Some of the most viral videos on TikTok are the videos that achieve a perfect loop. While these kinds of videos might look hard to do, they’re actually pretty simple if you know how.
In this article, we will walk you through all the steps you need to take to achieve the perfect looping TikTik video. When done right, these videos will look practically seamless. Others will watch your video and wonder how in the world were you able to do it. Don’t worry. It doesn’t take hours to do or some fancy editing software. You can make the perfect video loop by yourself with any video editing app that features the ability to trim and move clips around on a timeline. So here’s how you can achieve the perfect TikTok loop:
Never shoot your beginning first
This might sound a little crazy, but you don’t want to shoot the beginning of your video first. Instead, you’re going to want to bridge the transition from the end of the video to the beginning of the video in one take. This ensures the video is perfectly aligned at the loop point to maximize the seamlessness of the transition. You then later split the clip containing the beginning and end in post. After that you then move the beginning clip to the front of the timeline.
The timeline would then consist of the beginning clip, a transition clip and the end clip. Since you shot the end clip together with the beginning, the transition should be pretty seamless; they used to be one single clip. As for the transition shot, it should be a different shot with a clear cut in the video. It could be something like a cut to another subject responding to the person in the looped clip.
You can see this done in action in Josh Martin’s “How to Make a Loop Video” tutorial. In the perfect loop tutorial, Martin is only using two clips: a video clip that contains his ending and beginning and a clip that acts as a transition.
Shooting a loop without a transition shot
You don’t necessarily need a transition shot to make a loop. It really depends on the kind of video that you’re shooting. There are a lot of looping TikToks where the subject walks, jumps, or falls out of the frame, only to inhumanly reappear from a different side of the camera in an instant. The concept here is the same as the previous section. Making the loop is going to require an editing app that has a timeline where you can trim and move clips. You’re also going to want to shoot the ending first and transition it into what will become the beginning.
Circling back to our falling out of frame example, the way you would achieve this kind of loop is by first starting the video with you walking into frame and looking around. Then you suddenly fall out of the frame. To loop this, in post, split the ending of your video (the part where you walk into frame and right before you’re about to look around). Move this clip to the back of the video.
Quick note: lighting!
One of the biggest giveaways of a cut is when the lighting of the environment changes. Be very mindful of the lighting when shooting and editing your looping TikTok video. Try your best to keep the lighting as consistent as possible. If there’s a sudden jump in lighting, it doesn’t matter how seamless your cuts are. If the lighting makes a drastic change, your viewers will know instantly that the video was cut at that moment.
Uploading onto TikTok
Once you’re done editing your TikTok video, you’re ready to upload your perfect loop. Here are all the steps you need to do when uploading:
- Go into TikTok app
- Click on the + sign when on your TikTok
- Go to Upload
- Export the video you have stored on your phone (rotate video if you need to)
- Upload video privately first to see what the video looks like on TikTok
- If you like how it turned out, change the privacy setting to public
That’s all there is to it!
Looping videos may seem hard to do, but with just a simple few cuts and planning, they are simple and fun. They also do very well on TikTok; there’s definitely satisfaction is watching a perfect loop.