Expert Advice on Lighting Your YouTube Content Perfectly

How To Light Your YouTube Video

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

A Step-by-Step Guide to Edit YouTube Videos in FinalCut

How to Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

With its user friendly interface and versatile features, Fincal Cut Pro is definitely one of the best choices for making videos for Mac users. Using it isn’t that hard, but it’s definitely not a walk in the park, so we’ve taken the liberty to provide you with a comprehensive yet concise guide on how to edit YouTube videos with Final Cut Pro.

---

Even though FCP is good software, there’s no denying that it’s pretty pricy and a little bit complicated for most beginners. Wondershare Filmora for Mac is definitely better alternatives for Final Cut Pro. It’s a lot more user-friendly and requires no previous experience in video editing. With Wondershare Filmora, you can ignite your YouTube videos with over 300 effects like Fashion, Beauty, Block Buster, Travel, etc.

---

How to Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

In this section, we are going to take a quick look at the steps that you need to take in order to properly edit YouTube videos in Final Cut Pro. Without any further ado, let’s take a look.

Step 1: Importing the video clip into FCP

This is, of course, the first thing that you need to do. Regardless of whether the original footage was taken by your smart phone, taken from the Internet or you’ve left it over from some past event that’s long overdue, you can easily import it into the FCP in order to edit it. FCP supports a variety of different formats, so it’s a good idea to try and import the video even if you are not quite sure about its extension. In order to do so, open the program, go to the File button, click on Import and select the file or the folder. This is going to get you to a regular finder window which would enable you to pick the clip that you want to do. If it’s not highlighted or you aren’t able to select it, the software doesn’t support it, and it’s not compatible.

Keep in mind that if you want to import videos which have been published already, you can download them directly from the channel as MP4 files. If you want to store videos from different channels, you can use the Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate in order to get them converted and stored on your computer in a format that is supported by FCP.

Step 2: Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

That’s the fun part. There are a few things that you can do with Final Cut Pro, and they are all quite professional.

• First, you can sync an audio track with your video as the DSLR cameras usually have terrible quality of the sound. This is why you want to get the audio recorded separately. The only thing you need to do is select the audio clip and click on the Synchronize Clips, and you are good to go.

• Furthermore, you can do proper color balancing with the program quickly and incredibly easy. Go on Modify and then click on Balance Color and the software is going to take care of the rest on its own.

• You can also create previews when the video ends. In order to do so, you need to import your main clip, select a solid background color and place the preview video above it. You will then be able to trim and edit it conveniently. Adjust the scale and the position and you are good to go. Afterwards, you can also apply annotation on top of the preview.

Step 3: Upload to YouTube from the software directly

This one is rather easy. Here is the sequence that you need to do. Go to File -> Share -> Master File -> Setting -> File -> Share -> YouTube. That’s basically it. Then you need to sign in to your YouTube account and simply click on Next -> Publish and the entire thing is done. That’s all you need to do in order to quickly and conveniently upload your video to YouTube directly from the FCP.

Check this video tutorial to see how YouTube creators edit their YouTubes videos with Final Cut Pro

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

With its user friendly interface and versatile features, Fincal Cut Pro is definitely one of the best choices for making videos for Mac users. Using it isn’t that hard, but it’s definitely not a walk in the park, so we’ve taken the liberty to provide you with a comprehensive yet concise guide on how to edit YouTube videos with Final Cut Pro.

---

Even though FCP is good software, there’s no denying that it’s pretty pricy and a little bit complicated for most beginners. Wondershare Filmora for Mac is definitely better alternatives for Final Cut Pro. It’s a lot more user-friendly and requires no previous experience in video editing. With Wondershare Filmora, you can ignite your YouTube videos with over 300 effects like Fashion, Beauty, Block Buster, Travel, etc.

---

How to Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

In this section, we are going to take a quick look at the steps that you need to take in order to properly edit YouTube videos in Final Cut Pro. Without any further ado, let’s take a look.

Step 1: Importing the video clip into FCP

This is, of course, the first thing that you need to do. Regardless of whether the original footage was taken by your smart phone, taken from the Internet or you’ve left it over from some past event that’s long overdue, you can easily import it into the FCP in order to edit it. FCP supports a variety of different formats, so it’s a good idea to try and import the video even if you are not quite sure about its extension. In order to do so, open the program, go to the File button, click on Import and select the file or the folder. This is going to get you to a regular finder window which would enable you to pick the clip that you want to do. If it’s not highlighted or you aren’t able to select it, the software doesn’t support it, and it’s not compatible.

Keep in mind that if you want to import videos which have been published already, you can download them directly from the channel as MP4 files. If you want to store videos from different channels, you can use the Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate in order to get them converted and stored on your computer in a format that is supported by FCP.

Step 2: Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

That’s the fun part. There are a few things that you can do with Final Cut Pro, and they are all quite professional.

• First, you can sync an audio track with your video as the DSLR cameras usually have terrible quality of the sound. This is why you want to get the audio recorded separately. The only thing you need to do is select the audio clip and click on the Synchronize Clips, and you are good to go.

• Furthermore, you can do proper color balancing with the program quickly and incredibly easy. Go on Modify and then click on Balance Color and the software is going to take care of the rest on its own.

• You can also create previews when the video ends. In order to do so, you need to import your main clip, select a solid background color and place the preview video above it. You will then be able to trim and edit it conveniently. Adjust the scale and the position and you are good to go. Afterwards, you can also apply annotation on top of the preview.

Step 3: Upload to YouTube from the software directly

This one is rather easy. Here is the sequence that you need to do. Go to File -> Share -> Master File -> Setting -> File -> Share -> YouTube. That’s basically it. Then you need to sign in to your YouTube account and simply click on Next -> Publish and the entire thing is done. That’s all you need to do in order to quickly and conveniently upload your video to YouTube directly from the FCP.

Check this video tutorial to see how YouTube creators edit their YouTubes videos with Final Cut Pro

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

With its user friendly interface and versatile features, Fincal Cut Pro is definitely one of the best choices for making videos for Mac users. Using it isn’t that hard, but it’s definitely not a walk in the park, so we’ve taken the liberty to provide you with a comprehensive yet concise guide on how to edit YouTube videos with Final Cut Pro.

---

Even though FCP is good software, there’s no denying that it’s pretty pricy and a little bit complicated for most beginners. Wondershare Filmora for Mac is definitely better alternatives for Final Cut Pro. It’s a lot more user-friendly and requires no previous experience in video editing. With Wondershare Filmora, you can ignite your YouTube videos with over 300 effects like Fashion, Beauty, Block Buster, Travel, etc.

---

How to Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

In this section, we are going to take a quick look at the steps that you need to take in order to properly edit YouTube videos in Final Cut Pro. Without any further ado, let’s take a look.

Step 1: Importing the video clip into FCP

This is, of course, the first thing that you need to do. Regardless of whether the original footage was taken by your smart phone, taken from the Internet or you’ve left it over from some past event that’s long overdue, you can easily import it into the FCP in order to edit it. FCP supports a variety of different formats, so it’s a good idea to try and import the video even if you are not quite sure about its extension. In order to do so, open the program, go to the File button, click on Import and select the file or the folder. This is going to get you to a regular finder window which would enable you to pick the clip that you want to do. If it’s not highlighted or you aren’t able to select it, the software doesn’t support it, and it’s not compatible.

Keep in mind that if you want to import videos which have been published already, you can download them directly from the channel as MP4 files. If you want to store videos from different channels, you can use the Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate in order to get them converted and stored on your computer in a format that is supported by FCP.

Step 2: Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

That’s the fun part. There are a few things that you can do with Final Cut Pro, and they are all quite professional.

• First, you can sync an audio track with your video as the DSLR cameras usually have terrible quality of the sound. This is why you want to get the audio recorded separately. The only thing you need to do is select the audio clip and click on the Synchronize Clips, and you are good to go.

• Furthermore, you can do proper color balancing with the program quickly and incredibly easy. Go on Modify and then click on Balance Color and the software is going to take care of the rest on its own.

• You can also create previews when the video ends. In order to do so, you need to import your main clip, select a solid background color and place the preview video above it. You will then be able to trim and edit it conveniently. Adjust the scale and the position and you are good to go. Afterwards, you can also apply annotation on top of the preview.

Step 3: Upload to YouTube from the software directly

This one is rather easy. Here is the sequence that you need to do. Go to File -> Share -> Master File -> Setting -> File -> Share -> YouTube. That’s basically it. Then you need to sign in to your YouTube account and simply click on Next -> Publish and the entire thing is done. That’s all you need to do in order to quickly and conveniently upload your video to YouTube directly from the FCP.

Check this video tutorial to see how YouTube creators edit their YouTubes videos with Final Cut Pro

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

With its user friendly interface and versatile features, Fincal Cut Pro is definitely one of the best choices for making videos for Mac users. Using it isn’t that hard, but it’s definitely not a walk in the park, so we’ve taken the liberty to provide you with a comprehensive yet concise guide on how to edit YouTube videos with Final Cut Pro.

---

Even though FCP is good software, there’s no denying that it’s pretty pricy and a little bit complicated for most beginners. Wondershare Filmora for Mac is definitely better alternatives for Final Cut Pro. It’s a lot more user-friendly and requires no previous experience in video editing. With Wondershare Filmora, you can ignite your YouTube videos with over 300 effects like Fashion, Beauty, Block Buster, Travel, etc.

---

How to Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

In this section, we are going to take a quick look at the steps that you need to take in order to properly edit YouTube videos in Final Cut Pro. Without any further ado, let’s take a look.

Step 1: Importing the video clip into FCP

This is, of course, the first thing that you need to do. Regardless of whether the original footage was taken by your smart phone, taken from the Internet or you’ve left it over from some past event that’s long overdue, you can easily import it into the FCP in order to edit it. FCP supports a variety of different formats, so it’s a good idea to try and import the video even if you are not quite sure about its extension. In order to do so, open the program, go to the File button, click on Import and select the file or the folder. This is going to get you to a regular finder window which would enable you to pick the clip that you want to do. If it’s not highlighted or you aren’t able to select it, the software doesn’t support it, and it’s not compatible.

Keep in mind that if you want to import videos which have been published already, you can download them directly from the channel as MP4 files. If you want to store videos from different channels, you can use the Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate in order to get them converted and stored on your computer in a format that is supported by FCP.

Step 2: Edit YouTube Videos in Final Cut Pro

That’s the fun part. There are a few things that you can do with Final Cut Pro, and they are all quite professional.

• First, you can sync an audio track with your video as the DSLR cameras usually have terrible quality of the sound. This is why you want to get the audio recorded separately. The only thing you need to do is select the audio clip and click on the Synchronize Clips, and you are good to go.

• Furthermore, you can do proper color balancing with the program quickly and incredibly easy. Go on Modify and then click on Balance Color and the software is going to take care of the rest on its own.

• You can also create previews when the video ends. In order to do so, you need to import your main clip, select a solid background color and place the preview video above it. You will then be able to trim and edit it conveniently. Adjust the scale and the position and you are good to go. Afterwards, you can also apply annotation on top of the preview.

Step 3: Upload to YouTube from the software directly

This one is rather easy. Here is the sequence that you need to do. Go to File -> Share -> Master File -> Setting -> File -> Share -> YouTube. That’s basically it. Then you need to sign in to your YouTube account and simply click on Next -> Publish and the entire thing is done. That’s all you need to do in order to quickly and conveniently upload your video to YouTube directly from the FCP.

Check this video tutorial to see how YouTube creators edit their YouTubes videos with Final Cut Pro

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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