ALAN GAMING

EDITING GUIDE

This page is a guide for new and beginner editors to help them improve their editing and to help them get started.

(If you have any other advice/info you think should be added to this guide, feel free to message me on my social media or Discord)

Other Useful Programs / Tools

f.lux (Adjusts the colour temperature of your monitor)
ShareX (Screenshot software, better than Gyazo or Lightshot)
7-Zip (WinRAR without pop-ups)
MSI Afterburner (GPU OCing/fan control software)
HWiNFO (System monitoring software)
TeraCopy (File transfer software, alt. to Windows explorer)
PotPlayer (Video player)
LibreOffice (Microsoft Office but free)
IrfanView / XnView (Better Windows photo viewer)
NotePad++ / Sublime Text (Text editor)
Foobar2000 (Audio/music player)
Ableton Live Lite (DAW)
Twitch Leecher (Download Twitch VODs)
VeraCrypt (File/disk encryption)
TreeSize (Disk space analyser)
CCleaner (Free up SSD/HDD space)
HD Tune / CrystalDiskInfo (SSD/HDD health monitor)
Malwarebytes (Anti-malware)
VirtualBox (Virtual machine software)
Proton VPN (Free VPN)
Equalizer APO + Peace + AutoEQ Presets (Audio/Headphone EQ)
DDU (For clean installs of your GPU drivers)

TUTORIALS & EDITING HELP

Below I have listed a bunch of useful guides/tutorials, sites and Discord servers .etc that you can get help and support from.

After Effects & Premiere Pro

Cinema4D

Subreddits

Other Games & 3D

Blender

Houdini

Maya

Editing Live Streams

Half-Life Advanced Effects / HLAE

"Half-Life Advanced Effects (HLAE) is a tool to enrich Source (mainly CS:GO) engine based movie making" - advancedfx.org

HLAE is 100% the most essential program to have, without it, CS:GO editing/moviemaking wouldn't be possible. If you don't have it yet, you can download it from HERE, I suggest using the HLAE setup rather than the ZIP. When you need to update HLAE, the installer will just overwrite the older files.

NOTE: Whenever a CS:GO update gets released, HLAE will sometimes break/not work properly. If that's the case, you'll need to wait for a HLAE update to released. Follow @dtugend on Twitter for updates or join the HLAE Discord and follow their announcements channel to be notified when a new version of HLAE is out.

The majority of the commands are available on the HLAE Wiki, along with some guides and tutorials. You can report any bugs/issues via their Github page.

If you wish to support the developers of HLAE, you can donate to them via OpenCollective or GitHub sponsor

BEST EDITING PROGRAM?

The best program for you is really up to you, it's personal preference. Some people like to edit in Vegas Pro, some After Effects or Premiere Pro, some like to use a combination of Vegas and After Effects, it's all up to you and how you want to develop your workflow. After Effects is a compositing program, mostly used for stuff like tracking, animations and visual effects but you can also use it for editing. Vegas and Premiere are both NLE programs, designed for much more basic editing.

If you had to pick the best program out of those, I would probably recommend After Effects. Once you've learnt the basics, you can do so much more with After Effects than Vegas. Sony Vegas however is a bit easier to pickup in my opinion, but it can be limited depending on what you want to do with your edit.

Again, it's really depends on what you want to do and how you want to develop your editing workflow.

VELOCITY / SYNCING

FRAGMOVIE EDITING

Fragmovie editing is can be simple, since it doesn't require any special effects or lots of syncing (although it can be done), but it's hard to master like any edit. Virre is someone that comes to mind for fragmovies, his editing style is very clean and smooth. An editing style that he's developed over the years and he's mastered it extremely well.

My suggestion is to watch a lot of fragmovies from different editors to see their different editing styles, to help develop your own unique editing style.

I've made a small list of a few basics you should keep in mind:

Keep it clean, don't over do it with lots of VFX. That's what I personally prefer, but that's up to you. You can of course experiment with VFX if you want.
Always record at the highest quality and resolution, I don't recommend anything below 1080p.
Don't record 4:3 or stretched, keep it at the standard 16:9 or use 21:9 if you want black bars.
Render 60fps. Fragmovies look better at 60 rather than 24/30fps, since it more gameplay like. This will depend on the style of video you are making, if you want a more cinematic look, then use 24/30fps instead.
Keep the CC simple to start off with, you don't have to go crazy with it. Some basic saturation increase, brightness and contrast should be enough, but it'll depend on the mood/feel of the clip. Experiment with it to make it suit your video.
Try and use a standard moviemaking crosshair, avoid using ones that are pink/yellow/blue, I recommend using a white crosshair. Green is also fine, but might stand out more. Depends on your personal preference.
Make cuts on certain beats, it will depend on your song choice but having clips cut off beat will look and feel weird.
Learn when and when not to use velocity, some parts you won't need it, some parts you might want to do some syncing with the music.
To add onto the previous point, velocity can be used a lot of the time, but it can either be done well or look really bad. Barker's fragmovie is an example of it done extremely well.
Cut out the unnecessary parts, like someone walking from one site to another, keep the fragmovie interesting.

MUSIC

Music is completely 100% personal preference. There are many ways to find music, SoundCloud is one of the most popular ways, but you can also use other sites such as Bandcamp, Spotify or even YouTube. On SoundCloud you can find loads of underground/unknown artists there, which means copyright claims are less likely and you also help promote that artist. You can also use Music Map to search for related artists that you like.

I highly recommend you avoid using songs that have already been used before, so do not use "Paxton - Mind Tree" or "Tiesto & KSHMR - Secrets" for obvious reasons...

I would also avoid NoCopyrightSounds. I don't have anything against them, but their channel is very popular, if you find a song on that channel and use it in an edit or fragmovie, it's highly likely that someone else has already used it. Monstercat is also quite a good place for a variety of EDM music, but again their channel is quite large and there is a high chance someone has already used it.

As for copyright, I personally just use whatever music I want and take the copyright claim, you just won't be able to monetize the video. I would however avoid some songs from larger record labels (Universal, Sony, Warner .etc ), sometimes they will block the video depending on the country, which can be an issue.

How to tell if a sony is copyrighted

There is Lickd.co, which is a site where you can buy a license to use popular songs, without getting a claim or strike.

SFX

Sound effects are very important, in my opinion it can make or break an edit, even if everything else is perfect.
Try not to overuse the same wooshes/swishes, try to make them all different by stretching them and panning them, to change the direction of the sound.
Depending on the song, you also don't have to always use swooshes or wooshes, sometimes the song will cover them anyway, you only need to add them when they are needed.
You can find a bunch of free SFX over on FreeSound.org
Some examples of really good SFX can be found on T3C Sounds
2GB SFX Pack by Reedy (10k+ sounds)
30GB+ SFX Pack by sonniss.com

MOTION BLUR

There are a few ways of doing motion blur, depending on your editing program. They are RSMB, CC Force Motion Blur, Resample and S_OCIOTransform.

CC Force Motion Blur and S_OCIOTransform look the best and are more realistic/natural, but usually takes longer to render. RSMB is slightly faster but isn't as good as the other two. ReSample is Vegas' motion blur, which is essentially frame sampling/blending the frames together, but also creates ghost frames.

Any of those will give you motion blur, which one you use is up to you. I would suggest RSMB or CC Force Motion Blur for the best results.

TLDR: CC Force Motion Blur > RSMB > Resample

RESHADE

"ReShade is a generic post-processing injector for games and video software developed by crosire. Imagine your favorite game with ambient occlusion, real depth of field effects, color correction and more ... ReShade exposes an automated and generic way to access both frame color and depth information (latter is automatically disabled during multiplayer to prevent exploitation) and all the tools to make it happen." from reshade.me

ReShade is not 100% needed, it's an optional extra, depending on what you want your video to look like. It's really down to personal preference. Keep in mind, you will need a fairly decent PC to run it, if you're on a low end PC then ReShade will not run very well.

Download ReShade | ReShade Shaders | qUINT Shaders | Pascal Glitcher's RayTracing Shader

How to setup ReShade | Using MIRV_STREAMS with ReShade

Below are a few examples of what ReShade can look like:

VISUAL EFFECTS / VFX

CLIENT WORK / PAID WORK

Below are a few videos I highly recommend watching if you are interested in doing client work, working as a freelancer or in the creative field.

There are companies such as Render.gg that hire editors to edit videos (such as stream highlights), for streamers/content creators. Not only video editors, but also content managers, motion/graphic designers .etc

There are sites such as Fiverr, which provides a freelance service for anyone. Since it's a large and well known site, there will be multiple people doing the same thing, so the chances of getting hired through Fiverr aren't very high. Fiverr also takes a 20% cut of the payment.

For more Esports and gaming, HitmarkerJobs has job listings for editors, coaches, social media managers, writers .etc

I also suggest making something like a showreel, portfolio, website, Behance page or even just uploading your work onto Youtube. That way when you are approached by a client or applying for a position, you can show them some examples of your work.