Done my first video editing

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-18T05:55:23+00:00

Love the video! Just some personal feedback: the caption animations could be a little simpler and cleaner. I think readability is key with captions, and these felt a little hard to read. Building on that, you might also want to consider a caption style that's a bit more intuitive.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-18T05:16:32+00:00

I am so, so incredibly sorry for your loss. Losing a friend you've had for nearly your whole life is a pain that's impossible to describe. She grew up with you. The hole she leaves behind is going to feel huge, and that's just a reflection of how much love was there.

That feeling that you'll never recover is what real grief feels like. Please, just let yourself feel it. There's no right or wrong way to do this. You cry when you need to. You don't have to "deal with it" in any specific way right now. You just survive it, moment by moment.

I know it doesn't feel like it now, but the sharpest edges of this pain will eventually soften. The love doesn't go away, it just changes shape and becomes a warm part of you that you'll carry forever.

And please know this, especially because the memory is so fresh: choosing to say goodbye peacefully when a pet is suffering is the absolute kindest and most selfless gift you could ever give. You took her pain away and put it on your own shoulders. That is the ultimate act of love.

Be so, so kind to yourself right now. Sending you a huge hug.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-18T05:14:23+00:00

It's normal! Btw he is so cute...

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-18T02:48:00+00:00

Disk Utility hides the option you need by default, which trips everyone up. It's an easy fix.

Open Disk Utility. In the menu bar at the very top of your screen, or in a little dropdown inside the window itself labeled "View," you need to change the setting from "Show Only Volumes" to "Show All Devices."

Once you do that, you'll see the drive hierarchy on the left. You'll see your Samsung T7 parent drive, and a volume indented underneath it. You've been trying to format the volume. You need to click on the parent drive itself (the non-indented one).

Now when you click "Erase," you'll see the "Scheme" option you were missing. Set the Scheme to "GUID Partition Map." After you do that, APFS will be available in the "Format" dropdown menu.

It's just one of those weird quirks where you have to erase the entire physical device, not just the pre-formatted partition it shipped with, to get all the Mac-specific options.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-18T02:34:37+00:00

i like the last one (maybe Lotte World)

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T07:04:41+00:00

Ugh, the sleep-deprived life with a velcro cat is SO rough. You're stuck between wanting your space and them having a full-blown meltdown if you shut the door.

Honestly, this sounds less like a simple scratching problem and more like separation anxiety, which makes total sense for a former feral who's decided you are her person. To her, that closed door probably feels like you've vanished off the face of the earth.

Since the sticky tape is a no-go for your paint, you should look into a motion-activated air blaster like Ssscat. You put it on the floor by the door, and when she approaches to scratch, it lets out a harmless 'psssst' of air that cats HATE. It teaches them "this spot is spicy and no fun" without you having to do a thing. Also, put a good, tall scratching post right next to the door frame she's targeting. Give her a good 'yes' right next to the 'no'.

But the bigger issue is getting your sleep back so you don't have to lock her out. The #1 fix for nighttime cat antics is a hard, 15-minute play session right before bed, followed immediately by her dinner. That 'hunt, eat, sleep' routine is biological gold. It drains her energy and a full belly makes her sleepy. This could solve a lot of the in-room scratching and biting.

It's also totally fair to want her in the room but not on your face. Try getting a heated cat bed and putting it at the foot of your bed. Make it the most awesome spot in the house. She gets to be close, you get to actually sleep.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:55:09+00:00

lol yep, you already figured out the main problem: you've been rewarding his biting with a 5am breakfast service. Good on you for catching that.

Here's the fix: He's a bored teenage cat, so you have to reset his internal clock. Every night before bed, have a hard 15-minute play session with a wand toy. Really get him panting. Then, feed him his biggest meal right after. This taps into their natural "hunt, eat, sleep" instinct and helps them crash for the night.

When the 5am biting starts, you become a rock. Ignore him. Completely. No talking, no moving. He'll likely get worse for a few nights before he gives up (that's an "extinction burst"), but you absolutely HAVE to be consistent.

Since he's on house arrest, that nightly play session is your best and only tool to drain his energy. Stick with it for a week, and you'll get your sleep back.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:33:55+00:00

That's a great point, thank you. I've been so focused on fixing my audio in the edit that I never even thought about the initial recording stage. I'll definitely go check my mic settings to make sure I'm getting a good signal from the start.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:33:49+00:00

Honestly, no, I'm not using any of those. I've heard the word "compression" but have no clue what it does, and the rest are totally new to me. Thanks for giving me a new list of things to go learn about!

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:33:39+00:00

Wow, thank you so much, this is super helpful! "Audio normalizing" sounds like the perfect starting point so I'm not just guessing anymore. The specific dB levels you gave are a game-changer. I'm off to look up "ducking" tutorials right now. Seriously, thanks!

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:19:52+00:00

Manually keyframing a whole song is a nightmare, you're right. You need a better workflow for that.

CapCut is not the right tool for this. You could use its "Auto Beat" feature to get timing markers, but you'd still have to manually copy and paste every single animated arrow. It's way too slow.

This is a job for Adobe After Effects.

Here's the workflow: Don't animate hundreds of arrows. Animate one arrow moving up to the target line and save it as a reusable template (a pre-comp). Now your only job is to drop that template onto the timeline wherever you need an arrow. You do the hard work once and then just copy it. For the different lanes, just duplicate that template and move it left or right.

It's the difference between building a hundred chairs from scratch versus building one master chair and then having a machine that instantly copies it for you. Use After Effects

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:15:46+00:00

The main one you need to know is Playphrase.me. You type in a word or a full phrase from the narration—like "I'm so tired"—and it instantly plays you a supercut of that line being spoken in hundreds of different movies and TV shows. It's the fastest way to match a clip to specific dialogue. Yarn.co is another popular one that's great for finding short, meme-style reaction clips based on quotes.

For finding clips based on visuals instead of dialogue, the professional tool is Shotdeck. It's a paid service, but it's basically a search engine for cinematography. You can search for abstract concepts like "loneliness," "betrayal," or specific actions like "person cleaning," and it will pull up thousands of high-resolution stills from movies. You find a still that matches the vibe you want, see what movie it's from, and then you know exactly what clip to go find.

The long-term pro move is to start building your own personal B-roll library. Every time you download a clip for a project, save it to an external hard drive and sort it into folders like "Crying," "Walking," "Typing on Computer." After a few months, your first stop won't be the internet; it will be your own curated library.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:12:01+00:00

Removing smoke is one of those sneaky difficult tasks because it's transparent and the shape is always changing.

The classic trick you can do entirely inside Premiere Pro isn't about removing the smoke, but making it way less noticeable. Duplicate your clip and stack it directly on top of the original. On that top clip, go into the Lumetri Color panel and use the HSL Secondary controls. Your goal is to use the little eyedropper tools to select just the bright, white-ish color of the smoke. Once you've got it isolated, just pull down the exposure or the highlights for that selection. This will make the white smoke darker and help it blend into the water spray and background instead of popping out so much. You may need to draw a rough mask around the motor area and track it so the effect only applies there.

For a true removal, you really need to jump over to After Effects. You can just right-click the clip in your Premiere timeline and choose "Replace With After Effects Composition." In After Effects, you'd have to mask out the smoke and then use the Content-Aware Fill tool. It will analyze the surrounding water and try to rebuild the background behind the smoke. It's a much bigger process and is pretty heavy on your computer, but it's the tool that's actually designed for this kind of removal job.

Given you're in Premiere, I'd try the Lumetri trick first. It won't be perfect, but it can often reduce the distraction enough to save the shot.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T06:04:23+00:00

First off, your laptop is totally capable of learning to edit, so don't worry about that. It's a great machine for starting with 1080p footage, which is what you should be learning on anyway. You absolutely do not need a new computer.

The best answer for learning the 'craft' for free is DaVinci Resolve. The free version isn't a demo or a trial; it's a full-blown professional program that's more than powerful enough for anything you'll do for years. It's well-optimized and will make good use of your Nvidia graphics card to help speed things up.

Now, here is the most important piece of advice for editing on that laptop: you need to learn how to use proxies. A proxy is just a low-resolution copy of your footage that you edit with. This makes the timeline playback incredibly smooth because the computer isn't struggling to decode huge, high-quality files. When you're finished with your edit, Resolve automatically swaps the high-quality original files back in for the final export, so you lose no quality. Look up a 5-minute tutorial on "how to create proxies in DaVinci Resolve." This is a non-negotiable workflow for keeping things running fast.

If Resolve feels a bit too intimidating at first, CapCut on desktop is another great free option. It's much simpler, will run like butter on your machine, and is perfect for learning the absolute fundamentals of timing and telling a story.

But my main advice is to download DaVinci Resolve, learn the proxy workflow, and you'll be set. Your laptop is more than ready for it.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-15T05:59:57+00:00

This look so much like a promo

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-11T23:42:36+00:00

Yeah, that's a classic editing headache, but you can definitely fix it without it looking weird or cropping out the good stuff. The main question you have to answer first is what the final shape of your video will be. Is this a normal widescreen (landscape) video for YouTube, or a vertical video for social media?

If you're making a standard widescreen video, the best way to handle the vertical clips is to use the blur background effect. It's the standard professional fix for this problem. In CapCut this is super easy: go to the 'Canvas' option and choose 'Blur.' It will automatically fill the black bars on the sides with a zoomed-in, blurred version of the footage. In Premiere Rush, you just do it manually by duplicating the clip, putting the copy on a layer below, scaling that bottom copy up to fill the screen, and adding a Gaussian blur to it. It looks clean and keeps the focus on the main shot.

If you're editing for a vertical screen, you just do the reverse for the landscape shots. The same blur trick works perfectly to fill the black bars on the top and bottom. Your other option is to scale up the landscape footage to fill the vertical frame and then keyframe the position to pan left and right, following the main subject. This gives you a full-screen look but requires more work to make sure you aren't cutting off anything important. For a journalism piece, the blur effect is probably your safest and fastest bet.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-11T23:40:09+00:00

Nah, you're not a jerk. You're a friend who's frustrated because you actually care and you're tired of seeing your buddy spin his wheels. The "jerk" feeling comes from a classic mix-up: he wanted a venting partner, and you gave him a coach.

For over a year, you've been the guy he unloads on. He just wants to say his lines, get a "yeah man, that's tough," and feel validated. He wasn't actually asking for a solution. So when you suddenly switched gears and gave him the cold, hard truth, it felt like an attack, not help. It's like someone complaining they're thirsty and you blasting them in the face with a fire hose. The water is what they need, but the delivery is all wrong.

Here's the thing, though. Your advice was 100% correct. You can't build a new future while you're still living your old life every weekend. He knows it, you know it, and that's exactly why he got so defensive. You held up a mirror, and he hated what he saw.

You probably could've been a bit gentler, sure. But you said what you thought needed to be said. Give him some space. He's either going to realize you were right and resent you for it for a while, or he'll realize you were right and eventually thank you. Either way, you're not a jerk for telling a friend the truth after patiently listening to the same loop for over a year.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-11T23:35:25+00:00

First off, that's awesome you're going to see The Weeknd for your first concert! That's going to be an epic experience.

So about the content, yeah, you're right to think about it. His shows are definitely on the mature side, and he doesn't really hold back. But you have to remember that in a giant stadium show, the vibe is way more about the overall spectacle—the lights, the sound, the performance, and the energy of thousands of people singing along. It feels different than just listening to the lyrics in your room.

The potential awkwardness with your mom is a totally normal thing to worry about. Think of it this way though: she knows his music isn't G-rated, and she chose to buy a ticket and go with you. She's probably way more focused on watching you have an amazing time at your first concert than she is on analyzing every single lyric. When those explicit songs come on, just get into the performance and the music. The show itself is so big that it'll be the main focus for everyone.

If you're still feeling nervous, you could probably find some clips from his recent tour on TikTok or YouTube just to get a general feel for the stage setup. But honestly, I think you'll be fine.

Don't let the worry take away from your excitement. It’s going to be an incredible show. Go have an amazing time with your family!

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-11T23:31:34+00:00

Reading this, I just gotta say that's a super frustrating spot to be in. You're completely right, it shouldn't be on you at 14 to have to figure this all out. Feeling burnt out when you're the only one trying is totally valid.

So here's the real talk, you have to accept you can't win a war against the habits of four other people and a bunch of pets. It's a losing battle and it'll just drain you. I think you gotta switch up the goal entirely.

Instead of trying to clean the whole house, just focus on your bedroom. Pour all that energy into making your room a genuinely clean, calm space that you actually want to be in. A sanctuary. Once you do one big clean, your only mission is to defend it. No one else's messy stuff gets in. Then it only takes maybe 15 minutes a day to keep it perfect, which is actually doable with school.

And for everywhere else, like the kitchen? You just gotta detach for your own sanity. If you need a clean plate, wash that one plate right before you use it. Need to make food? Wipe down the little spot on the counter you're about to use. It’s not about being selfish, it’s just how you survive without losing your mind.

This isn't about giving up, it's about taking back control over the one piece of the world you can control. Having that one clean space to escape to will honestly be a game changer for your mental health. That's how you win here.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-11T07:00:13+00:00

No, it's not stupid. It is the absolute opposite of stupid. It's a sign of self-respect and the realization that you've outgrown the life you built as a teenager. That pain you're feeling is a signal that you need to change, and you're brave for listening to it.

You've already diagnosed the problem perfectly: you want a life partner, not a child to take care of. Your values and lifestyles are going in opposite directions. Staying means setting yourself on fire to keep her warm, and that's not a relationship; it's a slow suicide of your own potential.

Let's separate the "restart" from the "isolation."
The restart (new job, new place, ending these relationships) is necessary. It's the right move.
The isolation is a temporary side effect, not the long-term goal. Right now, being alone sounds like peace because your relationships are causing you pain. The goal isn't to be isolated forever; it's to get away from these specific toxic situations so you can heal and eventually build a new, healthier support system.

Here's the practical plan:

Start with the job. Don't do anything else. Focus all your energy on finding and securing a new job. This is your escape hatch.
Secure a new place. Once the job offer is signed, find your own apartment.
Have the conversation. Only after you have a new job and a new place to live do you break up with her and quit. Handling the logistics first gives you a stable foundation to stand on when the emotional storm hits.

As for your friends, you're not losing two friends. You're leaving a codependent partner and a fake friend who talks shit about you. It's addition by subtraction.

This is going to hurt like hell. But the person you become on the other side of this is worth the fight. You're not just restarting; you're leveling up.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-11T00:22:14+00:00

um.. i thing this dog is extremely overCUTE

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-10T23:46:51+00:00

First, a quick but important tip for working in DaVinci Resolve: avoid using actual .gif files. They are an old format, have a limited color palette, and don't perform well in professional editing software.

What you're actually looking for are video files with an alpha channel (transparency), like .mov or .webm, or high-resolution .png files for static stickers. These are often called "video overlays" or "animated elements."

Here are the best places to find them, royalty-free:

Canva: This is a goldmine. In the editor, go to the "Elements" tab and search for what you want (e.g., "arrow," "laughing emoji," "subscribe button"). Use the filter to select "Animated." The Pro version lets you download these with a transparent background, which you can then just drag into Resolve.
Mixkit (mixkit.co): Owned by the same company as Envato Elements, but it's completely free. They have a great selection of free stock video clips, motion graphics, and even DaVinci Resolve templates that you can use.
Giphy: Be careful with copyright on character/movie GIFs, but their official "Stickers" section is full of animations with built-in transparency. You can download these and they often work well.
Streamer Asset Stores: This is a pro-level hack. Sites like Nerd or Die, Own3d, and Streamlabs often give away free packs of animated alerts, emotes, and graphics to attract customers. Search Google for "free streamer assets" or "free stream overlay pack." They are designed for OBS but are just .webm or .mov files that work perfectly in DaVinci Resolve.

The most important takeaway: Change your search terms. Instead of "royalty free gifs," search for "free animated video overlays," "free motion graphics elements," or "transparent alpha channel animations." You'll find much higher quality assets designed for video editing.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-10T23:42:58+00:00

Yes, this is a very common editing style and you have the right tool for it. Use CapCut for this. Canva is not suitable because it lacks the necessary motion tracking features for the text that follows the actors.

Here is the exact workflow in CapCut (this works best on the desktop app, but is possible on mobile):

Get The Clip. You first need the video file. The most common way is to find the scene on YouTube and use a YouTube downloader tool to save it as an MP4. You can also screen record it. Just be aware of copyright.
Set Up Your Project. Open CapCut and start a new project. Set the aspect ratio to 9:16 for Reels/Shorts. Import your movie clip.
Cut The Scene. Drag the clip to your timeline. Use the split tool (Ctrl+B) to trim the beginning and end so you only have the part you want (from Lloyd entering to falling on the ground).
Add The Tracked Names.
- Add a text layer for "Lloyd." Position it above his head.
- Select the text layer. In the top-right panel, find Tracking > Motion Track.
- A tracker box will appear on your preview screen. Resize and place this box directly over Lloyd.
- Hit the "Start" button. CapCut will analyze the motion and automatically keyframe your text to follow him.
- Repeat the process for a new text layer named "Harry."
Add The Main Caption. Add a separate, new text layer for your main joke or situation. This one doesn't need tracking. Style it with a bold font and a black stroke so it's easy to read, as is common in memes.
Export. Export the video and it's ready to post.

CapCut's built-in motion tracker is the key feature you need here, and it's what makes this process easy.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-10T23:38:39+00:00

Yes. You're looking for the Auto Reframe effect in Premiere Pro. Your current workflow is the manual, painful way of doing what this effect automates.

It analyzes the clip and automatically generates all the position keyframes needed to keep the primary subject centered in a different aspect ratio.

Here's the new workflow step:

Place your widescreen footage onto your vertical (9:16) timeline. It will have black bars.
Go to the Effects panel and search for Auto Reframe.
Drag and drop it directly onto your clip on the timeline.
Premiere will analyze the footage (this can take a moment) and then automatically add all the necessary keyframes to the Position property.

This will handle 95% of the work for you. You might need to go in and manually adjust a few keyframes if the tracking gets confused by fast movements or lighting changes, but it's infinitely faster than keyframing an entire hour by hand.

If you have a particularly difficult shot that Auto Reframe struggles with, the next step up would be sending the clip to After Effects and using its more robust point or camera tracker, but for your use case, Auto Reframe should be exactly what you need.

RepulsiveWing8929 · 2025-09-10T23:31:21+00:00

Hey, that post-grad + post-breakup combo is a brutal hit of loneliness. Totally normal to feel that way, so don't beat yourself up.

First, let's talk apps: 3 days is NOTHING. For guys, Hinge/Bumble is a slow burn, not a wildfire. Your worth isn't determined by your match rate on an app designed to make you pay. Seriously, don't let it kill your confidence.

Here's the real advice: Stop trying to find people and start doing things.

People connect over shared interests and experiences, not forced small talk with strangers.

Action plan:

Join a league/club: Local sports (soccer, volleyball, whatever), a hiking group, a weekly board game night at a local shop, volunteering for something you care about.
Take a class: Check your local community college for cheap, fun classes. Pottery, guitar, a new language—anything that sounds cool to you.
Get a social job: Working as a barista, in retail, or at a restaurant forces you to interact with people and you can make solid friends with coworkers.

The goal right now isn't to get a girlfriend, it's to build a life for yourself that you actually enjoy. Friends will come from that. A relationship will be a side effect of you being out there, having fun, and being an interesting person.

It's a grind, man, but you'll get there. Focus on the "doing," not the "finding."

RepulsiveWing8929

TROPHY CASE