Whether you’re working on a college assignment, a freelance project, or creating content for your social media pages, proper handling of your audio and video files is of the essence. With our increasing reliance on the Internet and digital technology, properly managing multimedia files is now more important than ever. And it doesn’t have to be a daunting task! In this dedicated guide, we’ll provide various simple and useful tips to keep in mind for handling audio and video files like a pro.
Edit with the Right Software
Over the past few years, countless software, both free and paid, have sprung up to help us edit our multimedia files. Whether it’s to create a slideshow, trim, cut, or fine-tune audios and videos, it’s important to choose the right kind of program to work with. If you’re a novice, you’re better off with beginner-friendly software to create music or edit audio files for podcasts. Pay attention to the user interface, features, and ease of importing/exporting. Some research should point you towards dozens of practical software choices.
Mind the Files’ Format
Using the right format is also crucial. If your video or audio file doesn’t bear the right extension (.wav, .mp3, .aac, .mp4, .mkv, .mov .etc.), you risk damaging it and losing all your hard work, wasting hours of your time in the process. If you often download stuff from YouTube, the sound pros at vidd.ly/convert-youtube-to-mp3 suggest finding a website or software to help you convert YouTube videos conveniently into MP3 files. This should help you gain efficiency and speed. Scour the web to find an easy and reliable YouTube downloader.
Choose a Versatile Media Player
Invariably, the kind of platform you choose to play your files also has its importance. A media player should be dependable, easy to navigate, and most of all, versatile. This means that you should be able to play all kinds of audio and video files with it. The most popular options include VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player, and PotPlayer. In any case, don’t forget to continually update your player for a smooth and lag-free experience.
Using Compression
Compression is a helpful tool when it comes to handling large files. Whether you want to save some valuable space on your internal drive or send your files to a colleague, you can use a compression tool (WinRAR, 7Zip) to condense your files and make storage and sharing a cakewalk. No matter which program you use, be sure that it has a decent compression rate to ensure a fast and pain-free process.
Keep Your Files Organized
Ask any expert, and they’ll tell you that the golden rule of digital file management is that organization is key. You want to have dedicated folders and subfolders to keep everything neatly stored, organized, and accessible. In truth, nothing will waste more of your time than having to navigate endlessly to find a file on a messy desktop (the search option in file explorer or Spotlight is still no excuse!). So, start sorting through your gigabytes of files, create unique folders, drag and drop, color code, and do whatever works for you.
Back-up and Secure Your Files
Advancing without a full back-up of your personal music files, videos, movies, and pictures can be quite perilous. As a matter of fact, no one is ever safe from an unexpected computer crash, a cyber attack, or data theft. You could, for instance, have a dedicated external hard drive (at least 1TB of storage) to keep a copy of all your files should any go south. Alternatively, cloud storage is gaining more popularity these days with companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, or Dropbox offering cloud solutions to secure your files efficiently.
Effortless Sharing
Last but not least, if like many you’re working across several devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone), you want to make sure that you can access your audio and video files on a single platform. As mentioned, major tech companies offer cross-device sharing features to enable users to transfer their files easily. Some research should get you acquainted with the most reliable options on the market.
At the end of the day, managing and handling your digital files doesn’t need to be a complicated undertaking. All you need to do is keep them organized, pay attention to the format, convert them to the right extensions, back up your files, and select the right editing software. Hopefully, these simple tips will help you optimize your time and boost your online and offline productivity.
