- Here's how to edit videos (gentle music)
with the YouTube video editor.
In this updated tutorial,
we'll go step by step
through the latest YouTube editor interface
and the new features
so that you can easily edit or trim videos on YouTube.
Okay, so there's a couple of different ways
that you can access the YouTube video editor.
You can access it from your YouTube studio dashboard area
by coming over to content,
finding the video that you want to edit or make changes to.
Let's say for instance, this one here,
we can then click on editor down on the left side.
That's gonna open up the YouTube video editor.
The other way to get there is to go to your YouTube channel,
go through and find the video that you want to edit.
So let's pick this one here.
Pause it so we don't have to hear it play.
Then we can choose edit video.
Come over here again to editor
So all your options and tools
and things are up here in this top left corner.
Top right corner here is your preview or your playback
of your video, and this will show you the edits
and changes that you're making here.
Down the bottom here,
this is your video timeline area,
very similar to what you'd see
in more professional editing tools.
And we can resize some of these areas, make them bigger
or smaller by grabbing this resize button here.
We can zoom in and out on our timeline area
down the bottom here, using the zoom in and out buttons
which will give us more detail
or more control over the edits that we're making.
But down the bottom here in the timeline area,
you've got the bottom video track here
which is a visual representation of your video,
so that you can quickly see where everything is
to jump between the different sections.
Above that is your audio layer
which is your audio wave forms,
your visual representation of the audio in your video.
So if you wanna remove something
and you can see the pieces where you're speaking
or not speaking, it makes it easier to do it
by looking at that section too.
Above that is where we can make changes to our end screens
and also our ad breaks or ad positioning as well.
Now the other thing I wanna point out here
is you also have this vertical line here
which you can move around.
This is your playback indicator.
This shows you where you're currently at in your timeline
and you can see that if we hit play,
this thing moves along as you play the videos.
This becomes important when we're trying to trim sections
out of the video.
This can help you get really precise
with the edits that you're making in here.
So let's go ahead
and move that back to the start of our video.
Let's go up here to trim and cut
and let's look at the features that we've got
in terms of removing stuff from our video.
So straight away, we get these blue handles
that have appeared on the start and the end of our video.
So let's say that we wanted to remove something
from the start of our video.
We wanted to have the video start a little bit later.
Maybe you spent some time greeting people
to come onto your live stream before you got
to the content.
If you wanted to trim that off,
ll we need to do is to grab this blue handle area here.
You can see the cursor changes to an arrow.
We can click and drag and we can choose our new start point.
So let's just go after this transition here.
This line comes across the screen, right?
If we wanted this to be our new start point for the video,
that's now being set
because we've moved that start point to that point.
Likewise, at the end of the video
if we wanted to change the ending of our video,
remove maybe the Q&A from a live stream,
we can click and drag that and pull it all the way back
to where we want the video to finish.
Obviously, this is just an example video here
but when we release that,
we can now see that there's just white space shown
at the start and end of the video,
meaning that it's actually been removed
or it's not gonna be in our finished video
once we're done editing it down here.
Now at any time
if you make a mistake or you wanna undo anything,
there's an undo and redo buttons down the bottom here.
But you can also come up to discard changes up the top here.
That's like canceling out
of any changes that you made in this session.
Now, let's say for instance, we wanna remove a chunk
or a section from inside the video itself,
not the start, not the end, something from the middle.
This is where we want to use that playback head,
that playback indicator.
We're gonna go and find the section we wanna remove first.
So let's say I wanna remove this section here
where I'm talking about how our office
and studio here got flooded.
So I want to start this just before that
and then I wanna come up here to add a new cut.
So if we click on this, you can see now we've got some
of those red handles that have appeared
and the first one is created right where
that playback marker was.
So anything that you're leaving in this red area,
this is the stuff that's going to be removed.
So we can grab this end one here.
We can drag it back to where we want that cut to finish.
So after that, shot's on screen there.
And again for more accuracy and control,
we can zoom in on this section here.
But let's say that that's it there.
The section that we wanna remove.
We can just hit the little checkbox here
and that's gonna cut that out of our video.
You can see now that section has gone white as well.
So if we zoom back out now,
we can see that we're still trimmed off the start.
We've got this little section here
that's been removed as well
and we're trimmed off the end too.
Now with this, we wanna make changes to this.
We can put our mouse cursor back over it
and we can hit edit if we wanna readjust those points.
Or there's also a trash can button here too
if we want to remove that edit.
So if we no longer want to delete that section of our video,
then we can remove that cut that we've just added
for that section.
Now we're not just limited to adding one cut,
we can actually add multiple cuts.
So remove multiple sections of your video in here as well.
So let's go down a little bit further
and let's remove another chunk.
Let's say that there's something around here
that we wanna remove.
Again, we want to click to get our playback marker here.
Come back up here to new cut.
And again,
we've got those red handles that we can move around
to highlight these section that we want to take out.
Now we can also get more granular or more specific here too.
It's that if you know the actual time code
of this section you wanna remove,
then you can actually key that in up here as well.
So let's say we're happy with this section we wanna remove,
let's again hit the tick.
We've now got two sections here that are gonna be removed.
Now we can hit play and we can preview this back.
So let's just zoom in a little bit
and we wanna see what these edits look like.
We can click just before them, we can hit play.
It's gonna play back our video
but you can see that it jumped straight across that section.
So this is how you can preview everything
before you essentially commit to it
and have that video saved.
So you wanna go through and add in as many cuts as you need.
But one thing to note here as well
is that you actually can't reposition this footage.
Again, this is gonna allow us to take stuff away
but not add new stuff in, but also not move things around.
So let's just say that there was a chunk
of footage here that we'd love to have
at the start of our video,
we don't have that ability in here.
This is where you will need to use regular video
editing software and we'll have some links
in the description to help you
with regular video editing software too.
But again, this is all about trimming and removing stuff
from your videos that are already on YouTube.
Now, once you're done,
you just need to come up to the top here and hit save.
But you can see I've actually got an error
on the screen here.
Element must be visible for at least five seconds.
Now this is a bug and it doesn't happen all the time.
This is pretty rare.
So it's awesome that it's actually shown up now
while I'm recording this video.
If you are seeing this and you can't hit save,
then it's due to the end cards
or the end screens that you've got added on your video.
So the fix is to remove those
before you trim the end of your video.
You can see that if I extend that back out and keep the end
of the video, that we're now able to hit save.
So again, it's kind of a random bug in my experience.
It doesn't happen all the time
but if you are seeing that
and you can't hit the save button,
then you will need to remove those end card elements first,
which is what I'm gonna cover off next anyway.
But I guess it's cool that it happened for this tutorial
so that I can show you that as well,
so you're not gonna get stuck there.
So when you're done making your edits,
you wanna come up here and hit save.
Again you wanna cancel out, you can hit discard changes.
And at any time, even if you do hit save on your video
and you edit sections out, you can always come back in here
to the YouTube video editor.
You can hit these three little dots and you can revert back
to the original video that you uploaded to YouTube.
So always handy to know
that you can always go back to the original.
The other thing that we've got
in this little dropdown is keyboard shortcuts.
So if you do find that you're gonna be in here
making quite a few edits,
then these things will definitely speed up your workflow,
like having the ability to zoom in and out
just using these shortcuts on your keyboard
or to nudge that playback head left or right.
You can use the arrow keys here.
Again for more granularity, for more control
and it will help you speed up your process in here as well.
So the keyboard shortcuts really powerful.
Now because this is a live video on the channel,
I'm actually not gonna make these changes.
So I'm gonna choose here discard changes.
But if we did hit save,
this is what the process is from here.
It says that it can take a few hours
for your changes to apply, but during that time
your viewers will see the original version of the video.
You won't be able to go and add other changes
to the video until that processing has happened.
And again, that original version
of your video will be saved by YouTube
so that you can undo all of your edits at any time.
So if you wanna save your changes,
you'll then hit save here.
Again, I'm gonna hit cancel to discard these changes.
So that was the trim and cut area.
Now for those end screen elements
we can see those down the end here.
We can edit and customize up our end screens in here,
just by hitting edit.
Now we're not gonna dive into end screens
in a lot of detail in here.
We have full dedicated videos on this on our channel.
But this is again for the last 20 seconds of your videos,
you can have clickable links on screen to other videos.
You can see we've got a link here to this video.
We've also got a subscribe button
which is this other one down here
and we can pick these things up, we can move them around
and we can add extra elements in here too.
So say we wanted to add in another video
'cause we can have up to two videos on screen.
We can choose the add element button up here.
We can add a video, a playlist, a link
to our channel or a verified link off YouTube as well.
Then we can do all of that here.
So if I clicked on video,
then this is where we get to choose.
This is our most recent video, the best for the viewer.
Or if it's a specific video,
then we can go and find that video and add it in here.
We can pick it up, we can resize it
and we can choose how long it's going to stay on screen.
So if we zoom in here this last 20 seconds
'cause that's as long as these end screens can show
on screen,
then we can actually customize these elements
to appear when we want them
so you don't have to have them on screen for 20 seconds.
You can see that we can shorten this down
to appear when maybe I mention
in the video linked on screen is this video or this video.
So they only need to appear when we want them to appear,
as long as they're falling within that 22nd gap.
But we could also stagger these things out.
So we could have our subscribe button appear first,
then our video creation workflow video
and then maybe the best webcam I've ever used appears third.
So again, this is a timeline it's gonna play through.
It's going to get our subscribe button on screen first,
then one video, then the other.
And again, if you were having issues
and you couldn't save these things out before,
then this is where you wanna remove your end screens here
to make changes, make your edits to your videos
and you can just do that by selecting the element here,
hitting the little trash can and that's going to remove it.
Now again, instead of saving these changes,
I'm going to discard them
but that's the end screen functionality in here.
Another really cool feature in here though
in terms of editing your videos,
maybe helping you remove any copyright issues
or something you don't want to show in the video
is you can blur sections of your video here too.
So we're gonna zoom back out.
Let's go back to say the start of our video.
Let's come up here to blur.
We get the option to blur a face or we get a custom blur.
So if I go custom blur here, then I can literally
move this little box wherever we want it.
So maybe I want it over my face.
We can reposition it, we can resize it,
we can choose if it's going to be a rectangle,
if it's going to be an oval.
We can fix the blur to that position.
So it's always gonna stay there
as we play through our video.
You can see it doesn't work
on this section here or we can actually track an object.
So that blur is gonna be tracked to an object in our video.
Now we can also choose how long this blur is up on screen.
You can see here it's defaulting
to seven seconds here at the moment,
but we can also zoom in on our timeline,
to again gain more control.
And we have this blur area here.
So I can shorten the area
that this blur is going to show up on screen.
So we could use our playback head here
and work out where this cut is where I disappear.
So it's around here
and we can have that blur disappear at that point.
And because I've selected track object,
it's actually gonna track to my face.
So if we play this back now,
you can see that that box is slightly moving around
with my face.
So pretty powerful to have this in here.
Now we can also add in multiple blur elements inside
of your videos here as well.
So we've got one here.
Let's say we wanted to add in another one.
Again, let's choose a custom blur.
Maybe we wanna blur out
for some reason a primal video logo down the bottom here.
This one would be the fixed blur position
'cause that's not changing.
Again, we can choose how long we want to have that
on screen, maybe till about here.
And when we preview that now,
that section is going to be blurred out too.
Now if you do wanna do the automatic face tracking for blur,
we come up here to blur.
Let's choose face blur.
And this is where it's gonna go through your video
and it's going to automatically detect faces in your videos.
And this process can take some time.
See what it says here, "Feel free to explore YouTube.
In the meantime,
processing will continue in the background."
But after that's done, you'll be able to select the face
in the video that you want to remove or you wanna blur out.
And that's gonna automatically do that for you.
Yeah, 0.3%, this is gonna take some time.
So once you're done adding your blur elements,
you wanna make sure that you're hitting save
to save those changes.
I'm gonna back out of this now.
So we also have the ability to add music in here,
as I said from the YouTube music library.
So let's go ahead here, click on this
and we can either browse through the huge library
of music here.
We can search for something specific
or if you've gone through it
and you've starred any music in that library,
it's gonna show up in here as well.
So let's pick this track here.
Great name for a music track, Awful.
We hit add and that's now added into our video.
Now if I zoom back out here
so we can see the track in its entirety,
you can see that it actually doesn't stretch
for the entire video
'cause our video is longer than this track.
So we actually have the ability to add
in multiple music tracks here.
So I could also add in this one here.
They all add by default to the start,
but we can pick these up and we can move them around.
So if you've uploaded a video with no music
and you want to come in here and add music,
then this is how easy it can be.
And with each one of these music tracks,
we don't need to use the whole track.
We can click and drag to trim off the start of that track
and we can also do the same to the end as well.
But what we can also do in here is adjust the volume levels.
So right now by default these music tracks come in
at a hundred percent volume.
So they're gonna take over pretty much all the other audio
in our videos.
If I hit play on this now,
(haunting music)
all we're hearing is that music track.
So if I hit here at adjust mix level,
we can take this down to something fairly low
and now when we hit play.
For a while, so in this video, (haunting music)
I'm gonna give you a tour of where we work,
where we shoot our YouTube...
You can hear my voice and the music as well.
Now whenever you're using music
from the YouTube audio library,
it's a good idea to understand the different licenses
for the different tracks.
So if you hit the three little dots here,
you can see the license info and you can see any credits
or attributions that you need to add.
So it says YouTube may credit the artist
in this case and link to the audio library from your video
but there is no attribution required.
So that's the music.
I'm gonna go ahead and discard my changes.
We've covered the end screens.
Info cards are very similar.
So anywhere in the video that we want to have
a little card pop up in the top corner,
this is where we can add those in here as well.
So let's say we wanted to have a card pop up here,
I would click on the little add info card.
We can choose a video, a playlist, a channel, or a link.
So I'm gonna pick a video here.
Let's pick this one here.
YouTube shorts, the complete guide.
And you can see that at that point in the video
that this video is gonna show up in the top corner
as a clickable link for someone to use.
So while you can add these
from other areas on YouTube as well,
you might find that this is the easiest way
for you to add these things in bulk.
Do all of your cards,
do all of your end screens,
all from within this editor window.
And that brings us then to the ad breaks.
So if you are monetized,
if you're in the YouTube partner program,
then you can actually customize up when those ad breaks
can happen in your videos.
Now just from specifying these ad breaks doesn't mean
that an ad is always going to play there.
It's still gonna come down
to the individual viewer's session
and how many ads they may
or may not have been served already.
But in terms of adding or editing these up,
we can either hit the edit button up here
or we can come down to the edit button down here.
So we hit edit,
we can see that there's been two ad breaks
that have been added to this video.
So we can manually add in another one.
Here's again where you want to use that playback head.
Let's so that we wanted to have an ad here.
We'll then choose ad break.
It's gonna add one to that section
and we can remove them from up here as well.
So I'm gonna go ahead and remove that
and the other two ad breaks that are in here.
And if we come at the top here to place automatically,
then this is where it says YouTube's gonna remove any
of the ad breaks that are already in your video
and it's automatically gonna add in
one or more new ad breaks that will be placed
in natural gaps in your video.
And then from there we can adjust
where they're going to be placed.
So if we hit change now,
we can see that it's added two back in
and we can pick them up and we can can move them around
as we need to.
So if you are creating content where you are
letting people know that an ad is about to play,
it's not something we've done on our channel
but I have seen it done,
then this is where you can make sure that
that lines up perfectly with where you want an ad to play.
So now that you know how to use the YouTube video editor,
if you're looking for something more powerful,
something more advanced,
then check out the video linked on screen,
where we look at the best video editing software
on Mac and PC.