If you follow my YouTube channel or even if you just watch the videos that I put into blog posts here, you’ll notice a significant lack of editing. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had a few people ask me why I don’t make my videos look more professional. So this morning I went live on YouTube and Facebook to explain why my videos don’t have much in the way of post-production editing. If you missed it, you can view the video here.

Time
Like you, I only have 24 hours in a day and I don’t have an assistant. I’m faced with the choice of spending time making post-production edits or moving on to review more tools, learn more, and manage the other responsibilities in my day. If a rough cut or one-take video can convey the information that I need to share, that’s fine with me.

Value
Unless you’re making videos in which you are the focal point of the video, I don’t think that there is a lot to be gained by spending time scrutinizing and editing every aspect of the video. This is especially true if, like me, you’re just making three to five minute screencast videos. That said, if you’re trying to become the next Keith Hughes, Tom Richey, or John Green then it does make sense to carefully edit every part of your video.

Modeling
Sometimes teachers don’t make videos or don’t have students make videos because they think that a video needs to go through a lot of editing in order to be useful. A simple screencast in which you record yourself talking over some slides for a few minutes can be as effective as a three minute video that went through hours of editing. Now that doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t try to put in their best efforts, but we also need to bear in mind that unless the class is about video production, there are bigger things to worry about than whether or not a video has perfect edits. In fact, one my favorite videos produced by my own students had many flubs in it.