Wedding and event shooter Christian Valeri started his carrier at the turn of century. Located in the center region of Italy Christian and his wife Silvia offer all services around video production. Christian has won several wedding awards in recent years. Editing to him is about recreating the emotions of the captured event. To be able to fully concentrate on the creative process EDIUS has been Christian Valeri’s editing tool of choice from early on.


Getting ready for the wedding shoot

From childhood on I was dreaming of making films. I started this wonderful profession in 2000 when I was 16 years old. Back then my friend and former boss Duilio started the first video studio in the region where I live, in the central area of Italy in the region of Marche. I went to this studio to develop a film. Back then you still needed to be developed in a physical laboratory instead of software.

From dark room to video

I found myself in such a futuristic environment, with lots of displays, keyboards, and other sophisticated devices. I was quite in awe…


20 years ago: My first camera

But I took the opportunity to show my first video, shot and edited on a VHS tape, to the owner of the studio. Back then video editing was quite cumbersome as one had to cope with the limitations and rather poor quality of VHS machines. Nevertheless, the owner of the studio liked my “work”.

From that day on – more than two decades ago - I have never stopped enjoying the process of telling stories and documenting events, preserving precious moments to be shared in the future.

Positive energy generated by customers’ feedback

I enjoy working together with people and that very much includes the relation to my customers. The moment I deliver the finished edit to them, the moment they see the result for the first time and give such a positive feedback, I receive just as much positive energy for future projects.


20 years later: Enjoying the work with my customers

On the contrary to that the editing process in the early years was not enjoyable at all. Actually, it was quite discouraging. In the beginning I used to work with other software, very popular in post-production, but I’ve lost a lot of sleep with all the system crashes and hours of lost editing. So, I was very eager to try out other solutions hoping for more stability and saving my nerves. Around ten years ago I finally discovered EDIUS. And I realized it was truly simplifying every single phase of my work, saying goodbye to crashes and boring procedures that I had to face before. It was also a matter of motivation, because when you work without problems you can use your full potential and enjoy the process.

Capturing and recreating the emotion

With my videos I try to capture and recreate the atmosphere and the emotions of the event. Often, I don’t follow a chronological order. Instead, I concentrate on evoking emotions, allowing the client to relive the special moment of the event. Audio is very important for an immersive experience, so I use a lot of live audio along with music related to the event. To optimize the audio, I use the plug-ins included in EDIUS. They work well both for enhancing speech as well as suppressing unwanted background noise.

As for video effects I use filters from NewBlueFX and Vitascene. But in my opinion effects should be just a “side dish” supporting the real images. Visual effects should never be dominating the video.

I married Silvia, an EDIUS Cutter!

It was maybe one of the luckiest coincidences that the woman that I fell in love with and married also knew how to work with cameras and with EDIUS! I think that the female point of view always helped me to complete my work in the best way, especially during the shooting.


Silvia and I are a dream team

Sensitivity is needed in many cases like at weddings. Working on such projects together is benefitting the quality very much – and it makes working even more enjoyable.

EDIUS is the perfect editing tool for all our jobs including theatre shows and concerts.  Whenever we shoot with multiple cameras, we do the edit as a multi cam project. EDIUS then allows us to switch to the different camera tracks in real time just as if a director would be sitting in front of a live console for switching. This makes editing very intuitive, and any not so perfect transition can later easily be finetuned by adjusting the switching positions on the timeline.

Speed and versatility

Whenever needed – maybe because the mobile notebook is not so powerful – EDIUS allows us to gradually reduce the playback quality allowing a stutter free playback. This also allows us to do a quick first cut edit, to show to our customer, while the event is still running.


Editing with EDIUS

All together the footage of one event is usually about 8 hours long, shot with 2 cameras, a drone, and an action cam that I place in different positions during the event. The edited video is usually about 20 minutes long, depending of course on the character of the event.

I always shoot in 4k, mainly at 50p, sometimes 100p and in special cases even 1000p, reducing the resolution. I dedicate some time to the color correction at an early stage of the editing process. I can then better evaluate what the look should be and how to tie everything together. The fast to use and intuitive Primary Color Correction filter of EDIUS is a great tool I really enjoy using for that. This filter is also great for correcting any white balance issues or to dialing in some more saturation or contrast. Although corrected and optimized the image still looks natural with no loss in quality.

Archiving projects on NAS and cloud

I keep the footage of every project for at least 2 years on a NAS and in the cloud. From time to time, I need to reopen older projects. This is another great benefit of EDIUS, because working on older projects is never a problem. I never had any issues, no matter how old those projects were.

The market for wedding shooters in Italy

The wedding market in Italy is quite unpredictable. There are periods when I get more requests than I can handle. And there are also very slow times. But being a wedding shooter in Italy I cannot complain. The average price to shoot a wedding is around 2500 EUR.

I love shooting weddings and capturing the atmosphere

Social media helped me a lot in the beginning, allowing my work to be known as well as my style and my commitment. Today, good, or bad, I don’t have the necessary time anymore to keep Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube all up to date.

But still, with other customers recommending my work, and with even a few examples available online, I can win the attention of small up to medium companies for new productions. At Vimeo you can find several examples of my event work and as a wedding shooter: vimeo.com/christianvaleri

Format and file conversions with EDIUS

To finish my story, I like to come back to the studio more than 20 years ago, which I was describing in the beginning. Because my wife and I are now offering services as well! And today, I am also surrounded by lots of video machines. We don’t develop film of course but we offer all sorts of video and format conversion. With EDIUS and a dedicated hardware I capture audio/video from old tapes (VHS, VHS-C, mini-dv, BETA, VIDEO2000, etc.) I then edit and finish the projects with EDIUS. I also use EDIUS for any file conversion, for the great compatibility with codecs and formats. With EDIUS you never experience any quality loss.


I am very happy to be doing what I have dreamt of more than 20 years ago: shooting and editing video for a living and enjoying every aspect of the process.