Most beginner videos do not fail because of the app. They fail because a phone clip lags on an old laptop, a file goes missing, the sound is weak, or the song gets the video blocked on YouTube. Fix these five habits before you pay for a video editing course in Kathmandu, and every class after that goes faster.
Should you learn Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve first?
The first mistake is spending weeks on this question. Pick one free app and start cutting. We start with DaVinci Resolve, because the free version is enough for real paid work. Blackmagic Design, the company that makes it, says free Resolve 21 handles almost all 8-bit video formats up to Ultra HD at 60 frames per second.
Most Kathmandu job posts do ask for Premiere Pro and After Effects. That is a fair worry. But cutting for a reason, pacing a hook and cleaning a voice work the same way in every editor. The buttons change, the thinking does not. We compared the main apps in more detail in DaVinci Resolve vs Premiere Pro vs CapCut in Nepal.
Why does my video lag when I edit on my laptop?
Phone footage is heavy to play back. Phones save video in compressed formats like H.264, which are small on disk but hard work for a laptop while you cut. It is easy to decide the laptop is too weak and stop there.
The fix is proxy files. These are lighter copies of your clips that you edit with. In Resolve, first set the proxy size in Project Settings, under Master Settings, in the Optimized Media and Render Cache section. Then select your clips in the Media Pool, right-click and choose Generate Proxy Media. Turn them on from the top menu: Playback, then Proxy Handling, then Prefer Proxies.
You lose nothing at the end. When you export, Resolve goes back to the original full-quality files by default. With proxies, free Resolve runs on a laptop with 8GB of RAM. Keep about 100GB of free space, and an external SSD helps a lot.
Why does DaVinci Resolve say Media Offline?
Resolve does not copy your clips into the project. It remembers where each file sits. Move the folder to another drive, or clean up your Downloads folder, and the clips turn red with "Media Offline".
Before you import anything, make one folder for the project. Inside it, keep folders for footage, audio, graphics and exports. Name every version in one pattern, like clientname_2026-11-05_v01, so you never guess which export is the final one. Keep a second copy of the footage on another drive.
If it has already happened, select the offline clips, right-click and choose Relink Selected Clips. Then point Resolve to the folder where the files now live.
Why does my video look fine but feel cheap?
Usually it is the sound. Beginners spend an hour on colour and two minutes on audio. In our view, a viewer forgives a soft picture much sooner than a voice lost under fan noise and loud music.
Three habits fix most of it. Record 20 seconds of the empty room on set, so you have clean silence to fill gaps after you cut. Clean the voice first, before you add any music. Then lower the music whenever someone speaks, which editors call ducking.
Check your mix on headphones as well as on laptop speakers. Small speakers hide hum and hiss that a client will hear on a phone with earbuds.
Can I use any song in my YouTube video?
No, and this mistake can cost you a client. YouTube checks every upload against audio and video files sent in by copyright owners. This system is called Content ID. When it finds a match, the owner can block the video, run ads on it, or just track its views. The result can even differ from one country to another.
A song is not safe just because a playlist calls it "no copyright". YouTube says only music and sound effects from its own Audio Library are known to it as copyright-safe, and those tracks will not be claimed. You find the Audio Library inside YouTube Studio. Some tracks there use a Creative Commons licence and need the artist's name in your description. While you learn, use the "Attribution not required" filter. Read the YouTube Audio Library help page once before your first client job, and keep YouTube's page on how Content ID works for the day a claim arrives.
Should I add a LUT or a filter first?
The fifth mistake is dropping a "cinematic" look straight onto raw footage. A look on top of a clip that is too dark or too blue only makes the problem stylish.
Correct first, then style. Fix exposure and white balance until skin looks like skin, and only then add a look or a LUT, which is a preset that maps one set of colours to another. In Resolve's Color page we teach it in a fixed order: convert the footage, balance it, match the shots, then add the look.
What to try tonight
Shoot a two-minute clip on your phone. Import it into free DaVinci Resolve, generate a proxy, and cut it down to 30 seconds with one track from the Audio Library under it. Put the project in its own folder before you import, and name the export v01.
If you get stuck, Blackmagic offers The Beginner's Guide to DaVinci Resolve 20 as a PDF download on its training page, with lesson files you can practise on.
Saarathi Academy in Old Baneshwor, Kathmandu teaches all five fixes in its 5-week Video Editing course on free DaVinci Resolve and CapCut, with up to 10 students in the classroom. Read the course page and the week-by-week syllabus.
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