If you are willing to learn, you can study and play around with photo and video editing software and apps and build skills to improve your business for free or that will pay for itself quickly over a short time when you consider the cost of paying someone else to do it for you.

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Canva

Canva.com is a design site that helps your marketing material look professional and can be downloaded once designed. It has thousands of free templates and over a hundred design types of posts, presentations, letters, etc. that you can tweak to be your own unique design and then download to your computer for use on any of your social media platforms. There is a free version that has tons of great preset formats, graphics, photos and fonts available. Canva Pro for individuals and Canva Enterprise for teams has a monthly fee, but many added features such as an animator to make custom GIFs, one-click design resize, a background remover and millions of  photos, stock images, videos and graphics and more.

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Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro is a complex video editing software system that has a free trial time period. It costs a few hundred dollars if you decide to move forward with it after the free trial. Once you get the hang of it, it pays for itself quickly. It does take a few practice times to start to really understand how Final Cut Pro works. But, you will save so much money when you consider that a professional real estate video can cost hundreds of dollars. I think it is worth it.

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Set Up Your Project

Go to File, then New and select “Library” to create a new library. I recommend creating a new library for each listing you have to help you stay organized. I suggest naming each new library the same name as the listing address. 

• Go to File, then new, then “Event.” Be sure to save to your Library name.

• Go to File, then New, then Project. Be sure to save to your correct Event. When the Settings option appears, adjust the settings according to the device that recorded your footage. 

• Go into the file to rename the “untitled event” to the address of the listing. 

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Import Media

• In the “Import Media” section, upload all of your footage that you took of the listing.

• To the right of your screen click the music icon, and upload royalty-free background music you are using for the video (or choose any of the included music in the Final Cut Pro program) and your headshot to use at the end of the video

• Click and drag all videos into your Timeline space which is found at the bottom of the screen. 

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Adjust the Speed Settings 

There is a speedometer icon found next to the magic edit wand. Click and select “automatic speed” to create a consistent speed throughout your video. 

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Edit Your Video Clips

• Put your video clips in the order you prefer.

• Select the entire video timeline, command click and select “detach audio,” which will separate the audio from the video. Delete the audio part.  

• Cut parts of video clips you want removed with the blade tool from the Tool Menu and make each clip about 2-3 seconds long. Keep in mind that your entire video should be no more than about 2 minutes long.

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Edit the Color

Go to the color panel found on the upper right hand side and select “Exposure.” Adjust the color, exposure, and saturation on all of your video clips to make sure they flow together well.

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Add Music

• On the Assets event section, upload royalty-free background music you have chosen for your video or choose to use music already installed in Final cut Pro. If you want to purchase music for uploading to Final Cut Pro, there are lots of sites for non-copyrighted music. 

• Click and drag the music file into your timeline. The music length “bar” needs to cover the entire length of your video in your timeline. You can click on the lines in the music “bar” and adjust the volume and even fade it out a few seconds past the end of your video.

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Add a Title 

Click on Titles in the top left section. Select a title page according to your preference. Move this title page to your timeline as the first clip of your video. Adjust any wording or fonts. Do the same by adding another Title Page at the end of your video as well. I usually add my name and website there and make the clip a few seconds longer so that people can read my contact information.  

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Save Your Video to Your Desktop

Go to File, then Share, then Master File. This will take you to your settings, where you can ensure that it is saving to your desktop. You can try to save to your file different ways to see what gives you the best quality for the smallest file size.