Check out this intro that I made for YouTube.
Today we are going to look at how I created this intro step-by-step, and we'll also look at
how you can customize it to make it your own. The really neat thing is you probably already
have this software included on your computer. It’s called Clipchamp, and it’s video editing
software made by Microsoft, and best of all, it's completely free to use. On Windows 11, go down
to your start menu and then search for Clipchamp and you should see it as the best match. You can
also download it directly through the Microsoft Store, or you can even use it directly in your
web browser at Clipchamp.com. If you'd like to follow along, we'll start from the very beginning
all the way through to exporting the video. You can also access my project file right up
above. You'll also find a link down below in the description. All right, let's make an epic YouTube
intro. To get started, let's head to the website Clipchamp.com. You can also launch the app, and
irrespective of whether you decide to use the app or the web, you'll get the exact same experience.
In the top right-hand corner, let's click on try for free. Here you can create a new account,
and it's entirely free to do that, or you can also sign in with an existing account. Here, I'll
continue with my Microsoft account. This drops us on the Clipchamp home screen and right here
we can create a new video, and in a moment, we'll do this, but first, let's take a look down below
at all of these different templates. Here you have intro and outros. You have YouTube, gaming,
Instagram, and all of these different categories. When I click into intro and outro, you see all
these different templates that you can customize to make your own. It's well worth a look to see if
maybe one of these does what you're looking for. Let's go back up to the top and click on back and
then let's start from scratch. This drops us into the main Clipchamp editing interface, and at first
glance, it might feel a little bit overwhelming. We have all of these different options over on the
left-hand side, and all of these different options over on the right-hand side.
As we walk through and build this intro, it'll make a lot more sense. I usually like starting
my intros by including some music, especially some fast-paced and also upbeat music. Over on
the left-hand side, there's an option for music and SFX or sound effects. I'll click on this,
and here we see all of these different songs that we can insert into the project.
Some of them are free, and you can just use these freely, and others have a diamond icon, which
requires an upgrade. Luckily you have lots of free songs to choose from. Right up here, I'll click
on see more, and here we could sample a few of these songs. Here let's click on this play icon.
I can also click in the middle of the clip if I just want to
preview maybe what it sounds like after the intro.
Now, right up here, there's a song called Somewhere In The Mountains. Let's listen to this.
I like that. I think that works well. To add this to my timeline, I can click on this green plus
icon and that'll add it down here in the timeline, or alternatively, I could also press here, and you
see this hand icon appear. I could press there and then I could drag it down to my timeline,
and then I'll release, and here we see the song on the timeline. Now that I have an item on the
timeline, we can adjust the timeline view. Over here, I can click on this plus icon if I want
to zoom in on my timeline, or we could also zoom out by clicking on this icon. When I hover over,
you'll also see the associated shortcut key. Alternatively, I can also hover over the timeline
and press the control key and then move my mouse wheel up or down, and that’ll also zoom in or out.
Over here, there's a key called zoom to fit. This will fit the timeline to all of the contents. You
could also press that shortcut key. Here I’ll click on this icon and here we see that it fits
to all of the contents. Right up here, we can see that the current project is one minute and
44 seconds, and I don't know about you, but for a YouTube intro, that is way too long, so I want
to trim this clip down below. Let's first have a listen to see if there's a good point to cut it.
Here, I'll press the spacebar key and that'll start playing the project.
You'll hear right here in the song, there's a point where the music stops playing, and I think
that would also be a good point to cut this song. That's when the intro will end. If we go all the
way down, with this song selected on the timeline, you see that there's this handle icon at the very
end. When I click on that, here I can trim the audio file, so here I can pull it forward. Now one
trick, I want to trim it right at this point where the music stops, so here I can place the play head
right there and now when I pull the handle, I can trim it right to that point, and you'll
see that it snaps right there. Let's go back up and click on zoom to fit and here now we see the
entire timeline. Right up here, we can see that the project is about 5 seconds, and for an intro,
that feels like the right amount of time. Next, I want to insert some text that describes what
this video is about. So, how to make a cool YouTube intro. Over on the left-hand side,
there's a category for text. Let's click on this. This opens up a pane with all of the different
text options within Clipchamp. Right here, we have the option to insert plain text, and down below,
we have all these different titles that we can insert and there are many different options.
Here if I hover over any one of these options, I can sample what it looks like. So, here's
statement, you have an option called typewriter, here’s stencil, and you see these nice animations,
so you have all these really neat effects that you can add. For now, I just want to keep it really
simple, so let's go with the plain text. Here I’ll click on this and then drag it over onto
my timeline. I can now see my text on the timeline down below. Here I’ll take the play head and move
it right to the beginning, and here we can see the text within the preview area. Here I can click to
edit the text, and I want this to be the beginning of how to make a cool YouTube intro. So, here I'll
type in how. With the text object selected on the timeline down below, over on the right-hand side,
I can see all of the different properties related to this text. Here I can click into text, and you
can change things like the font. Maybe here I go with let's say maybe Della Gothic One. I think
that looks good. You can change the font style. You can change the font size, the alignment,
the color. You have all these different options. You could also have the text fade in or fade out,
and down below, I can also apply different filters, and let's see maybe this slow zoom one
looks nice. Let me select this one. So, that's now applied a slow zoom. Here I can click on filters
again and this will remove the pane. Down below on my timeline, here I can see that the text stays
up pretty much through the end of the intro, and I don't want how to appear for that long.
Just like we did earlier, I can click on the handle here and I can trim this clip,
or another way I can do this, let's say maybe I want to keep this how text up for, let's say
about one second. I'll place my play head right here, and with the text selected on the timeline,
I can click on this split icon, or I could also press S the shortcut key. I'll press S
and that splits my clip. Here I'll select this end portion and I can press backspace or delete
and that'll remove it from my timeline. Next, I want to add more text for every single word of
how to make a cool YouTube intro. So, here I'll select this text and press control C to copy,
and then I'll press control V to paste, and I'll do that six times, and currently it all says how,
but here I'll go into the second one, and let's click here to edit the text, and for this one I’ll
say to. I have all of my text on the timeline now, but you’ll see that the text goes beyond the song,
and I want the text just to fit into these 5 seconds. So, I need to adjust the timing
of the text. So, let's listen to the beat of the music and see where we want the text to come in,
and then when the text will go out. Let's go back to the beginning and have a listen.
So, I think for to, I just want this to appear very briefly,
so here I could take this handle and here let's drag it down to, let's say about 1.2 seconds.
When I drag that in, you'll see that there's now a gap between to and make, and here when I play it,
you'll see that it's just black up in the preview area, so I don't want this
gap. One of the neat things that you can do with Clipchamp, when I hover over the gap,
I see this delete icon. I can click on that, and that removes the gap. I’ll now go through
and adjust the timing of the rest of these clips. Let's now move the play head to the beginning and
play this to see what it looks like. I’ll press spacebar to play. OK, I think the text fits the
beat pretty nicely and the timing is pretty good on all these different words. Of course,
you could go through, and you can tweak it if you want a little bit more or a little bit less,
but I think the timing on all these looks pretty good to me. As we watch this clip play, the text
really is just a little bit plain, and that makes sense, because I used the plain text up above,
but I also want to make it a little bit more exciting by maybe adding some animation. I'll
move the play head all the way to the beginning to the first word that appears, which is how. With
text open on the left-hand side, here I see all of these different titles with all these really
neat animations, and there are so many different options, and this one smoke looks pretty cool,
but as I go down, I have all these different options, and I could simply click on one of
these, so let's take glitch. I could click on this, and I can drag it over to my timeline,
and I could drop it on top of one of these text elements. So, here I'll place it on top of how
and this applies the glitch effect to how. Now I can play it and we can see what it looks like.
That effect looked pretty nice. With how selected over here, over on the right-hand side,
here I see all of my properties and you might notice I have a few additional properties now.
Let's click into text and here I want to update the font and here let's go with that Della Gothic
One. Here I have my colors. I also have transform and let's go with the largest size and I also
have a new property now for glitch. Here I could adjust the amount of glitch and also the speed of
the glitch. Here I'll click on glitch to close this pane and let's see what this looks like.
That looks pretty nice. I can now apply additional effects to the other words that
appear as part of this intro. Let's have a preview to see how it's coming together.
Over on the right-hand side, here I'll click on zoom to fit. Overall, this looks pretty good,
but one thing that falls a little flat is cool. Just the plain text
and even one of these animations for cool, I don't think it does that word justice.
Over on the left-hand side, let's click on the option called graphics, and here I have all of
these different graphics or motion graphics that I could insert into my project, and a lot of them
have animations, which is really neat. Now I want to see if maybe there's a sticker that says cool.
Here's one option, but let's see what else they have. Here I can click on this see more icon,
and I can even click on this pane over here to expand the number that I can see on my screen,
and here we see all these different options for stickers that I can insert into my project.
And right up here, I see a category for free to use. Let's click on see more.
This opens up all the free to use stickers, and here when I hover over any option, here I could
see what the animation looks like, and what's really neat is all of these are transparent,
so I can place it on top of say a background, and it'll fit in perfectly. Here I can scroll down,
and we can see all the different options. There are so many different stickers that I can insert,
and right here, there's an option that says, cool. I'll take this, and I'll drag it onto my
timeline. I think that'll work a lot better than the text, and here I'll place it where
I had the cool word appear on my timeline. Over here, I'll click on graphics to close this pane.
I can now see the cool sticker on my timeline, and I want to trim it, so it's the same length as the
cool text down here. I'll place my play head right here and then press S to split the clip,
and here I'll delete this portion. I no longer need this text that says cool,
so let's delete that from the timeline, and I'll just stick with the sticker.
With this sticker selected, I can go up into this preview area and I can adjust how it
appears. Here, I'll adjust it, so it appears larger on my screen. When I select the object,
I can also move it around and I get these nice helpful guidelines that help me align my text.
Here I'll place it right in the center. Let's now play the clip to see what this looks like.
As this video was playing, the text animations all look pretty good, but the black background
is just a little bit plain, and one of the really neat things you could do is insert stock video
behind the text to make it just appear a little bit more dynamic. Over on the left-hand side,
let's click into stock video, and here you have so many different options of stock video that you can
insert into your project. Here I'll click into the free to use category. Here we can look through at
all the different options, and you can experiment to see which backgrounds you like. So, just here
as an example, I could take this one and I could drag it over onto my timeline. Here I could choose
where I want to position it. Right here I could place it on top of all these different items.
The only problem, when I do that, it appears on top, so whatever appears above is a higher layer
and that'll overlay all of these different items. Now I want this background underneath the text,
so here I'll select the background and I can drag it underneath the text. Here you see that
green bar that indicates where the background will go. Now when I play it, you see that I have this
really cool background behind the text. Here I'll remove this background. Then I can go through and
maybe research some backgrounds that I think would work well. I'll go through and pick a
few different backgrounds to play throughout my video. I went through and I added a whole bunch
of different stock video as a background behind all of my different text effects,
and I trimmed the backgrounds just like we trimmed the text earlier. Here at the very beginning,
where I say how to make a, here I have this very subtle background that I found in the collection
that just adds this nice little effect behind the text. Under cool, I added four different
backgrounds. So, here as cool appears, it rapidly shifts between the different stock video, so that
adds some excitement and energy, and at the very end, I added this synth wave behind YouTube intro,
and I thought that really looked nice, but here you can experiment with different stock
video as your background, and I think it adds a really nice effect. As this intro is playing,
I want to emphasize the word cool just a little bit more, and this is one of the coolest features
in Clipchamp. Over on the left-hand side, let's click on record and create and here's
the option to enter text and convert it to speech. Let's click on this. This opens up a
pane where I can turn text into speech. Right up above, I can choose my language and there
are so many different languages to choose from. Right here, I can also choose a voice,
and many different options here, and each voice sounds a little bit different. I'll select Tony.
What's really cool is over here you could also choose a voice style and currently it's set to
general, but maybe we go with excited. I want Tony to be really excited and say cool. Right here,
I could also choose the voice pitch and maybe we go with an extra high Tony. I could also adjust
the speed and here I can type in my text. Add an exclamation mark and here I can preview what it
sounds like. Cool! That sounds pretty neat. Here I’ll click on save to media. Over on the left-hand
side, I can see that it added cool to my media. Here, I'll drag this over into my timeline and
I'll place it so he says cool as the text appears. I'll go through and do it two more times so it
sounds like a crowd is shouting out cool. I've now added all the different text to speech to
my timeline and let's hear what it sounds like. Cool! Cool! Cool! Haha, that's pretty epic. To
finish up, I want to transition into my actual video. Over on the left-hand side, I'll click
on my media and then I'll drag in a video clip from my computer. I'll now take my video clip
and I'll attach it to the end of this intro, and here, let's see how it transitions. Now that was
just a hard cut between the intro and then when I come on the camera. Let's click on zoom to fit,
and I want to add a transition here. Over on the left-hand side, let's click into transitions, and
just like with all the other categories, I have all these different transitions that I can choose
from, and here's one called spin. I’ll select this and then I can drag it onto the timeline,
and I'll place it between these two different clips. Let's now preview what this looks like.
Let me shorten this clip just a tiny bit, so my video starts playing sooner. Let's preview it one
more time. Today we are going to look. Ah, that looks pretty good. I think I'm all done with this
intro now. In the top right-hand corner, let's click on this button that says export and here you
have a few different quality levels that you can select. Here, I’ll select 1080P. That's currently
the best quality level, and now it's rendering my video. Now that my video is all done exporting,
in the top right-hand corner, I can see that it automatically saved it to my computer in
my downloads folder. Here you could also click on download as well. Down below,
you can copy this link and then you can share it with others, so they can see the video that
you pulled together. If you followed along, be sure to copy that link and then share it
down below in the comments. I think it’d be a lot of fun to see what you came up with. To
watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing, and I'll see you in the next video.