﻿This video editor is a game-changer. In 2024, CapCut is one of the best video editors on the
market, with its beginner-friendly interface and ease of use, while still having advanced
tools for more experienced users. My favorite feature is its massive library of drag-and-drop
templates that can instantly make your videos more professional and cinematic, which we'll get to in
a bit. Now let's dive in. Start by downloading the CapCut desktop editor, which I'll link below. Once
you've installed it, open it up. This window will prompt you to start a new project. So,
this is what the CapCut editor interface looks like. At the bottom, there's the timeline,
where we'll be importing and cutting up our clips. Top left is for importing our media, as well as a
whole bunch of templates that can be found here. In the middle is the player, aka the viewer,
where we view our edited video. Finally, on the right, you'll find project settings, which also
doubles as clip settings, which we'll be tweaking in a bit. Before doing anything, you want to click
modify here and give your project a name. Keep all these settings the same since CapCut should adapt
the project settings to the footage you import. Finally, if you have a slow computer, head over
to Performance and toggle on proxies, which will automatically convert your higher quality clips
to lower resolution for faster editing, which it will change back once you export. Otherwise,
go ahead and click save. Now let's edit. I'm going to go ahead and import my first clip, which is the
opening shot of this very video. Now here it is in the media pool. To add it to the timeline,
drag and drop it. Now, when we press the space bar, we can preview, and space bar again to stop.
There are a few timeline settings to note. The first one is the track magnet, and what this does
is it automatically magnetizes your clips to the start of the available space on the timeline. So,
if I turn that off, you'll see I can place my clip wherever I like. Turn it on and it goes
back to the start. If you have multiple clips on your timeline, it will basically eliminate
all the empty spaces. I tend to turn this on and off throughout my edits depending on what
stage I'm at. Next to that is auto-snapping, and what that does is, if you're dragging your clips
around on the timeline, it will automatically snap to any definite cut points, like here,
it's snapped to the playhead. If I move it along, it's snapped. Turning on snapping
makes it kind of like a magnet. I wouldn't worry about the other timeline shortcuts for now since
this is a beginner's tutorial, aside from the zoom functions so you can see your entire timeline and
here you can manually zoom in and out. A faster way to do this is by pressing plus and minus on
your keyboard.To edit a clip, it's always good to zoom in a bit so you've got fine control. Then
you can either drag the start and end to shorten the clip or click this button to create a cut,
then delete the unwanted clip. At any point, you can press Command or Control Z to undo what you've
done. A faster way to cut up your clips is using keyboard shortcuts. So by pressing B, I can bring
up the blade to cut the clip or an even better one that I've set up is pressing Q to delete left,
which eliminates everything that was before that point on the timeline. If you want to edit 10
times faster, I'd strongly suggest learning the keyboard shortcuts because it means you can just
tap a button instead of having to manually select tools, which makes the overall editing process so
much faster. To access them, head up to the top and hit help shortcut and here they are,
the default CapCut shortcuts. However, they're not very good, so I would suggest editing them
here in this menu. If you want a full breakdown of every keyboard shortcut I use in CapCut to
edit 10 times faster as well as an explanation about what all of the different shortcuts mean,
feel free to download my keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet completely for free down below. So now I'm
going to go ahead and cut up this clip, and I normally edit by referencing the waveforms on
the timeline as clues as to where the cuts need to be placed. So, I'm going to zoom in here. I know
it's not super visible, but it's visible enough. I'm going to make a cut, delete the previous clip,
cut again at the end of my first line, go to the next bit, make a cut, delete the middle bit. I'm
going to go back on my timeline and play it back. "Is a game changer in 2024" bit too much of a
space there so remove that. "A game changer in 2024," that's better. Now, I'm going to go ahead
and fully cut up this clip and done. Now before we go too much further, I want to draw your attention
to the player window, where there's a few things you may want to consider changing. Firstly, if
you click this menu, there is an option to change the preview quality. If you're editing on a slow
computer and your playback isn't super smooth, if that's the case, change it to Performance
priority, otherwise keep it on Quality priority for higher quality playback. Then you can also
export still frame here if you want, which can be handy for thumbnails and whatnot. At the bottom of
the player window, you'll see ratio. This refers to aspect ratio, so most projects will be 16:9,
which is the ratio you're looking at now. However, if you're editing for mobile, you want to choose
9:16, which is the vertical format. And it's a good idea to set this up front so you can frame
all your shots to fit that aspect. Then you can resize it by clicking on the clip in the timeline
and zooming in on the right-hand side. CapCut's great because you can also click and drag the
player window to move your video clip around. My project is 16:9, however, so I'm going to
change it back to that. And this brings me to the clip settings window, which is a really powerful
section of CapCut that allows you to manipulate and edit your individual shots. So, if you want
to punch in, you just change the scale, and then you can move the clip around yourself manually.
You can rotate it or apply a few different effects like stabilizing, reducing noise, motion blur,
and so on. Across here, there's a few different advanced options like cutting out chroma key,
masking, and face enhancement, which I definitely don't recommend using. Next to video, you'll find
audio. Here's where you edit your sound. So, if you want to make your clip louder or quieter,
just drag this slider, and fade in, fade out will add a crossfade across the start or end of your
clip. You can apply changes to multiple clips at once by selecting them all on the timeline.
And then when we go back to audio, if I raise the volume like this, you'll see that it's raised the
volume of all tracks on the timeline and likewise when you drag it down, same thing happens. One
thing to look out for with your audio waveforms is that when any waveforms change to orange,
it means they're slightly too loud and you need to bring your clip volume down to try and minimize
all peaks so they're back in the blue. Instead of doing that though, you can choose loudness
normalization where the software will do its best to adjust all the levels based on what they should
be to not end up too loud or too quiet. So, that's just a fast way to normalize your audio.
Then I'll always choose noise reduction as well because I do have a bit of an echo in this room,
and turning it on removes any excess background noise or humming. Next to audio,
you'll find speed. This is for fast motion and slow motion. So, if you're making a time-lapse,
you want to change this so it's really fast, or if you have a slow-motion clip, you want to drag that
down to whatever speed is suitable for your clip. Otherwise, keep it at one. Under curve, you'll
find some advanced controls for speed ramping, slow and fast motion. Finally, there's adjustment,
and this refers to color correction. Since I have all of my clips selected on the timeline,
any change I make here will automatically be applied to all clips. If you have a talking
head like I do, I'd recommend skin tone protection being turned on and you can manually color correct
your clips so the colors appear more normal vibrant. You might want to adjust your exposure
to be either darker or lighter or just balance it out so the highlights aren't as bright and the
shadows aren't as dark. You can see the before and after by toggling the adjustment tick on and off,
and this does sometimes help you see your clip with fresh eyes so you can make that small tweak
it needs. Now when you select just one single clip on the timeline, this animation option will also
come up and this refers to the transition at the start and end of each clip. So, if you want to
make your shots more dynamic, try one of these. By clicking the transition here in the transition
menu, it automatically added the transition to this clip as you can see here by this line on the
left-hand side of the timeline. You can alter the duration of it to be longer or shorter here. Also,
you'll notice there's out and combo. Out is obviously transition out, a transition here to the
end of the clip and changer, and combo essentially means in and out. So, definitely try some of these
out and see if there's any you like. Just click on one to add it and then tap the space bar to
preview it. "This video editor is a game-changer." Of course, it's important not to overdo these,
however, especially when you've got clips that are identical like a talking head where you simply
don't need to transition from shot to shot. Where they do work better, however, is with b-roll. So,
I'm going to drag a b-roll clip into the media pool, and this is just a screen recording of
using CapCut to trim a b-roll clip down. Before you import it into the timeline, simply grab the
handles on the right and left-hand side. You can see the preview there in the viewer. And
now when I click and drag this onto the timeline, it's a much shorter clip than the original, which
of course you can shorten again by clicking and dragging. Firstly, with the b-roll clip selected,
under the video menu, I'm going to choose scale, and I'm going to zoom in a bit then reposition
the clip, and I'm going to go for something a bit fancier now, and that is keyframing this
shot so it moves. The keyframe is shot reposition it to the first position you want it to play in,
and up here, I'm going to create a keyframe next to position and size, which will essentially lock
all of these settings in place. Then I'm going to move to the end of my clip where I want this
clip to end, and now I'm simply going to drag this across. Now, automatically CapCut has keyframed a
pan from left to right. Let's watch it back with its beginner-friendly interface and ease of use.
Great! If you want to edit a keyframe, zoom into the timeline and you'll see the keyframes are
denoted by these white diamonds here. So let's say I want to edit this one, but I don't want it
to go as far to the right-hand side. I'm going to line up the playhead with the keyframe and
drag it to the new position I wanted. Now when I play back the friendly interface and ease of use,
it's updated the animation.Keyframes are a great way to give shots a sense of movement. When you
look at a still shot versus one that is slightly moving, either left to right, right to left,
or even a slight zoom in or out, the moving shot is always more dynamic and engaging. Again though,
don't overuse this and have every single shot of your edit move. Next, let's add some text. At the
top left, you'll see the text option here. Click that and drag default text down onto the timeline
above the clip you want to use it with. My idea for these text animations is creating a word for
every word I say in the opening 3 seconds of this video. So what I'm going to do is use the audio
waveforms as a reference as to how long I need to drag out this text. Instead of dragging and
dropping every time you want a new bit of text, I suggest instead holding down option on your
keyboard then clicking on the text and dragging across, which will create a duplicate. So,
I'm going to go to the end of where I say "video," adjust the text by double-clicking,
and I'll repeat the process for this opening bit, and I'm done. As you can see, "this video
editor is a game-changer" are all separate bits of text on this timeline. When I play it back,
"this video editor is a game-changer," they play in sync with my voice. While
you can automatically generate subtitles, this is a good way to do it for small parts of your video
without having to subtitle the whole thing. To edit the style and position of your text,
select it all. Now, up here under text, we've got a whole bunch of different options. Firstly,
I'm going to make it bigger. They've got some text style presets with outlines and different colors,
which I'm not going to use here. Instead, I'm going to change the font up top and find a font
that I like. This one's pretty cool. If you're not happy with the position of your text, just click
and drag it to a new position. You can also rotate it with the rotate tool and scale it up and down
here in the viewer. Now, I do like that, but it's still blending into the background a bit too much,
so I'm going to select all my clips and come down here to stroke. And stroke basically
adds an outline. Let's take a look at that. "This video editor is a game-changer." Not bad at all.
Another option is adding a background. This can definitely help make text clearer, and there are
a bunch of different options for customizing the box. You can change the opacity, make it rounded,
change the height and width, as well as offset it. Now, I'll play that back and see how it
looks. "This video editor is a game-changer." I think it's a bit big, so I'm going to select all
of the text and at the top, I'm going to shrink it down. Now, there are a whole bunch of text
effects you can take advantage of within CapCut. If you click over to here, "bubble" creates like a
speech bubble if you want your text style to be in a slightly different format and shape. Obviously,
you need to go back and customize it so it didn't have the black background so it works better with
that neon outline. But there really is a high level of customization you can do to this text.
Next to "Bubble" is "Effects," and these are just various different types of typography. Again, a
massive library here, and these are all really fun and will help you create a much more customized
look than the default text and colors. I quite like this gradient. You can also animate your
text in the "Animation" tab, and again, you've got "In," "Out," and "Loop" depending on where you
want the animations to be. And again, click on an effect to preview it. There's also some advanced
text options like tracking, text-to-speech, and AI characters, which I won't get into in this video,
but definitely feel free to check them out. And can you believe we're not even really into the
proper templates of CapCut yet? What I'm about to show you will blow your mind yet again. So
heading back up to the top left, if you click "Audio" here, you'll find a whole library of
royalty-free music and sound effects that you can use within your project, which is really so
handy to have these and not have to bring them in externally. If you head over to "Stickers,"
what these are are graphic overlays that you can place on top of your video. So let's try this one
out. And look at that, it's placed that with a transparent background on top of my video. And
just like with text, you could add an animation to it or a loop animation, which means it will keep
moving throughout. So this is fantastic if you have something specific you need. For example,
I use crosses and ticks a lot in my videos to show right and wrong. CapCut has a massive library of
pre-made graphics that you can use within your videos, and this is just so helpful to not have
to source these externally. You'll notice that some of these are animated and some aren't,
so just hover over an image to see which one it is. Next one over is "Effects," and these
effects range from cinematic to extremely silly. To preview one, just click on it and it will
automatically apply itself to your video. This library is really huge. You can expand it here,
and depending on what type of effect you're going for, just select it, preview it, and if you decide
you did want to add that effect, just drag it down on top of your clip and it will apply. Next
one over is "Transitions," and this is similar to the transitions we had before, just a much bigger
library. Again, just hover over to see what it is. If you like it, drag it over to the timeline
and place it in between two clips. This library is seriously impressive and goes far beyond the
inbuilt templates of every other video editor, at least the ones I've used. Next is "Filters," and
these are obviously color grades, which I wouldn't recommend using unless you want something that
looks highly stylized. Then there's "Adjustment" if you want to add an adjustment layer, but that's
a bit advanced for this video. But the templates don't just end there. If you choose "Templates" at
the end here, you'll find a library of pre-edited videos that you can insert your own footage into
to create short catchy TikTok videos. Personally, I like something a bit more customized, so I'm
not going to use those. But if you head over to "Media," another entire menu of templates you'll
find is here. On the left-hand side, if you click "Library," you'll find a whole bunch of
great royalty-free clips that you can use within your videos, including green screen effects,
plain colored backgrounds for vertical content, animated moving backgrounds, more graphic
overlays, and how cool is this, it even has its own inbuilt library of royalty-free stock footage,
which are super cinematic and great clips to use to help practice your editing. To insert one,
as usual, just drag it and drop it. The final cool thing I'm going to show you under the media
menu is if you click "AI Generated" here, you can generate your own images. So let's say I want a
neon cyberpunk cityscape. I'll type that in and click generate. And a few seconds later, it's
generated some fantastic images that I can now use within my video. Obviously, these are royalty-free
because they are generated from scratch. This is yet another extremely impressive feature of CapCut
that makes it a fantastic all-in-one editor. Now once you finished editing, it's time to export.
You can export by pressing the blue button at the top right of the window. And here we're
going to give our exported file a name, choose a save location, choose your resolution (I like
exporting in 4k), and for maximum quality, I'd recommend higher bitrate H.264 codec and whichever
frame rate you shot with. Then go ahead and hit export, and we're done. Now there will be many
more CapCut tutorials to come on my channel. So if you want to see them, then be sure to
subscribe down below. Now if you love CapCut like I do, but you also want a more advanced
editor for more serious projects, you may want to consider DaVinci Resolve. So in this video,
I share my thoughts on the differences between DaVinci and CapCut and who each software is for.