Big Idea

The argument in one line.

A video looks unprofessional not from one big flaw but from small mismatches, clashing fonts, wasted audio, missing context, static framing, and unchecked errors, that a five-step review process catches and fixes.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You edit your own YouTube videos and want specific, checkable fixes instead of vague 'make it look better' feedback.
You have a personal brand, logo, or website and want your video's fonts, colors, and graphics to actually match it.
You use DaVinci Resolve, including the free version, and want to see real Fusion node work: character-level text styling, animated masks, punch-ins, and smooth cut transitions.
You make talking-head or voiceover content and want to use music and sound effects as a deliberate tool instead of background filler.

SKIP IF…

You're looking for color grading or audio mixing technique, this is about structure, branding, and pacing, not technical grading or mixing.
You edit in Premiere, Final Cut, or another NLE, most of the hands-on steps are DaVinci Resolve-specific menu paths and presets.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Greg re-edits a subscriber's video, a professional film composer's YouTube essay on Danny Elfman, live, to show that polish comes from five checkable habits rather than talent or expensive gear. He matches every graphic and font to the subscriber's own website branding, turns music and sound effects into deliberate editing tools instead of background filler, adds titles and images wherever a beginner viewer would get lost, breaks up static framing with punch-ins, smooth cuts and cutaways to hide jump cuts and hold attention, and finally trains viewers to self-audit by watching their full export back before and after publishing to catch flash frames and small continuity errors.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:25

01 · Cold open

Greg states the premise: he re-edited a subscriber's video and will break every change into five actionable steps viewers can apply to their own edits.

00:25 – 00:54

02 · Who is Dillon Derosa?

Introduces the subscriber: a professional film/TV/game composer whose credits include Kraven, Mortal Kombat, The Conjuring, and Justice League.

00:54 – 08:17

03 · Step 1: Match the branding

Dillon's video uses seven fonts and an unrelated Game Boy graphic that clash with his slick, single-font website. Greg rebuilds the lower third from an element on Dillon's own site (Fusion character-level styling, color-picked from a screenshot, background box, play-button mask) and shows an alternate branded picture-in-picture treatment.

08:17 – 10:52

04 · Step 2: Use audio as an editing tool

Dillon only uses music at chapter points; Greg adds a note-matched audio cue as Dillon names specific chords, and proposes custom branded sound effects tied to the niche (and to any niche, like keyboards for tech or scissors for haircuts).

10:52 – 16:25

05 · Step 3: Give viewers context

Adds titles and images only where a beginner would get lost, Danny Elfman film posters sliding in via Animated Mask + Dynamic Zoom, and a lower third defining 'color' as a musical term, never visuals added just because they look cool.

16:25 – 22:38

06 · Step 4: Keep your viewers' attention

Fixes static A-roll framing and hidden jump cuts with punch-ins (eye-line guides, 1.4x zoom), the Smooth Cut transition, and cutaways to titles/images; also uses a wipe transition that needs visual contrast between the shots it connects.

22:38 – 28:38

07 · Step 5: Spot the little mistakes

Trains the eye to catch flash frames (the 'Alien Baby' clip example), clips shown too quickly, premature cutaways from a sidebar list, and a zoom transition animating the wrong layer; recommends watching the full export back, and having someone else watch it too.

28:38 – 29:09

08 · Close: free preset + next video

Offers the free Zoom Camera Lite preset used for the smooth zoom-in technique and teases a follow-up video covering five more common editing mistakes.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

A video can look unprofessional simply because it uses seven different fonts while the creator's own website uses one.
Treating music, sound effects, and lower thirds as one branding system, not separate decorations, is what makes a video feel premium.
Pairing a spoken detail, like naming a chord, with a matching audio or visual cue as it's said turns narration into a demonstration instead of just talk.
Branded sound effects don't have to be generic. Any niche (haircuts, computers, music) has a real-world sound effect it can borrow and brand.
Punching in right before a new sentence or a new piece of information both hides a jump cut and signals the viewer to pay attention.
A punch-in only reads as clean if the subject's eyes land in the exact same on-screen position across both shots, lined up with horizontal and vertical guides.
A wipe transition only looks clean when it cuts between visually different shots. Using it between two takes of the identical framing removes the contrast the wipe depends on.
Cutting away from on-screen text or images too quickly is as much a mistake as showing nothing at all. Give the viewer enough time to actually read it.
A single flash frame, sometimes just one extra frame of leftover text or a changed camera angle, is enough to visibly jar a viewer and is fixed by trimming one or two frames.
Watching the full exported video back at normal speed, not skimming at double speed, is the main way editors catch flash frames and small continuity errors before anyone else sees them.
Showing someone else the edit before publishing, even a non-editor, surfaces mistakes the editor has stopped noticing after dozens of rewatches.
A zoom transition applied to the wrong layer (the background clip instead of the title or A-roll on top) animates the wrong thing and is worth auditing for.

Takeaway

Five checkable habits that make an edit read pro

WHAT TO LEARN

Five checkable habits separate a professional edit from an amateur one: matching branding, using sound on purpose, giving viewers context, varying the frame, and actually watching the final export before publishing.

03Step 1: Match the branding

Treat every graphic, lower third, and font choice as part of one branding system pulled from your own site or style guide, not as a grab-bag of templates that merely look cool.
The branding check is simple: put your own website or style guide next to the edit and ask whether the fonts, colors, and boxes could have come from the same source.
A branded lower third doesn't need new design software. Recreate it from a real element already on your website, a text box, a play button, a brand color, and reuse that look everywhere.

04Step 2: Use audio as an editing tool

Music and sound design aren't just backing tracks. A note-matched audio cue as you say the note turns a spoken fact into something the viewer hears demonstrated.
Custom branded sound effects, even simple ones tied to your niche, reinforce identity the same way a logo or font does.
The gap to look for is anywhere the video states something technical with no audio or visual reinforcement alongside it.

05Step 3: Give viewers context

Add a title, image, or short graphic any time the spoken content assumes knowledge a casual viewer won't have.
Only add an on-screen element when it backs up what's being said. Visuals added just because they look cool, with no connection to the audio, are the actual mistake to avoid.
The test is literal: watch your own video back and ask if there's a moment where a beginner would need extra context to follow along.

06Step 4: Keep your viewers' attention

Staying on the same framing for too long both bores the viewer and forces visible jump cuts where pauses were trimmed out; vary the shot instead.
A punch-in works best right before new information or a new sentence, and only reads clean if the subject's eyes land in the exact same spot across both shots.
A wipe or cutaway transition needs contrast between the two shots it connects; using one between two takes of the identical framing removes the visual change the transition depends on.

07Step 5: Spot the little mistakes

Watch the entire exported video straight through, at normal speed, before and after export, flash frames and small errors don't get caught at double-speed skim.
A flash frame, one leftover frame of text or an extra camera angle, is fixed by trimming one or two frames; it's worth hunting for even in an otherwise finished edit.
Showing the edit to someone else before publishing, even a non-editor, reliably surfaces mistakes the editor has stopped noticing after many rewatches.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Lower third: A text or graphic overlay positioned in the lower portion of the video frame, commonly used for names, titles, or supporting context.
Fusion page: DaVinci Resolve's node-based compositing page, used for building and animating text, masks, and graphics beyond the Edit page's basic tools.
Character-level styling: A Fusion text modifier that lets an editor change the font size or color of selected characters or lines independently from the rest of a text block.
Punch-in: A quick zoom cut within the same shot, used to re-engage viewer attention and disguise a jump cut between two takes.
Smooth Cut: A DaVinci Resolve Studio transition that blends two similar shots together to hide a jump cut between them.
Jump cut: An edit between two clips of the same subject and framing that creates a visible, often jarring, break in continuity.
Dynamic Zoom: A Resolve tool that animates a clip's zoom and position between a start box and an end box set in the viewer overlay.
Flash frame: A single stray frame, such as leftover text or a wrong camera angle, that flickers visibly on screen for a fraction of a second.
Animated Mask: A Resolve/Fusion preset used to crop, border, and animate footage into shapes like a bordered picture-in-picture box.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:54linkDillon Derosa (dillonderosa.com) ↗

00:00linkDillon Derosa's original video (How to Write Like Danny Elfman) ↗

01:00productGreg's DaVinci Resolve preset pack ↗

28:14toolZoom Camera Lite (free preset) ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

03:10

“You can't imagine a video that Apple released that suddenly has a random colored background with comic book sans as the font.”

Sharp, visual analogy for brand-consistency failure that needs no setup.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

10:44

“If your videos are about computers then you can use a sound of a keyboard. If your videos are about how to cut hair then you can have the sound of scissors.”

Concrete, instantly applicable branded-sound-effect idea for any niche.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

22:46

“The best way to spot these little mistakes is to make sure you watch the entire video back before you export it. Don't just skip through it at double speed.”

States the core discipline of step five as one clean, actionable line.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

22:31

“There needs to be some contrast between the clips that is transitioning between.”

The exact rule that explains why a wipe transition works or fails.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

analogy

I re -edited one of my subscribers videos to show how anyone can make their videos 10 times better just by making some simple changes. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through every single change that I made and break these changes down into five actionable steps so that you can apply these exact same things when editing your next video.

So this is Dylan. Dylan is a professional composer who has worked on major films, TV shows and video games. I mean, just look at some of these projects that he's worked on.

It's some seriously impressive stuff. But as good of a composer as Dylan is, he's not a professional video editor and he's making the same mistakes that I see people making all of the time on YouTube. So here is step one of five steps to improve Dylan's edit.

So this is Dylan's website. And I think you'll agree with me that his website looks slick. And it's got this very...

premium feel to it, doesn't it? And I think Dylan's videos should look the same. But when I watched Dylan's video, I noticed that the branding of it doesn't fully match up with the look of his website.

So for example, this lower third here, and as much as I love the Game Boy graphics symbol, it just looks completely out of place in this video and would look completely out of place on Dylan's website as well. I also noticed that Dylan has seven different fonts throughout his video, whereas his website just has one. And this mismatch is what can make a video look unprofessional.

I've seen so many videos on YouTube where it feels like people are using graphics and templates just because visually they look cool, rather than intentionally using them to drive the look and feel of what their video should be. I mean, you can't imagine a video that Apple released that suddenly has a random colored background with comic book sans as the font.

Of course not. you know that they always use a white background with the same font and style to them and it looks clean and professional. So Dylan's video should be the same.

So let's take this Game Boy Lower Third as an example. The graphic of the exclamation mark box isn't anything to do with the video or anything to do with music in general.

The black and white box doesn't match Dylan's branding and the font is Poppins, which doesn't match the font on Dylan's website, which is Barlow Condensed. So we want to replace this with something that fits Dylan's branding and gives the video that premium look. And luckily, since Dylan's already got a very well branded website, we can use that to help us.

So on Dylan's website, we can see that he's got a few of these nice looking boxes with text. So one option that we have is to recreate one of those and use that look as a lower third. So I know that Dylan has my preset pack, so I'm gonna use my text plus title from my pack.

But this same thing can be done with any text plus title. My one just makes it easier to do basically. So first I'm gonna put the text in like this, left align it like this, and then change the font to match Dylan's website, and then put it in the bottom left of the screen like this.

Then I wanna make these three lines smaller than the title so i'm going to click on this one symbol over here to open this up on the fusion page and then with show controls ticked over here i'm able to drag over the bottom three lines to select them and then right click in the text box and hit character levels styling which unlocks the modifier tab where we can find the controls for the character level styling and because we have those three lines selected in the viewer i can now bring the size down on this modifier so that it only affects those lines and not the title i also want to change the color of these three lines to match this text here so i'm going to make a screenshot of dylan's website and then bring this image into the fusion page and then if i select this node and hit the number one key on my keyboard it means it's put this image into viewer one by default you see your end result in viewer two which is this main viewer but if i hit this double window here you'll see that we now have viewers one and two so if i select those three lines again i can drag the color picker over

your one and position it where the text is and then let go and there we go the text is now the right color if you're on a mac you can actually add this color to a new color palette and then grab all of the colors off of the website like this so you don't have to keep doing this every time you want one of your branded colors and then i can delete that screenshot from the composition and head back to the edit page now i want to add this styled box around the text so i'll come down to background and hit enable background which adds this background to the text.

Then I'll make it a bit bigger and change the color to match his website like this. Then I can drag up the outline thickness and change the color of the outline so now it's looking similar to the boxes on Dylan's website. I quite like the look of the play buttons on Dylan's website and I think that could be a nice touch on the lower third.

So I'm going to simply take a screenshot of this on Dylan's site and then open up the text on the Fusion page and then add the image in an empty space here. I'm then going to select the text and add a merge node, meaning that anything that connects to this green input will be placed on top of the text.

But this play button needs to be a circle, so I can select the screenshot node and then click on the circle mask up here and then use the on -screen viewer to make it the right size mask. Then I can use the merge node's size and position to place the play button in the corner of the text like this. Lastly, I want it to slowly fade in and out with a nice blur, so I can just add my blur and fade trend.

preset to the start and the end so it now transitions in and out nicely like this and it fits his brand really nicely. So that's an option for the lower third but another option that we have is to put Dylan into a picture in picture box and then match the styling of the background to be exactly the same as his website like this.

This one looks even more like Dylan's website because I've used the same background color, the same font and we've also recreated the faded circle that follows your cursor when you're using his website so we've got that floating behind the text which looks really nice so for this one i added a solid colored background to the timeline this is actually just a background node from fusion that i packaged up for the edit page because it has more options than the native resolve solid color so if you have my preset pack it's just in the generator section up here i then set this to gradient and made a nice gradient background so on dylan's website i really like this nice faded circle that follows your mouse around.

So I wanted to do something similar here. So I added a second solid color, gave it that nice brown color, and then added my basic mask preset to it and whacked up the soft edge control so it's nice and faded like on Dylan's website. Then I added my Shake Pro preset to it and set it to floaty so it just floats around nicely like this.

I then played around with the speed and the overall strength just so it would roam around a bit further. and a bit slower. Next I wanted to put Dylan in a box so I added my animated mask preset and used the mask and image controls to position him here and then gave it a colored border like this.

Then I added one of my text plus titles like this and then I used my easy list preset to quickly put the list together and then have them animate on like this. Lastly I thought it would be quite nice for this sequence to start on Dylan on full screen and then transition it into this branded scene so i selected the first clip and then on the animated mask controls i hit animate in meaning it animates in like this and that's it and you can do some really cool stuff with the animated mask by moving it around the screen to get effects like this that look really slick so for dylan's video i'd be going through and making sure that all of the titles and graphics are all aligned and all feel like they're all meant to be there This alone will make his videos look a lot more professional.

So for your videos, go through your edit and ask yourself, does every little graphic and every title feel like it belongs in the same video and with your general branding? If the answer is no. then that's where you should start.

But the branding doesn't stop at the visuals. There's also the audio. And this takes us nicely onto step two.

So Dylan's video is all about music and he's actually missing a huge opportunity to use music as an editing tool. So here's what's working really well. He has a piece of music that comes in on his chapter points, like this first one here.

simply put, boil down to one word. That just draws you in and makes you feel really engaged and ready to hear what Dylan's about to say, which is great. But apart from the chapter points and the parts of the video where he's actively showing you a piece of music, there isn't any other added audio other than the occasional whoosh or handwriting sound effects.

And I think there could be. So let's take this section here. With the Ra6 we can have C minor chord and a D minor chord.

Or better yet, we can have the C minor chord and an F major chord. That minor 1 chord to that major 4 chord. So here Dylan's talking about specific notes.

So what could be really nice here is if there's a piece of audio playing each note as he's saying it. And then if we pair this with the branding that we made in the first step. it suddenly looks like this.

So I think this looks and sounds really nice. Another example of using audio as a tool would be to actually use branded sound effects throughout this video as well. So whenever something comes on screen, like this lower third from earlier, for example, we could have a sound effect that sounds like a piece from a song.

So like this.

Luckily for Dylan, he could actually create these from scratch. So it sounds a lot better than what I just showed. And he could have some real fun making some little sound effects that he can pop in throughout his videos.

And anyone can do this for any kind of niche. So for example if your videos are about computers then you can use a sound of a keyboard. If your videos are about how to cut hair then you can have the sound of scissors.

there's lots of different ways that you can use sound effects like this to enhance the branding of your videos. So make sure to use audio as an editing tool and really think about the sound effects that you're using to make them fit in with the video that you're editing. So now that we've got the branding and the audio working, the next thing to think about is making sure your viewer can actually follow along with what you're saying.

Because there's moments in Dylan's video where a beginner could easily get lost. And a quick title or... or image on screen would easily solve that problem.

But we don't want to be chucking things on screen for the sake of it. We only want to add things on screen when they're backing up what's being spoken. Like I just did there.

Dylan does this really well throughout the video. Like this part here where he's using my wipe titles preset to back up what he's saying. Because people hear Danny Elfman's music and they think, oh, it's quirky, it's weird, it's dark, it's...

chaotic because it's absurdity and yeah it's all those things they're generally true but there's still some parts where the viewer might need some extra context like this part at the start where Dylan's talking about Danny Elfman so you want to learn how to write like Danny Elfman well writing like Danny Elfman doesn't mean stealing his ideas it doesn't mean copying his identity because Danny is Danny and you are you so right at the start here is a chance to visually make a statement about who Danny Elfman is so that if the audience isn't sure about what he's done then instantly they'll be like oh yeah okay i know who he is now and we can do that really easily just by adding some images of the movies that danny elfman's done so now it looks like this so you want to learn how to write like danny elfman well Writing like Danny Elpin doesn't mean stealing his ideas.

It doesn't mean copying his identity because... And this animation is really easy to do. So the way that I did this was by adding in the same branded background that I made earlier.

And then I dropped an image onto the timeline and then added my animated mask to it. I then clicked on auto size, which snaps the edge of the mask to the edge of the image. And then I hit enable border to give it a border that matches Dylan's branding.

I then added my gradual animation preset. which by default slowly scales in the image like this. But we want this to slowly move from right to left.

So I'm going to set the scale to zero and then set the starting position using the starting X position control and then set the X position speed down here. I'm going to then drag in all of the other images onto the timeline like this and then right click on my first image. hit copy and then select the other images and hit paste attributes and then just make sure fusion effects is ticked so it copies over just the fusion effects so now they're all on top of each other like this now all i have to do is change the starting position for each one like this and then they're all moving nicely from right to left but slow enough so that they're still easy to see now obviously dylan has my preset pack so he's able to use my presets for this but for those of you who don't have my pack and Another way you could do this is by opening up the first image on the fusion page and then adding a rectangle node to the blue input of the image and then setting the width and height to one and then using the corner radius to create these rounded edges.

Then on the edit page, you can use the outer stroke effect to add the border to the outline of the image like this. Then you can use the dynamic zoom effect in the inspector to set the right to left motion by turning it on and keeping it set to linear. Then you can come over to the viewer overlay and turn on the dynamic zoom viewer.

Then you'll see two boxes on screen. One of them is green and the other is red. So what the dynamic zoom is doing is it's basically going from the green box to the red box.

So here you just need to set the green box to be the same size as the red box so that it doesn't do any zooming in and then just hold down the shift key and move the red box to the right so that it animates from right to left. Then you can do the same for the other images and it's done. It's just a bit more fiddly to set up that way, basically.

And also, if you change the length of a clip that has dynamic zoom on it, then it also changes the animation speed, which is a bit of a pain. So just bear that in mind.

So now let's look at another example where Dylan could give the viewer an extra helping hand. Take a look at this clip. Danny Elfman is, simply put, boiled down to one word, color.

Elfman is a color. That's what Elfman is. He's not doing anything crazy or absurd.

He's not doing anything complex. Yes, it may sound like that a lot of the times, but ultimately it's just... color choices.

So here Dylan is talking about color but he doesn't say exactly what color is. Now obviously his target audience will most likely know what it is but for beginners and casual viewers like me who are interested in the topic but don't know a lot about it we start to get a little bit lost because we're not sure exactly what he means.

And this can be fixed really easily just by adding in a simple lower third like we made earlier. So now let's watch this back with a lower third added in.

color elfman is a color that's what elfman is he's not doing anything crazy or absurd he's not doing anything complex yes it may sound like that a lot of the times but ultimately it's just color choices that's better right it just gives the viewer that extra bit of information that they might need to help them follow along with the video so when you're editing your videos just ask yourself are there moments where putting something on screen would help your viewer follow along and that can be giving them extra context or just reinforcing what you're saying because the right image or title at the right moment is what makes the information stick so something else that makes it hard to follow along with the video is when you're looking at the same thing for too long and that brings us on to step four so you might have had it where you're watching a video and you just start suddenly zoning out.

And this could be because nothing new is happening on screen. So you're just staring at the same thing for too long and it all just starts feeling like a bit of a slog. Now, Dylan's video is definitely not a slog and he does a lot of what I'm about to show you, but there's still some areas that he can improve on with this.

So take a look at this clip. There's your brass little force right there, creating forward momentum. Also giving you that question and answer, great writing.

But that right there is forward momentum. It's creating these little flourishes from the winds to the brass, string ostinatos to keep everything going. This is how Danny Elfman creates a moving piece to keep the listener engaged.

Or more famously, it's creating... in the low orchestra using tubas and trombones. So as you can see Dylan's staying on the same framing with his a -roll a lot of the time which means that a the viewer is looking at the same frame for a lot of the video and b it means that we have a lot of jump cuts throughout the video where he's cut out the pauses in between takes and luckily there's multiple ways to fix both of these things.

The first fix is to simply punch in at certain moments like I just did there and then back out like that. This stops the viewer from looking at the same frame for too long and also hides the jump cuts.

It's best to do this with a bit of intention behind it though, not just purely to hide a jump cut. So the best time to use this is when you're about to reveal a new piece of information or if you're starting a new sentence because if you do it too often or randomly mid -sentence then it just looks a bit odd. So when you do this it's almost a way of saying to the viewer, hey don't look away there's something new coming here so you need to pay attention and something that you need to remember when you add a punch in is you want the eyes of your subject to be in the exact same place between the two shots and you can line this up by coming to the last frame of the first clip and then coming up to this drop down here and turning on guides from here you can come up to view guides and then add guide and then select horizontal and then do the same again for the vertical line then you can line them up with the eyes like this then you can move one frame forwards on the timeline to the start of the next clip and then set the zoom value to around 1 .4 it needs to be a big enough of a jump for it to work so i normally go for 1 .4 and then you just need to move it into the same position that the guides are in and now when we watch this clip back

It looks like this. String Austin Owes to keep everything going. This is how Danny Elfman creates a moving piece to keep the listener.

Now you will have noticed that there's still a jump cut in there. at this point here. And if you're on the studio version of Resolve then this would be a good situation to use this second way of hiding jump cuts.

And that's the smooth cut transition. So if I add the smooth cut transition in between these clips and then set it to something like 0 .2 you'll see that it now creates a smooth transition between those two clips to blend them together. So let's watch this all back now.

There's your brass little force right there creating forward momentum. Also giving you that question and answer, great writing. But that right there is forward momentum.

It's creating these little flourishes from the winds to the brass, string ostinatos to keep everything going. This is how Danny Elfman creates a moving piece to keep the listener engaged. Or more famously, it's creating...

in the low orchestra using tubas and trombones that now flows really nicely i normally spend about five to ten minutes at the end of an edit just to go through a timeline and add in a bunch of punch -ins like this just to help keep the video more engaging the third way to hide jump cuts is something that we've already discussed in step three is to simply cut away to a title or an image that backs up what the subject is saying so let's take a look at this section here so you've got danny Elfman.

He has quirky music with Pee Wee's Adventure. You've got Beetlejuice. You've got his dark mystery music with Darkman and Batman.

I think through all this fantastical... So here, Dylan's staying on the same frame and then sliding these images on top of the frame. And then he takes us into the next sentence with a wipe transition.

And I'm going to show you what this section can look like by simply applying everything that I've spoken about so far in this video. So let's take a look. So you've got Danny Elfman, his quirky music with Pee Wee's Adventure.

You've got Beetlejuice. You've got his dark mystery music with Darkman and Batman. I think through all this fantastical magical mystery and darkness.

Doesn't that look a lot better? It's got his premium branding feel. It doesn't linger on the A -roll for too long.

And most of all, it transitions into the next sentence cleanly. And the reason why this wipe transition works in my example and it doesn't in Dylan's is because he used it to transition from his A -roll to the exact same A -roll and framing, which doesn't really work with wipe transitions because there needs to be some contrast between the clips that is transitioning between, which is why when it's cutting from this screen with the images on to his A -roll, it works and it looks clean because it's got that contrast.

And the way I did this was simply by extending the image and the background color out over the cut point. And then I clicked on the A -roll, held down the shift key and dragged up to put it above the background. Holding down shift means it will go directly up or down and it won't accidentally slide out of position to the side at all.

Then I opened up the effects browser and came down to the transitions in my preset pack. Added the wipe transition, enabled colored line and gave it Dylan's gold color and then set it to wipe from top to bottom. And that's it.

We've now got this really clean transition between this line and this line, as opposed to what we had before with this setup. So when you're watching your edit back, if you notice that you've been on the same frame for a while, try using one of these tools to keep your viewers attention. But doing these first four steps correctly won't make your video instantly look professional.

rest of the video has a lot of other small mistakes that are quietly undermining your whole edit so this is where step five comes in step five is to try and train yourself to spot the little mistakes and i see so many of these same mistakes happening all over youtube and the best way to spot these little mistakes is to make sure you watch the entire video back before you export it don't just skip through it at double speed actually sit back and properly watch it and then once you've watched it export it and then watch the entire video again just in case there's any little issues in the export and even better have someone else watch the video with you it doesn't have to be another editor just anyone you're living with like your housemate or your partner your cat because i've always found that when i'm showing someone my video i tend to spot things that i hadn't spotted earlier it's really weird So give that a try and see how you get on.

But what kind of mistakes are you looking for? Well, let me show you some common examples. So here's one in Dylan's video.

From my first feature film, Alien Baby, to quite recently, a dark magical mystery album. Did you spot it? It's a very quick flash frame just here.

So this is a clip from Dylan's first feature film that he worked on. And at the end of the clip, it cuts to the next camera angle in that clip. which gives us this very quick flash frame which can be a bit jarring to watch.

So it's just a case of trimming this down by two frames and now it flows nicely. Flash frames can easily happen in lots of ways throughout an edit. You might leave a piece of text on screen for one frame too long and then suddenly that's a flash frame like that one there.

So make sure to keep an eye out for those. So another mistake that I see happen quite a lot on YouTube is where someone's trying to show a bunch of things to the viewer but they show it all way too quickly which makes it a struggle for the viewer to even digest what they're seeing.

So let's take this part at the start of the video where Dylan's talking about some of the projects that he's worked on.

So the start of it where he's scrolling through his website is good because it's nice and slow and gets the message across clearly but then he shows four clips back to back and he skips through each one a bit too quickly. So for this section I'll be putting in a branded background using my animated mask to put a curved border around the clips and then have the name of each one underneath them and then extend them out a bit longer so there's more time to take it all in.

and now it looks like this.

So that just looks a bit cleaner now, as well as fitting with his brand. Another similar mistake to this is when people cut away from something too quickly, like Dylan does with his sidebar list here. He has magical wonder.

He has this dark atmosphere. He has this... theatrical quirkiness to him and just a sprinkle of eerie loneliness.

And after you narrowed in the Danny Elfman. So here I would just be extending this out a bit longer, meaning that the viewer has more time to take it all in. Sprinkle of eerie loneliness.

And after you narrowed in the Danny Elfman. And then Dylan's already got my wipe title over here to introduce the next section of his video. So we can just drag the sidebar list underneath the wipe title.

And so the wipe title comes on. And then when it comes off, the sidebar is gone. So that works nice and cleanly.

So it's all about remembering that your viewers are hearing and seeing all of this information for the first time. So just bear in mind that they might need a little bit longer for it all to sink in. So some other quick things that I would change in this edit are that I noticed at the end of each chapter title, Dylan has a zoom in transition on the clip under his title, which only means that this clip here underneath actually zooms in.

not the text on top or the A -roll that it's actually cutting to. So for this, I would just delete that transition. and then replace it with my camera movement layer transition which is actually a generator meaning that it can sit above everything on the timeline like this.

So now I can click on zoom and then make a cut at the transition point here and then set the second clip to be the second half of the transition by clicking on the dedicated second half button and now it zooms in on the whole thing like this. I also noticed that Dylan has quite a few zoom ins on his a -roll that look like this but I personally think that a smoother and and slower zoom in would fit his branding better.

So for this, I would be using my zoom camera layer preset, putting it over the arrow like this, setting it to two seconds, and then setting the B controls like this, and then adding a bit of mid blur. So now it looks nice and smooth like this. And if you like the look of the zoom camera preset, you can get a free version of it called zoom camera light.

This one comes as an effect. So instead of having the generator layer, you would basically make a cut to your arrow where you want the zoom to start. And then you would add my zoom camera light preset to the clip like this.

Set the timing, then set the B controls. And it's done. It will give you a nice zoom in like this.

I'll leave a link to Zoom Camera Lite in the description below so you can download it for free. It's already been downloaded thousands of times by editors, which is crazy. And it's my most popular free product.

So check it out and see what you think. So next time you finish editing a video, just make sure you're watching the full video back before and after you export it. That's how you can train your eye to catch these things before anyone else does.

But the mistakes that I've pointed out in this video aren't the only mistakes that I've been seeing editors making on their videos all throughout YouTube. And to see five more mistakes that are ruining your videos, check out this video here where I re -edit another one of my subscribers' videos. I dive in deep to show you how you can fix things like color grading, your audio, and most importantly, how you can apply good pacing to your video to ensure that you never lose your audience's attention.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Greg opens with a promise: he re-edited a subscriber's video and is about to show, step by step, exactly what he changed and why, broken into five repeatable rules anyone editing their own videos can apply.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

16:25list

5 Steps to Improve Any Edit

Match The Branding
Use Extra Audio
Give Viewers Context
Keep Your Viewers Attention
Spot The Little Mistakes

Greg's checklist for turning a rough edit into a professional-feeling one, demonstrated live on a subscriber's video.

Steal forAny self-review pass before publishing a video, website page, or sales asset: check branding consistency, intentional audio, viewer context, pacing/attention, and a final full watch-through.

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

28:14link

“I'll leave a link to Zoom Camera Lite in the description below so you can download it for free.”

Soft CTA for a free tool tied directly to the technique just demonstrated, paired with an end-screen tease for a follow-up video covering five more editing mistakes.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA

00:54linkDillon Derosa (dillonderosa.com) ↗

00:00linkDillon Derosa's original video (How to Write Like Danny Elfman) ↗

01:00productGreg's DaVinci Resolve preset pack ↗

28:14toolZoom Camera Lite (free preset) ↗

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.

OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.

Storyboard