About
Mobile Arcade is a community of gamers who record and share their gameplay. The best highlights are edited together with high-quality, transformative editing into unique gaming montages.
Over 20 hours of work goes into each video with 15+ hours spent on editing alone ensuring we create something original that you can’t find anywhere else. Mobile Arcade is not a content aggregation channel, we create original videos with transformative and creative editing in collaboration with the gaming community.
How we edit
Editing is creative work and requires a lot of inspiration to get right. We spend a lot of time brainstorming how best to present certain clips. We only want to use clips that we can add creative value to and present in a unique way because we don’t want to be a content aggregation channel, we want to make original content in collaboration with the gaming community.
All our videos start with reviewing the submissions. We get a lot of submissions and the best ones are hand picked by one of the team members. We always save more clips then required for an episode so that we can stick to our policy of only using clips we have original ideas for how to edit.
Once we have the clips picked out we import them into Adobe Premiere and start the editing process.
1. Sorting footage:
We start the editing process by looking through the clips and placing them in 3 different groups: Clips we have an idea for how to present in a creative way, clips we want to use but need to brainstorm more on how to edit, and clips we don’t want to use.
While grouping the clips we already have ideas for we make sure to write down our idea somewhere so we don’t forget it. We then start brainstorming on the other clips, usually, we end up not using 70% of those.
Once we have filtered out the clips we want to use we starting planning out where to place them and which clips fit together. Our favorite thing to do is being able to combine multiple, similar clips into a segment with a narrative. We spend a lot of time on this because it gives a whole new light to the material.
Now that we have our footage sorted and a basic plan for the video. Our plan always change a lot when we actually start editing.
2. Music
Music is an incredibly important part of entertainment so we, of course, put a lot of effort into this.
First, we search for music we think might fit. Since we already know what clips we’re going to use it’s a lot easier to know what type of music we’re looking for. We make a playlist of the music we think we’ll use.
Once we have a playlist ready we choose the first song and start syncing the clips to the music. We want all the visuals to match the beat of the song, so we spend a lot of time on this.
A lot of viewers might not why our videos feel like they flow so naturally, but that is because of the work we put into syncing visuals to the music. It just makes everything higher quality.
3. Sound Effects
Once we’ve added all the music we need and synced the visuals to the music we have the base of the video ready. We then move onto sound effects.
First we need to replace the audio for the clips without audio. Due to Androids restriction on recording audio from your phone a lot of the clips don’t have sound so we need to add it ourselves. This takes a lot of time but helps improve the quality of the video.
We then move on to the other, extra sound effects. We usually add extra sound effects for two different purposes.
The first thing is to emphasize certain actions like punches, bounces, explosions, etc. Here we usually use foley sound effects. What’s important when using these sound effects is that they are also on beat with the music, if you watch our videos you’ll notice almost every pop, punch, explosion, etc. is on beat.
The other way we use sound effects is to change the context of the clip, giving it a new perspective. We might add a sound effect that sounds sinister to a clip that’s not supposed to be scary, but when the sound effect is added it suddenly gives new meaning to the material and makes it scary.
Since how we use sound effects varies so much from episode to episode I can’t expand too much on it here.
4. Simple visual effects
Before we move onto the more advanced effects that are mostly done in After Effects, we do the simple effects. This includes things like:
- Color correction/other visuals that affect the mood of the clip.
- Example: If we’re doing a dramatic edit, we might do some film noir-esque color correction.
- Pan, zoom, crop.
- Example: Having the camera follow certain players to help with context.
- Transitions
- Add whatever visuals we need to make our editing idea for the clip come to life.
This is also very specific to the material we have, so it’s difficult to provide more examples since it changes from video to video.
5. Text and subtitles
Next up we start adding text and subtitles. We usually add all the subtitles we want before animating it.
We spend a lot of time animating the text and subtitles because it has a huge impact on the quality of the video.
We start with motion tracking. We like doing this because, due to the time it takes, it’s not something you see on a lot of other channels. We often motion track frame by frame to get it perfect, meaning we move the position of the text every single frame the object moves. Our videos have 60 frames per second, so that’s a lot of keyframes.
After we’ve motion tracked and placed all the text where we want it we add in and out animations to the text as a cherry on top to make it perfect.
6. After Effects
Now we’re done in Premiere and move on to the more advanced visual effects in After Effects. What we use After Effects for varies a lot from video to video but it’s usually for 3D effects or rotoscoping. We’ll go more in-depth on specific use cases in a future post or video.
7. Final touches
After this we export a preview version of the video which is reviewed by a minimum of 2 people. We leave comments with suggestions on what should be changed or improved. This is important to maintain the high-quality videos we want.
After changes are made we render out the final video and upload to YouTube.
Examples
Here are some examples of original vs edited clips.