You might had video shots that looks crap so you want to learn how to make videos look better. If not, your friend came to you and wanted you to find a way to improve his or her ugly video.

Many video makers are thinking that they can just shoot whatever and however and just leave all the improvements to the video editor. While this works in some ways, video editing cannot improve those crap videos in many cases. In reality, the beauty of the video depends so much on the video shooting itself. If the video taken is done very well then the editing follows. However, if the video shots are all shaky, overexposed, underexposed, and what not, chances are you will really have a bad output no matter how good the video editor is.

But what can we do now? The video taken was shot by a not so professional cameraman so we cannot really undo the mistakes anymore. Well, here are some of the things that you can do to lessen the problem:

1. Color Correct the Incorrect Colors

If the video shots have underexpose or overexposed shots, you can sit down for a while to improve the color levels. In Premiere, I use Levels or Curves to do this. If the white balance is also incorrect, you can change it using Color Effects such as Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, and what not. Just try to use those color correction tools that your video editing program has.

2. How About the Shaky Footage?

Well, this is really the biggest problem for me. The solution though for this one is either find some good and steady video shots or use pictures to cover those shaky parts. Now, if all the video footage are shaky then I don’t think there is a great solution that can make it steady. Andrew Kramer taught a solution on how to lessen the video shake using After Effects but I don’t think it is practical for long videos.

This is a lesson that you can give to your cameraman though. You can show him or her the videos he or she took and tell him or her why is it a big problem on your part as a video editor. There are simple solutions to this problem like using a tripod or monopod. Just check out more ways on how to shoot videos properly.

3. Add Some Effects and Graphics

For the video output to look great still despite the bad video shots, I usually add some video animations and motion graphics. It’s either a 3D simple animation using 3D Max or motion graphics using After Effects.

As I said, the beauty of the video output is based so much on the video shooting itself. Video shooting then should be done properly. These are the ways though on how to lessen the problem for those not so good video shots.