Clipchamp

Windows 11 includes a free and surprisingly full-featured video editor called Clipchamp that should meet the needs of just about anyone. And while this isn’t well-documented, you can also use Clipchamp to create and edit audio files and export a video as audio.

Defaults

Clipchamp is included with Windows 11.

Clipchamp in Windows 11 requires you to sign in with a Microsoft account (MSA) (or Microsoft Work or School account, or MWSA). If you sign in to Windows 11 with an MSA, you will sign in to Clipchamp with that account automatically. If you sign in to Windows 11 with a local account, you will be prompted to sign in with your MSA.

Tip: Clipchamp is a web app and it’s also accessible in any modern web browser. The web version supports signing in with an MSA or MWSA like the Windows 11 app, but it also supports signing in with a Google account.

Clipchamp is free and full-featured, but you can get additional premium functionality with a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium subscription or by paying for a standalone Clipchamp Premium subscription that costs $11.99 per month. With either subscription, you get:

• Support for up to 4K video resolution, compared to Full HD (1080p) in the free version.
• Free stock assets that expand on the free stock assets offered in the free version.
• Premium filters and effects that expand on the free filters and effects offered in the free version.
• Access to the integrated Brand kit with custom logos, colors, and fonts.

Tip: This chapter covers the Clipchamp features that everyone gets for free.

Clipchamp uses a project-based workflow. Each project consists of some combination of media assets–video, image, and audio files–that you provide and must be stored somewhere and Clipchamp-provided assets, text, transitions, branding elements, and more.

Clipchamp works with local storage, meaning storage devices attached to your PC, but you can also store projects and assets in your cloud-based OneDrive storage, which explains the MSA (or MWSA) requirement. There are trade-offs to both choices:

• Local storage. You must maintain the files the make up the assets of a Clipchamp project. If you move or delete one of those files, Clipchamp can see or use it.
• OneDrive. Your Clipchamp projects–including any assets you provide–take up space in your cloud storage but the content is available from any of your PCs or Macs or other devices on which you’ve installed a OneDrive client.

Tip: If you use a third-party cloud storage service like Google Drive with Windows 11, you can configure Clipchamp to use local storage and then choose a file system location that’s synced with that cloud storage service so that your project assets and other data can be made available on any of your PCs, Macs, or other devices.

By default, Clipchamp uses local storage only, even if you sign in with an MSA. This occurs in a hidden folder of files that the app needs to function correctly and also contains temporary copies of media assets; You can find it at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Packages\Clipchamp.Clipchamp_yxz26nhyzhsrt. (For some reason.) By default, Clipchamp is configured to use up to 10 percent of the space available in the system drive. And whatever space it does use–minus the media assets you provide–is found within this folder.

Clipchamp has two primary interfaces:

• Home page. This is the interface you see when you launch the app. It provides choices for starting a new project from scratch, using an AI-based auto compose feature, using a selection of easy edits that start off in one of Clipchamp’s secondary interfaces, or using one of the many templates that Clipchamp provides. It also displays thumbnails for all the projects you’ve already created. (This can be on your PC and/or in OneDrive depending on how you configured the app.)

• Video editor. This is the primary interface for editing a video project, exporting the completed video, and sharing the project with others.

Tip: The Clipchamp video editor also lets you access secondary interfaces for recording audio, the screen, a camera, or the screen and a camera together.

Projects

If you create a new project using the “Create a new video” button or open an existing project, Clipchamp navigates to the video editor interface. This interface contains the following elements:

• Toolbar. This vertically oriented pane displays icon-based tabs for key video editor features, each of which provides a collapsible panel with options for the selected feature. For example, when you select “Text” in the toolbar, the Text panel appears with plain text, text styles, title, two-line, caption, and other text-based options.

• Video preview with a floating toolbar. The video preview area in the top middle of the Clipchamp app also provides “Undo” and “Redo” buttons, a floating toolbar with “Size” (aspect ratio), “Background color” and “Autocaptions” options, a “Full screen preview” button, and large “Share” and “Export” buttons.

• Timeline. This interface is where the magic happens. You drag, arrange, and edit video and audio clips and other assets into the Timeline to create a finished video that can include music and sound effects, titles and other text, transitions, filters, effects, and more.

• Property panel. Once you add content to the Timeline project, this vertically oriented pane displays icon-based tabs for “Captions” and the features that are available for any selected item(s) in the Timeline. For example, if you select a video clip in the Timeline, icons for “Fade,” “Filters,” “Effects,” “Adjust colors,” and “Speed” appear. As with the toolbar, the Property panel expands when you select a tab and provides a collapsible panel with options for the associated feature. For example, The “Fade” panel has controls for configuring video fade-in and fade-out.

Customize

Clipchamp has a simple app settings interface that’s accessible via the “Settings” (gear) icon at the top of the app window in either of the primary interfaces.

Key settings include:

• Local storage. Here, you can optionally configure Clipchamp to use up to 20, 40, 60, or 80 percent of the local storage it can use by default.
• Export. Clipchamp uses your PC’s graphics chips to speed video exports with hardware acceleration. If you have issues exporting, you can disable this feature and exports will be slower but more reliable.

Create a new project

There are several ways to start a new project from the Clipchamp home page. Among them are:

• Create a new video from scratch. Click this button and Clipchamp will switch to an empty video editor interface with the “My media” panel open so you can import media assets and start editing the new project.
• Create a video with AI. If you have your own media assets ready and want some guided assistance from AI, you can click this button and follow the steps in a short wizard to provide a title for the project, add your media assets, choose a style based on an AI review of your content or let the AI choose for you, choose between landscape and portrait orientations, choose a length, and select music to accompany the video. Then, you can choose to just let AI do its thing and export whatever video it comes up with or you can load the results in the video editor for further editing. I strongly recommend the latter.

• Get started with an easy edit. Clipchamp randomly promotes two of its secondary interfaces as a quick starting- off point for creating a new video.
• Create a video using a template. Clipchamp lets you jump straight into a new project by choosing a template–an often extensive set of bundled assets–that it then lays out in the Timeline so you can start with something attractive and professional. From there, you can view and edit the project created by the template and import media assets to build it out further.

For the most part, I assume you will start with a new project built from scratch.

Open a previous project

To open a previous project, scroll down to the “Your videos” area in the Clipchamp home page and click the project thumbnail you want. Previous projects appear in reverse chronological order as a grid of thumbnails, but you can also search for a specific project, sort the list differently, or import a previous project stored elsewhere if desired.

Name or rename a project

In the Clipchamp video editor interface, you can name a new project or rename an existing project by clicking the “Name” drop-down in the left of the app’s title bar area and choosing “Rename.”

Back up the media in a project to OneDrive

Clipchamp works with local files by default, but you can back up any project to OneDrive by clicking the “Media not backed up to OneDrive” button in the title bar area and configuring this feature to “On.”

When enabled, Clipchamp backs up your media assets to your cloud storage, making them available to you if you open this project on another PC or device.

Tip: Clipchamp will continually remind you to back up to OneDrive if you don’t avail yourself of this option.

Import and manage media assets for a project

Media assets–the video, image, and audio files that you supply–are key to the Clipchamp experience. You use the “My media” panel available in the Clipboard to import and manage a project’s media assets.

Tip: When you start a new project from scratch, this panel displays by default.

You can import media in several different ways:

• Browse for files. Click the “Import media” button at the top of this pane to display a standard “Open file” dialog you can use to navigate to the file system location where your assets are stored and then select the file(s) you wish to import. The imported files will appear as thumbnails in the “My media” panel.
• Browse the content library. Click the right  side of the “Import media button” (it resembles a caret) and choose “Browse content library” to display the Clipchamp content library and its different asset types.
• Create text to speech. Click the right side of the “Import media” button and choose “Text to speech” to add a “New text to speech” clip to the Timeline. A “Text to speech” panel appears in the Property panel with a choice of AI-based voices, a text box for importing or typing text and adding pauses, and “Preview” and “Save” buttons. Unlike with most other media associated with a project, Text to speech clips appear in the Timeline only and are not represented in the “My media” panel.

• Import from OneDrive. Click the right side of the “Import media button” and choose “OneDrive” to display a file picker interface with a file system-like view of your OneDrive storage in the cloud. As with the “Import media” button and its Open file dialog, you can navigate the OneDrive file system and select the file(s) you wish to import. The imported files will download from the cloud and appear as thumbnails in the “My media” panel.
• Drag and drop from the local file system. You can also open a File Explorer window, navigate to the file system location containing the files you need, select them, and drag them directly into the “My media” panel in Clipchamp. When you do this, the imported files will appear as thumbnails in the “My media” panel.

Arrange and edit video clips and other assets on the Timeline

Once you’ve imported at least some of the media assets you wish to use with a project, you can arrange–and, if needed, edit–them and other assets in the Timeline.

Add a media asset to the Timeline

There are two methods for adding media assets in “My media” to the timeline:

• Add to timeline. When you mouse over a thumbnail in “My media,” a purple “Add to timeline” (“+”) button appears. If you click this button, the asset appears in the Timeline varies based on what, if anything, is already displayed in the Timeline. But images and video clips will appear in a single Media track in the Timeline by default and audio clips will appear in a single Audio track below the Media track.

Tip: You can also multi-select assets in “My media” using the “Select item” buttons that appear on each thumbnail as you mouse over each and then use the “Add to timeline” button on the final asset to import them all at once.

• Drag-and-drop. If you need a bit more precision, you can drag a media asset from the “My media” panel directly onto the Timeline.

Assets you add to the Timeline take up horizontal space commensurate with their length, which you can measure against the time display at the top of the Timeline. Some assets, like video clips, have specific lengths, of course, but Clipchamp allots 4 seconds for images and 5 seconds for text by default.

Reposition an item in the Timeline

With a simple project, you may have just a single video clip and minimal or no text, filters and effects, and other additions. But as you add more assets to the Timeline, and more types of assets, the view can get more complex and provide you with numerous editing possibilities. The ability to reposition a media is perhaps the most basic.

You reposition items in the Timeline with drag and drop: Just click any item to select it and drag it with the mouse.

How you can reposition an asset depends on what’s in the Timeline. For example, if you have just a single image or video clip, there’s not much you can do beyond moving it left or right in the one Media track in the Timeline. But if you have two or more images and/or video clips, you can have multiple Media tracks, and you can drag these items up or down to move them into a different track.

Tip: The arrangement of tracks from top to bottom in the Timeline matters because visual items–text, images, video clips, and so on–that appear in a track above other items in other tracks will visually appear in front of those items in other tracks and in the final video. For example, the items in the Text track will always appear above the items in Media tracks.

You can also drag these items between, above, or below existing Media tracks to place them in a new track.

Other asset types work similarly but they’re constrained to the track types they support. And there are rules for where certain track types can appear. Audio tracks can only appear below video tracks, for example, and Text tracks can only appear above Media tracks.

Change the length of an item in the Timeline

You can resize some assets to determine the length of time they appear or play. Images, as noted above, appear in a video for four seconds by default, but you can resize an image item in the timeline to lengthen or shorten that amount of time. There are two ways to do this:

• Drag with the mouse cursor. You can grab the left or right side of a compatible item in the Timeline with the mouse cursor and drag it left or right to increase or decrease its length. As you do, a purple indicator appears in the time display at the top of the Timeline so you can resize it accurately.

• Edit duration. You can right-click an item in the Timeline and choose “Edit duration” from the context menu that appears to specify its duration exactly.

This works a bit differently for different types of items. If you have a video clip that’s two minutes long, for example, you can grab its right side and drag it left to lessen the amount of time the clip plays without actually splitting the clip and deleting the bit(s) you don’t want.

Split a media asset

There are different ways to edit images and video clips, but one of the key actions you can take is to split an item so you can delete one of them and, in effect, trim the beginning or end of the item.

To do so:

• Click the item you want to split to select it.
• Using the mouse cursor to reposition the playhead indicator–a vertical white line that extends from the top of the Timeline to the bottom–to the location you want to split the selected item. As you do so, the Video review updates to display that point in the project.
• Click the “Split” (scissors) button in the top left of the Timeline.

Keyboard shortcut: You can also just tap the S key to split the selected item at the location marked by the playhead indicator.

Now, the item is split into two separate items with no gap between them.

From here, you can delete one of the clips by selecting it and tapping the Delete key, reposition one or both items, or perform any other edits. If you delete or move one of the clips, there will likely be a gap–empty space–where it was in its original track in the Timeline. You can manually position other items to remove that space or you can mouse over it and click the “Delete this gap” (trashcan) icon that appears.

Add captions to your project

Adding captions to a video project is normally tedious, but Clipchamp has an Autocaptions capability that uses AI to detect and transcribe spoken words in audio and video clips and generate a captions transcript you can then edit as needed.

You can start with this feature in two ways:

• Turn on autocaptions. This button is available in the floating toolbar associated with the Video preview area.
• Captions. The tab is always available at the top of the Property panel.

When you select either choice, the “Transcribe with AI” window appears.

Select the language as prompted and click “Transcribe audio.” The “Captions” panel on the right will display Clipchamp’s progress as it detects and transcribes any spoken words. When it’s done, this panel will display the transcript with time stamps.

You can click anywhere in the transcript to see those captions in the Video preview. You can also edit the text of the transcript directly in the transcript.

This panel also lets you download the captions in .SRT format, which is widely compatible with video player apps, including Media Player, or hide the captions in the video.

Tip: Captions are added to the video using standard Text items, and they can be edited like any other Text items.

Use Fade to fade a clip in and out

Images and audio and video clips you add to the Timeline support configurable fade effects so that they don’t begin or end in a way that is visually or audibly jarring. To configure this for one or more items, select them in the Timeline and then click the “Fade” tab that appears in the Property panel.

There are “Fade in” and “Fade out” sliders, each of which can be set to 0 to 2 seconds in increments of 0.1 seconds.

Enhance a clip with filters

Clipchamp supports a wide range of filters, visual effects that you can add to images and/or video clips in the Timeline. You can apply one filter to any of these items and configure its intensity.

To do so, select one or more images and/or video clips in the Timeline, position the playhead indicator so you can see the selected item(s) in the Video preview, and then click the “Filters” tab that appears in the Property panel.

Select the filter you wish to apply. Then, optionally use the “Intensity” slider that appears under the filter thumbnail to change the intensity as desired.

Add an effect to a clip

Similarly to filters, Clipchamp also supports a wide range of effects you can apply to images and/or video clips in the Timeline. Effects typically offer multiple options and, unlike filters, you can apply more than one effect to items in the Timeline.

To add an effect to one or more items, select the item(s) you wish to use in the Timeline, position the playhead indicator so you can see the selected item(s) in the Video preview, and then click the “Effects” tab that appears in the Property panel.

Select an effect you wish to apply. When you do, one or more options will appear below the effect thumbnail. For example, the “Blur” effect supports just a single option, a slider that you can use to configure the intensity of the blur effect.

The “Crash zoom” effect has options for positioning the starting point of the zoom, how much the item will zoom, the number of steps it will take, and the delay for each step.

You will need to experiment with the available effects to find the ones you like, and remember that you can add multiple effects to any compatible item in the Timeline.

Adjust the colors of a video clip or image

The “Adjust colors” tab in the Property panel lets you adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation, temperature, transparency, and, optionally, the blend mode used by any image or video clip in the Timeline. (The blend mode impacts how this item displays when you use transparency and there is another item visually below it in the Timeline.) As with filters and effects, you can edit these attributes for multiple items at the same time.

To do so, select the item(s) you wish to use in the Timeline, position the playhead indicator so you can see the selected item(s) in the Video preview, and then click the “Adjust colors” tab that appears in the Property panel.

Adjust the volume of an audio clip

You can configure the relative volume of audio and video clips in your projects and, with audio clips, optionally enable a “Noise suppression” option that uses AI to remove background sounds and echos.

To do so, select one or more audio and/or video clips in the Timeline, position the playhead indicator so it’s just before the beginning of the first item you’re editing, and then click the “Audio” tab that appears in the Property panel.

The “Volume” slider is set to 100 percent by default, but you can configure it to be softer or louder in 1 percent increments. Note that the “Noise suppression” only appears when an audio clip–and not a video clip–is selected.

Adjust the speed of an audio or video clip

Audio and video clips you add to a project normally play at their normal recorded speed, but you can use the “Speed” tab in the Property panel to speed them or slow them down.

To do so, select one or more audio and/or video clips in the Timeline, position the playhead indicator so it’s just before the beginning of the first item you’re editing, then click the “Speed” tab that appears in the Property panel.

Here, you can slow the playback as low as 0.1x or as high as 16x in 0.lx increments.

Preview your video

You will use the Video preview extensively as you edit videos with Clipchamp. It works in concert with the Timeline, with both interfaces kept aligned as you preview a video in progress or if you manually move the playhead indicator to go an exact point in the Timeline.

The floating toolbar in the Video preview provides the following capabilities when no items in the Timeline are selected:

• Size. Clipchamp will automatically select an aspect ratio for your project based on the media assets you add. But you can configure this explicitly by clicking the “Size” button. You can also mouse over each option you see to preview its impact on the project.

• Background color. If you use images, video clips, or other visual items with different aspect ratios, it’s possible that what would otherwise by empty space below all the items in the Timeline will peek through. To prevent that, Clipchamp will display a solid black color for the background by default, but you can use this option to configure a different solid color or the gradient of your choice.

• Caption options. As described elsewhere in the chapter, Clipchamp has an Autocaptions capability that uses AI to detect and transcribe spoken words in audio and video clips and generate a captions transcript you can then edit as needed.

When you select an image or video clip in the Timeline and position the playhead indicator over it, the floating toolbar in the Video preview provides the following options:

• Crop. This lets you drag handles on the sides and/or corners of the selected item to resize it to fit better with other items that may have different aspect ratios. For example, if your project is sized to a 16:9 aspect ratio but a selected image or video clip is a different aspect ratio, it will display with black (or another background color) bars; you can use crop to manually fill that space better.

• Fit/Fill. This button acts as a toggle for a selected image or video clip that’s a different aspect ratio than the configured size (aspect ratio). With “Fit,” the item will display centered in its native aspect ratio, and with “Fill,” it will fill the entire space, cropping from the top and bottom or sides as needed. You can then use the mouse cursor to drag the selected item in the Video preview to position it as you wish.

• More. This button provides access to a wide range of additional options, including Order (which lets you position the selected item visually towards the front or backward), Rotate by 90 degrees, Flip (horizontal or vertical), Picture in picture (Top left, Top right, Bottom left, or Bottom right), and Remove background, which uses AI to remove the background from the selected image only.

Note that you can also preview your project in a full-screen display, which can be helpful. Just click the “Full screen preview button” in the lower right of the Video preview area to start.

Record your camera, screen, audio, or screen and camera

The “Record & create” tab in the Clipchamp tool provides four useful tools to speed the creation of specific types of assets you can use in your projects, each within its own secondary interface. They are:

• Screen and camera. This lets you record the screen, a window, or a browser tab along with the view from one of your PC’s cameras in a picture-in-picture display you can resize and position arbitrarily over the screen recording. The “Camera” and “Mic” buttons let you choose the recording hardware to use, and the “Script” button lets you paste a script you wrote in a translucent overlay over the recording so you can read it as you go. You select the screen, window, or tab to record after clicking “Start screen recording,” and you can optionally enable system audio. The video clip you create plays back as soon as you’re done, and then you can retake the recording or save it to add it as a standard media asset in the “My media” tab and to the Timeline.

• Camera. This lets you record the output from one of your PC’s cameras with hardware selection options, optional backdrop blur or image background replacements, an optional translucent script overlay, and optional Draw, Filter, Frame, and Board effects you can use in real-time. As with the above tool, you can retake or save and import the finished recording.

• Screen. This lets you record the screen or any window or browser tab while optionally recording a voice-over. You can select the microphone hardware to use and optionally enable a translucent script overlay. As with the above tools, you can retake or save and import the finished recording.
• Audio. This tool lets you record audio–typically your voice–for up to 30 minutes using a microphone connected to your PC with an optional translucent script overlay. When you’re done, you can preview the recording, retake it, or save it to the project where you can edit it in the Timeline.

• Text to speech. This tool works differently than the above tools and is described earlier in the chapter.

Use the assets provided by the Clipchamp content library

In addition to the media assets–video, image, and audio files–you can add to a project, Clipchamp provides a nice collection of its own freely usable assets. You can see what’s available in the “Content library” tab in the toolbar.

Here, you will find shapes, music, annotations (graphical objects in different shapes and sizes), images, frames and borders, sound effects, overlays, animated GIFs from GIPHY, and other items you can add to your projects. When you find one you like, you can click the “Add to timeline” (“+”) button that appears on its thumbnail when you mouse over it.

Tip: Some items in the content library, like audio only items, are added to the Timeline, while others are added to both “My media” and the Timeline.

Add text to a project

You can add one or more Text items–titles and other text-based overlays–to your project using the “Text” tab in the Clipchamp toolbar. There are multiple Text styles from which to choose, and each has a range of configurable options.

To add a Text item to a project, position the playhead indicator at the point in the Timeline where you would like to add the Text. Then, find the Text item you like and click its “Add to timeline” (“+”) button to add the item; Clipchamp will typically add it to a new track above any other text tracks in the Timeline, but you can of course reposition it as needed.

To edit the Text item, position the playhead indicator so that it’s over the new (and selected) item. This will display the Text item in the Video preview and open its “Text” tab in the Property panel, where you can see and edit its available options.

The options you see vary by Text item. The “Plain text” style provides options for the font, alignment, and color, plus more advanced options like line height, letter spacing, outline, and shadow, for example.

And the “Make it glow” style provides text, font, size, glow color, back color, stroke color, and positioning options.

Add a transition to a project

Clipchamp supports a wide range of transitions, visual effects you can use to ease the movement between one image or video clip and another. Without a transition, these movements can be visually jarring.

There are two ways to add a transition between two items in the Timeline:

• Add transition. You can add the most commonly used transition, called a cross-fade, to any contiguous images and/or video clips in the Timeline by mousing over the gap between them and clicking the “Add transition” button that appears.

• Transitions tab. If you want a specific transition, you can click the “Transitions” tab in the toolbar to browse the available transitions. You can preview any of them by mousing over its thumbnail. And when you’re ready to add a transition to the project, you just drag the thumbnail between any contiguous images and/or video clips in the Timeline; an “Add transition” button will appear when you do so.

Either way, the “Transition” tab will appear in the Property panel when you add a transition.

From here you can:

• Select a different transition. The selected transition appears at the top of the tab, but you can select any other transition instead.
• Configure the duration of the transition. Transitions are 2 seconds long by default, but you can use the “Duration slider” to configure a transition to be up to 5 seconds long in 0.1-second increments.

Tip: You can also create a cross-fade transition by positioning two images and/or video clips in different tracks, ideally right on top of each other, and positioning one of them so that it slightly overlaps the other.

Share a project with others

You can share a Clipchamp project you’re working on with others, but you have to back it up to OneDrive first. Once you do, you can click the “Share” button to do the following:

• Share. This displays a OneDrive share sheet that you can use to begin sharing the project with others.
• Copy link. This option copies a link for the shared project to your Clipboard so you can share it manually with others.
• Manage access. This option lets you configure the rights other people get when they access your shared project.

Export your video

Once you’ve edited a project to the point where you want to publish a finished version of the video, you can click the “Export” button to view the available options in an “Export video” window. Most Clipchamp projects will have at least one visual asset, and in this case, it will assume you want to export the project in video form.

You can choose between 4K, 1080p, 720p, and 480p quality video formats, optionally rename the project (as the exported video will use the same name), optionally store the project in the cloud, and, if that latter option is enabled, determine where you wish to save the exported video in OneDrive.

If the project contains only audio items, then you can export to an M4A audio file. You can also do this with a video file if desired.

When the settings are correct, click “Export.”

When the video (or audio) is done exporting, you can open it or its containing folder (your Downloads folder by default) via the Downloads pane in the top right. You can also use the “Share or download video” options to save the export to other services if desired, though it’s a good idea to at least preview the final output first.

To return to the video editor, click “Keep editing.” To return to the Clipchamp home page, click “Clipchamp” in the upper-left.