut, tighten, sound, colour, captions and text, check, export. Each pass has one job, so you never grade a shot you later cut or caption a line you later delete.

1. Organise. Make bins, labels and names before the first cut.
2. Rough cut. Put the story in order. Keep it long and loose.
3. Tighten. Remove pauses and retakes, and add J-cuts and L-cuts.
4. Sound. Set dialogue level first, then put music under it.
5. Colour. Correct with scopes first, then add a look.
6. Captions and text. Add them only once the cut is locked, inside the platform's safe zone.
7. Check. Look for black gaps, flash frames, offline media and guides left showing.
8. Export. Use one setting per platform.

Each tip below names the editor's own panel or command first, then the mouse button, gesture or wheel slot that does the same job. We make mouzeclick, the mouse app and the Premiere Pro and After Effects panels mentioned here. Where the editor's own tool does the job, we say so.

This page names commands, not keys. For the default keys, keep our full list of Premiere Pro keyboard shortcuts open beside it. Adobe now calls Premiere Pro simply Adobe Premiere; this page keeps the older name.

Which video editing techniques should you learn first?

Start with the moves you repeat on every video. The table pairs each one with the native way and the mouzeclick way. It was checked on 3 November 2026.

How should beginners organise a project before cutting?

Make your bins before you make a cut, and colour-code clips as you review them. Labels let you tell A-roll, B-roll and music apart on the timeline at a glance.

A plain bin set works in any editor: sequences, footage, audio, graphics and exports. DaVinci Resolve splits the job into pages: media, photo, cut, edit, Fusion, color, Fairlight and deliver.

In Premiere Pro, mouzeclick gives you three ways to sort and label:

• Organize Project. It sits in the Motion lab of the Premiere Pro workspace. It sorts the project into bins 01 Sequences to 06 Other and moves unused media to 99 Unused. Windows only.
• mouzebin. One of the Premiere Pro extensions, on Windows and Mac. It sorts clips into bins by rule, finds unused, duplicate and offline media, relinks, batch renames, applies label rules and writes a project report. It never deletes files on disk.
• The Premiere Pro Tool wheel. It holds all sixteen label colours in a 4 × 4 grid and all eight marker colours, so you label while you review. With Premiere closed, mouzeclick writes the sixteen label shortcuts into Premiere's own shortcut file and keeps a backup.

How do you make a rough cut quickly?

Cut from a transcript if your editor has one, then fix the order on the timeline. In Premiere, Text-Based Editing transcribes your video on import, and Adobe says you can build a rough cut by copying and pasting text.

In DaVinci Resolve, editing happens on the cut and edit pages. Blackmagic lists text based editing among the features DaVinci Resolve Studio adds to the free version.

The rough cut is where you make the most cuts, so put the cut on the mouse first. Buttons work per app: Mouse 4 can cut a clip in Premiere, switch tabs in Chrome and paste everywhere else. It changes the moment you switch windows.

To set it up in mouzeclick:

1. Open mouzeclick and choose Premiere Pro as the app.
2. Pick a gesture button. Any button can be one, left and right included. A quick tap still clicks, and holding and moving runs the gesture.
3. Press Add editing gestures. It fills the empty directions: up plays, down splits, left undoes and right moves one frame forward.
4. Put any other command on a free button from the built-in shortcut library, which holds 153 Premiere Pro shortcuts on Windows.

Our guide to Premiere Pro mouse shortcuts covers each button in detail.

How do you remove silence and retakes?

Cut pauses by audio level and retakes by transcript, and keep a copy of the sequence either way. Do both before captions, so the words you caption are the words that stay.

Pauses

Studio's Silence tab runs on Windows and Mac:

1. Press Analyse. It reads the sound on your computer, draws the waveform and marks each pause.
2. Check the defaults: quieter than −40 dB, pauses from 0.40 s, and 0.12 s kept around speech.
3. Untick any pause you want to keep, such as a beat before a punchline.
4. Press Remove. It cuts on every track, leaves a music bed alone and keeps a copy of the sequence. It needs no Python and uploads nothing.

The Premiere Pro workspace (Windows) also has Silence & Cut on its Cut desk. It reads audio levels with no speech model and has three presets: Dialogue −48 dB, Podcast −44 dB and Aggressive −38 dB. You can choose Remove + ripple, or Cuts only. A higher threshold treats more quiet audio as silence, so start with Dialogue and move up only if pauses remain. The full method is in our Premiere Pro silence remover guide.

Retakes

Studio's Retakes tab is Windows only. It reads the transcript and strikes through every restarted sentence, keeping the last take. Speech Whisper skipped is listened to again. "Words said twice" and "um and uh" are optional and start off. One press removes everything and keeps a copy, and captions made afterwards still line up. See the retake remover walkthrough.

What are J-cuts and L-cuts, and when do they help?

A J-cut starts the next shot's sound before its picture. An L-cut lets the current shot's sound run on under the next picture. Use them in interviews and dialogue, so a cut feels like the conversation moving on rather than a hard switch.

By hand, you trim the sound and picture of a clip apart on the timeline, then overlap the audio with the neighbouring clip.

The Premiere Pro workspace has J-cut and L-cut buttons in its Toolbox. The same Toolbox has Stair up and down, Freeze frame, Nest sep, True dup, Un-nest, and transform rows with keyframe buttons.

The workspace is Windows only. The Mac app does not include it. The mouzeclick workspace page maps every section.

How do you add punch-in zooms without keyframing each one?

For one or two zooms, set the scale keyframes by hand. For a whole talking-head video, write them in a batch and adjust the few that miss.

AutoZoom (Windows only)

AutoZoom is on the Premiere Pro workspace's Cut desk. It writes plain zoom-in, hold and zoom-out keyframes from each clip's own scale. The defaults are:

• a 115% punch-in
• every 4 s
• a 1.5 s hold
• a 0.18 s transition

Nothing is triggered by speech, and Clear Zoom takes the keyframes off again. The numbers are explained in our Premiere Pro auto zoom guide.

AutoCamera (Windows only)

For podcasts, AutoCamera on the same desk cuts 2 to 8 camera angles to whoever is talking, measured from each speaker's mic. Off-air angles are disabled, never deleted.

On Windows and Mac

The Premiere Pro Tool wheel has punch in, slow zoom, a shake that dies away, Fill frame (no black bars) and nine anchors. Open it with F10 or a held right button. Studio's Timeline tab can zoom every other clip, with "Keep faces in frame".

How do you cut to music?

Mark the beats first, then cut on the markers. Without markers, every cut is a guess at the beat.

By hand, play the track, add markers on the beats as you hear them, then cut on them. The mouzebeat extension for Premiere Pro, on Windows and Mac, does it in a few steps:

1. Find the beat and add markers on every beat, every 2 beats, every bar or only the hits.
2. Press Listen to hear a click on every beat before you commit.
3. Cut clips to 1, 2, 4 or 8 beats. Snap cuts is there too.
4. Add pulse or auto-duck if the edit needs them.

Our page on beat markers in Premiere Pro shows both ways.

If a cut on the beat needs movement, mouzetrans (Windows and Mac) puts transitions on cuts. It has 11, including Zoom in, Whip, Spin and Fade to black. One or two styles per video usually reads better than many.

Should you fix sound or colour first?

Fix sound first. Viewers put up with a soft grade more than with dialogue they cannot hear, and level changes can affect where you cut. Then correct colour with scopes before you add any look.

Sound

Set dialogue to a steady level, then bring music in under it. DaVinci Resolve keeps audio on its Fairlight page. Blackmagic lists voice isolation, a music remixer and a dialogue separator as Resolve Studio features. In Premiere, mouzebeat's auto-duck lowers music under speech.

Colour

Correct exposure and white balance against scopes first, then add the look. Resolve does colour correction on its color page. Its free version includes luma, HSL and 3D keyers, a color warper and HDR tools.

mouzegrade runs in both Premiere Pro and After Effects, on Windows and Mac. Its scopes are a waveform, an RGB parade, a vectorscope with a skin line and a histogram. It has six built-in looks, loads .cube LUTs and matches clips to a reference. The grade is written as an ordinary colour effect. If faces look wrong, check them against the skin line first.

How do you add captions and text for social video?

Caption after the cut is locked, and keep every word inside the platform's safe zone. A caption hidden under a like button or a username is a caption nobody reads.

Captions in each editor

• Premiere. Adobe says captions can be translated in 18 languages.
• CapCut desktop. Go to the Text tab in the top menu bar, choose Auto captions, set the source language and click Create. CapCut can export a separate SRT file and translate captions into another language.
• DaVinci Resolve. Subtitles and Closed Captioning are on the edit page. Square and vertical resolutions are in the project and timeline settings, and Resolve also offers Smart Reframe.

mouzeclick Studio captions (Windows only)

Captions are written on your computer by Whisper. Pick one of three models, each downloaded once: Fast 60 MB, Accurate 190 MB or Best 574 MB. After that, your audio never leaves the machine.

• 47 languages plus automatic detection, with Translate to English and a Hinglish option.
• Unsure words are underlined, and "Remember this fix" carries a correction into every new transcript.
• Output goes to Premiere's own caption track, or "Styled on the video" in 289 looks in 27 families.

Compare it with Adobe's tool in our auto captions in Premiere Pro guide.

Safe zones (Windows and Mac)

Studio's Guides tab has 65 platform presets in 8 groups. TikTok's margins, for example, are top 130 px, bottom 484 px, right 140 px and left 44 px. The guides sit on one clip, on their own track. Hidden guides are not exported, and the tab warns you while they show. Details are in safe zone guides in Premiere Pro.

What should you check before you export?

Look for three faults that are easy to miss in playback: gaps that show black, single flash frames and offline media. Then confirm the guides are hidden and the format fits the platform.

Check the sequence

1. Run a QC check. In the Premiere Pro workspace (Windows), QC check marks black gaps, flash frames and offline media.
2. Close the gaps. Studio's Timeline tab has Close all gaps, on Windows and Mac.
3. Find missing files. mouzebin finds offline media and relinks it.
4. Hide the guides. Hidden Studio guides never reach the export.
5. Resize for each platform. The workspace's Sequence Resizer (Windows) makes 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 4K, 720p or your own size.

Export in CapCut desktop

Click the blue Export button in the top right corner. Set the title, resolution and codec. Make sure "Video exporting" is ticked, then click Export again.

Export in DaVinci Resolve

The last of Resolve's pages is deliver, and Blackmagic lists direct upload to YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo and X. Check your footage against the free version's limits first: virtually all 8-bit formats at up to 60 fps, up to Ultra HD 3840 × 2160. DaVinci Resolve Studio adds 10-bit video up to 120 fps and resolutions beyond 4K.

How do you put these editing tips on a mouse?

Give each move you repeat a button, gesture or wheel slot, set per app, and leave the rare ones on the keyboard. mouzeclick works with any mouse your computer sees. It uses up to five standard buttons plus scroll and tilt, with no driver.

• Buttons. Each button has eleven slots: tap, hold and move in four directions, a chord with another button, or hold and scroll.
• Options wheel (F8). It holds 48 favourites per app, on three rings of 12, 16 and 20. There are ready-made wheels for Premiere Pro, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, Photoshop and CapCut.
• Tool wheel (F10). It works only in Premiere Pro and After Effects. The Premiere Pro wheel has 112 tools in 12 segments, and the After Effects wheel has 114 tools in 13 groups.
• Shortcut library. There are 309 built-in shortcuts on Windows, including 41 for DaVinci Resolve and 23 for CapCut. On a Mac, don't count on Resolve or CapCut entries; record your own shortcut instead.

For default keys in other editors, see our DaVinci Resolve shortcuts and CapCut keyboard shortcuts. Blackmagic says the Resolve edit page has fully customizable keyboard shortcuts.

Platforms, plainly:

• Windows and Mac: the mouse app, gestures, all three wheels, the 22 extensions, and Studio's Silence, Timeline and Guides tabs.
• Windows only: the workspaces, Studio captions, Retakes, cloud sync and in-app updates.

A Mac setup takes four steps, shown on the Mac install page. One plan covers everything: $25 a month, $249 a year, or $499 once for one of the first 100 lifetime keys.

Questions people ask

Sources

Checked on 2026-11-03. Prices and features change: each link goes to the maker's own page.

1. Adobe Premiere product page (Text-Based Editing, caption translation, name change)
2. CapCut: add subtitles to video (auto captions, export steps, SRT export)
3. DaVinci Resolve product page (pages, free version limits, subtitles, shortcuts)
4. DaVinci Resolve Studio page (keyers, audio tools)
5. DaVinci Resolve what's new (vertical resolutions, Smart Reframe, direct upload)

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