Hey guys, welcome to the first episode in our HitFilm Basics Masterclass. In this
tutorial, we're going to show you how to download HitFilm Express, install it, and
get up and running so that you can begin editing videos as quickly as possible. If
you find that you've already done one of the sections we'll be covering, feel free
to skip ahead to the timecode on screen. HitFilm Express is our free video
editing and visual effects software. Whether you're wanting to create short
films or a gaming channel, music videos or vlogs, it's all possible inside of
HitFilm. Let's go ahead and get started, so the first thing you need to do is
open up your internet browser and go to FXhome.com/express. If you'd like
more information on HitFilm express and what it can do, feel free to browse the
page. We have a list of all of our features, a list of effects and tutorials,
so feel free to give that a browse if you're interested. I'm going to come over
here and click on download HitFilm Express. So this will take us to our new
pay-what-you-want page. This is a, at the time of this video, relatively new
initiative that we just started. Now, don't be put off by this page, HitFilm
Express can and still will be free. All you have to do is move the slider to the
left, all the way to zero, and then you can hit download. However, we did want to
give you guys the opportunity to get bonus content as well as give back to
the community in the form of a charity donation. You can see here that we have
three tiers, so we have starter, content creator, and VFX artist, and you can
choose to purchase, if you want, whichever one fits your needs the best. As you can
see down here at the bottom, we also give a portion of the proceeds to charity
which is a great opportunity for us, not only to give back to the community, but
also to the world in general. Depending on which tier you select you can scroll
down and read more info about what exactly is in that pack. For now, since I
already, work here I'm going to set the slider to zero and then select download.
This will let me download HitFilm Express completely for free. We'll be
taken to a quick download page so I will just put in some general information.
I do recommend subscribing to the email newsletter, you'll get information on our
community, what we're working on, as well as any sales that we have coming up. Once
that information is filled in. I'll come over and select "Send me the Express
download", and you can see that it's still completely free. You'll get a pop-up that
says that your email has been sent so check your email to grab the installer
and get started. Now I'll come over to my inbox and open the email
was just sent. Rise of the Dark Side is our Star Wars-inspired masterclass, so be
sure to check that out if you like Star Wars. For now, I'll just click download
your installer. This is the step that assigns a serial code to your account so
be sure not to skip this part, it is important. And then I'll choose the
installer for my operating system, in this case, Windows. When it's finished
downloading, go ahead and click the installer to begin the process. I'll come
over here and click Next, agree to the terms in the license
agreement, and then click Next, Typical, and install. Once the
installation is finished, I'll go ahead and start HitFilm Express and I'll get
a pop-up window asking me to activate. Select activate and unlock and enter the
email and password that you used earlier. Restart the software to complete the
activation. Once it reopens, you now have HitFilm Express downloaded, activated,
and ready to use.
Now that we've got the software downloaded we can actually start using
it. This is the home page of HitFilm Express, on the right here you can see
our community section. This is where we put our own tutorials, but it's also
where we put our community stuff, so things that people have made, nice quotes
about the software, and other things like notifications of upcoming sales. So keep
an eye on this page because it's constantly being updated. If you prefer
to read about any of the features in HitFilm Express, we do have a quick
button to get to the user guide. This is a comprehensive guide of, basically, every
feature in HitFilm, so be sure to give it a read if you have any questions. Let's
go ahead and create a new project by coming up here to the left and selecting
New. The New Project Settings window will pop up, here you can set the height and
width of your project, as well as the frame rate. I'll go ahead and set the
template to 1080p at 23.9fps. This is a
standard format. In this duration field you can set the length of your project
if you know how long it's going to be. You can always come back and change this
later. And the aspect ratio I'll keep as is. Then I'll hit OK
to create the project. This is HitFilm Express, if you've never used video
editing software before it might be a little bit intimidating, but if you've
used other programs, it should be similar. We have our main editor timeline down
here which is where we place our footage. We have our viewer up here in the top
right, which is where we can see the final product. On the left, we have our
media panel which is where we import our footage that we're going to use, and we
have various other panels that you can tab over to but we'll cover those in
later videos. The panels inside of HitFilm Express can be rearranged to fit
your workflow. So if you just click and drag, you can move panels resize them, and
in the case of non-essential panels, you can also close them by clicking the
hamburger icon, up here. If you find that you've rearranged your workspace, or
closed a panel, or just want to get back to the way things were, come up here to
the Window tab > Workspaces, and select Reset Workspace. This will put all the
panels back where they belong. The next step is to bring the footage that you
want to edit into HitFilm, there are a couple ways to do this - you could double
click inside the media panel, you can click Import and then search for the
files in the browser, or you can drag them directly from the file explorer
into HitFilm. So with that, you are now ready to start
editing inside of HitFilm Express, which is what we'll cover in the next video. If
you didn't download HitFilm Express already, feel free to do so from the link
in the description. Also, do leave any questions that you have down below.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you all in the next tutorial.