Are you a travel blogger or vlogger? And wondering how to edit videos quickly while traveling? Producing quality video content regularly while on the go can be challenging. However, with the right strategy and tools, you can streamline your editing process considerably.
Why Should Travel Bloggers Create Video Content?
Video has become a compelling content medium in recent years. In fact, according to Wyzowl, 90% of customers claim video helps them make purchasing decisions. Additionally, your audience is far more likely to share video content than blogs or photos.
As a travel blogger, video lets you showcase destinations in a vivid and immersive way that text and still images cannot replicate. Viewers feel like they are tagging along on your adventures. When done correctly, video content can boost conversions and take your social media growth to the next level.
Challenges of Editing Video While Traveling
While indispensable, filming and producing frequent videos on the road comes with some unique challenges, including:
- Limited Equipment: Lugging around cameras, mics, gimbals, and laptops necessary for shooting and editing video can be cumbersome when space is at a premium. Many travel bloggers end up with back pain and injuries from hauling gear.
- Inconsistent Work Environment: Finding secure, quiet spaces with dependable WiFi to edit videos while in transit is enormously challenging. This can severely hamper productivity and creative flow.
- Disorganization: From hours of raw footage across multiple devices to libraries of background music and b-roll animations, organizing all your media assets takes time. When constantly moving, maintaining order can become overwhelmingly complex.
- Time Constraints: Sightseeing, adventures, tours, and new destinations keep you busy when traveling. Finding hours to color-correct footage and splice video projects is a genuine challenge. This often leads to stagnating growth if you cannot produce content consistently.
Thankfully, by optimizing your mobile editing setup strategy and leveraging specific tools, travel bloggers can rise above these challenges with aplomb.
Optimizing Your Editing Setup
When unable to depend on high-performance desktops, use software can help extract every ounce of performance out of your mobile device.
- LumaFusion
- Target Platform: Primarily for iOS devices.
- Key Features:
- Multi-track editing with up to 6 video/audio tracks.
- Advanced audio features, including live audio mixing and track keyframes.
- Customizable effects and color correction.
- Advantages:
- The intuitive interface is ideal for professionals and hobbyists.
- No subscription is required; it is a one-time purchase.
- Supports external drives and cloud storage integration.
- Use Case: Excellent for journalists and filmmakers needing robust editing on the go.
- Adobe Premiere Rush
- Target Platform: Available on iOS, Android, and desktops.
- Key Features:
- Cross-device functionality with cloud syncing.
- Built-in camera functionality for high-quality video capture.
- Simple, drag-and-drop interface with essential editing tools.
- Advantages:
- Seamless integration with Adobe Creative Cloud.
- Easy sharing options for social media platforms.
- AI-powered features like Auto Reframe.
- Use Case: Ideal for social media content creators and vloggers who value workflow continuity across devices.
- KineMaster
- Target Platform: Both iOS and Android devices.
- Key Features:
- Multilayer video editing with a range of effects and transitions.
- Real-time recording and editing.
- Chroma key compositing for green-screen effects.
- Advantages:
- User-friendly interface suitable for beginners.
- Regular updates with new features and assets.
- Supports 4K video editing.
- Use Case: Great for educators, marketers, and YouTubers looking for an easy-to-use, feature-rich editing tool.
- InShot
- Target Platform: Available on iOS and Android.
- Key Features:
- Trim, split, merge, and crop video clips.
- Music, sound effects, and voiceover capabilities.
- Video speed control for slow motion and time-lapse effects.
- Advantages:
- Highly intuitive for quick, basic edits.
- Wide range of filters and effects.
- Ideal for editing content directly for social media.
- Use Case: Perfect for influencers and casual content creators who need quick, simple edits for social media posts.
Their streamlined workflows help content creators in the field turn around professional projects rapidly. Some even harness cloud collaboration, allowing you to pick up edits seamlessly across multiple devices.
Carefully selecting mobile gear and software can make on-the-go video editing infinitely smoother.
Find the Right Hardware
- Investing in a lightweight yet powerful laptop or tablet is imperative when aiming to edit videos anywhere. For 4K projects, a device with at least 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD storage, and discrete graphics is recommended. The Apple MacBook Pro 16 and Microsoft Surface Pro offer the perfect blend of performance and portability.
- Make sure your primary camera uses SD card storage instead of internal drives. This allows quick offloading of footage without cables and adapters. Also, budget additional batteries, SD cards, and external drives, and always have gear in your base.
- Finally, whether shooting handheld or on the go, a compact tripod and microphone are vital for stabilizing footage and capturing high-quality audio. The JOBY GorillaPod and Rode VideoMicro are extremely popular among travel video creators.
Their streamlined workflows help content creators in the field turn around professional projects rapidly. Some even harness cloud collaboration, allowing you to pick up edits seamlessly across multiple devices.
Loud Backup
No matter how epic your adventures get, losing precious footage or progress due to hardware failures, theft, or corruption is heartbreaking. So, utilizing an WP Automatic cloud backup solution like Backblaze is non-negotiable.
For just $6 a month, Backblaze will continuously back up external drives connected to your system. So, footage remains safe offsite no matter what happens to your devices. This offers tremendous peace of mind so you can focus on creativity rather than stress about safeguarding irreplaceable work.
Optimizing Your Editing Strategy & Workflow
Beyond the right gear, implementing an intentional editing strategy and workflow vastly accelerates productivity on the road:
Catalog All Assets
Before diving into edits after an adventure:
- Organize and catalog footage and relevant creative assets.
- Break down longer videos into shorter clips.
- Add color-coded markers to the best moments.
- Tag files with locations and proper names.
- Archive photographs, illustrations, and animations that could be useful during editing.
Asset organization is crucial so creativity flows smoothly regardless of where editing occurs. Apps like Adobe Bridge help swift tagging and categorization so you can easily access media later. Some editing platforms even analyze clips, suggesting which work best together using AI.
Map The Storyboard
Every compelling video begins with an engaging storyboard dc remapping out the narrative sequentially. Rather than wasting hours trying arrangements that do not resonate, story boarding first saves many revisions.
Free apps like ShotDesigner help craft shareable storyboards; collaborators can provide notes from anywhere, accelerating approvals.
Establish Rough Cuts
Trying to perfect edits from the very first pass often stifles creators from being able to make real progress. An intermediate rough cut that establishes correct pacing, flow, and continuity without sweating animations or corrections accelerates output considerably.
Rough cuts help spot missing transitions and identify redundant sequences to kill pacing issues before invested hours, making finished trims, color, and audio tweaks impossible to walk back easily. Free yourself to explore freely at this stage, avoiding tunnel vision.
Collaborate In Cloud
Modern editing platforms like Frame.io support cloud collaboration, allowing creators to easily share rough cuts, storyboards, and other assets for review and feedback from clients, colleagues, or outsourcers to accelerate approvals.
Some cloud editors even allow multiple contributors to access the same projects simultaneously. So, rather than emailing large files back and forth or eating up cellular data, cloud collaboration streamlines this tremendously.
Review notes, annotations, and comments from approvers automatically attach to relevant frames, maintaining revisions context so when back at your base, you can quickly address rather than decipher cryptic non-linear feedback, saving massive time.
Focus On Audio First
Crisp, clear audio makes more impact, enhancing perceived production quality more than almost any visual tweak because poor sound undermines voiceovers or the environment.
So, rat undermines credibility rather than obsessing over color correction or animations during initial edits, focusing on setting audio levels, noise removal, normalization, and compression so pacing and continuity flow smoothly. Audio improvements may transfer across visual rework, saving duplicate efforts.
Tools like Levelator automate loudness normalization across clips, automatically detecting silences and inserting fades between edits, preventing jarring jumps. Auphonic enhances speech quality via algorithms, so voices always sound crisp regardless of recording conditions.
Create Animate In Parallel
After the base storyline is locked, kickoff motion silver graphics creation, animations, and lower thirds are in parallel with subsequent trims rather than trying to multitask excessively. This avoids losing continuity, re-visualizing animations, and wasting time reworking locked sequences should central duration or ordering changes happen later.
Web apps like Animaker and RenderForest simplify crafting professional animations without intensive specialized skills so you can focus your efforts better. Their cloud libraries offer many customizable templates, logo reveals, transitions, illustrated backgrounds, and motion graphics, saving tons of action.
Send Final Renders Overnight
Attempting final 4K exports, renders, or YouTube uploads using cellular data will crash constantly, even on robust equipment. So, never initiate major exports needing reliable, sustained bandwidth while mobile.
Instead, queue up final deliverable sequences overnight tethered to reliable high-speed WiFi, ensuring flawless finishes and avoiding failed uploads and truncated renders. If touring remote areas often, consider buying unlimited data SIM cards exclusively for production offloading, avoiding surprise overages from cellular carriers.
Archive & Backup Always
Finally, before checking out of any hotel room or AirBnB, manually back all working footage and project files to dual external drives and cloud services. Never assume auto backup services will always work perfectly. Losing days of irreplaceable content is devastating, so spending a few extra minutes guaranteeing redundancy is invaluable insurance should disaster strike.
Recommended Tools
Here are some recommended mobile editing hardware, software, and services for travel video creators building their optimal field kits:
- Hardware
- Apple MacBook Pro 16
- Microsoft Surface Pro
- JOBY GorillaPod Tripod
- SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD
- Rode VideoMicro Microphone
- Software
- Services
- Backblaze
- Frame.io
- Animaker
- RenderForest
Summarizing Effective Mobile Editing Tactics
By combining versatile mobile gear, purposeful editing strategies, and innovative cloud platforms, travel bloggers can achieve impressive video results rivaling dedicated desktop workstations. Some key pointers:
- Invest in optimal lightweight and durable equipment
- Harness performance-optimized editing programs, removing complexity
- Catalog and organize all assets, facilitating creativity
- Storyboard first, establish pacing via rough cuts before polishing
- Use cloud collaboration to improve stakeholder reviews
- Prioritize flawless clear audio over premature visual tweaks
- Queue animation, motion graphics, and renders for overnight tethered sessions
- Always manually back up all working files before checking out
With these approaches, travel bloggers can continue entertaining and inspiring viewers consistently with compelling video content no matter where their journeys take them next. Just remember editing on the move boils down to preparation, pragmatism, and avoiding unnecessary perfectionism.
So pack your bags, grab your gear, and hit the road confidently. If this guide helped you streamline mobile content creation workflows, let us know in the comments below which tips resonated most or share your wisdom about helping fellow creators maximize productivity.
Happy travels and editing!
