Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today, we’re going to look at how you can edit better in CapCut. For example, we’ll look at how you can use shortcut keys to edit so much faster. We’ll also look at how you can enhance the way you both look and also sound. We’ll even look at how you can prepare videos to post on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube shorts. These are just a few of the tips and tricks that we’re going to walk through today. But first let’s check out how you can get CapCut entirely for free. If you’ve never heard of CapCut before, it is fantastic and also free video editing software that offers more than most paid video editing software. You can get it on your phone by going to the App Store or the Play Store. You can also use it in your web browser by going to capcut.com and you can edit your videos entirely in your browser. You can also download a Windows app or a Mac app. And my favorite way of getting CapCut, you can go to the Microsoft Store and download it directly through there. The nice thing about going through the Microsoft Store is you’ll get automatic updates, so you’ll always have the latest and greatest version. This brings us to tip number one, and I’m using the desktop app through the Microsoft Store. You can enhance the way you look. Here, I have a video clip of me just talking down below on the timeline, and ideally, I’d like to make a few improvements to the way I look. I mean, people pay a lot of money in real life to do that. Luckily, I can use CapCut to do this for free. With this clip selected, in the top right-hand corner, I’ll make sure that video is selected. And all the way over on the right-hand side, there’s a tab for enhance. When I click into that, there are all sorts of different enhancements that I can make to the way I look. For example, here, I can check on face and over in the preview area, you’ll see this rectangle around my face. CapCut automatically detects my face using AI. That’s impressive. Underneath that you have two different modes that you can choose from. There’s a single mode where you just have one person in the video, or you could even do it with multiple people. Now I just have one person, so I’ll select single mode. And right here, I can start targeting improvements. For example, I could make my skin a lot smoother. If I bring it all the way up, it doesn’t even look like I have any pores. So probably want to pull that back just a little bit. I still want it to look somewhat natural. You could also whiten your teeth, no need to visit the dentist. And look at that, my teeth look so much whiter. And once again, the thing that’s so impressive is as you make these different enhancements, AI picks out the part of your face that you’re enhancing. Here, you could apply facial beauty. You could also make manual improvements. You can even apply makeup. With this one, let me put some lipstick on. Let’s go with some rouge lipstick, and I look a little bit like the Joker now. And as I go down, you’ll see that there are all sorts of different improvements that you can make. It’s a fun one to play with. One of the really neat things now is I’ll go over to the preview area and here I’ll play the video and look at this, all of the enhancements stay on every single frame of this video. And it doesn’t even really slow down my PC. This is so impressive. This brings us to number two and that’s effects. Up on the top navigation bar, let’s click into effects and CapCut has a massive collection of different effects that you can apply to your video. Right over here, there are two different categories, you have video effects and then also body effects. Here, if I expand video effects, you see all these different categories and up at the very top, we have all of the different trending effects. To apply any one of these effects to your video, here I could simply click on this effect and I could sample what it looks like. But here I could also drag it down to my timeline and here I can click on these handles to adjust how long this effect appears for. And here I could play it. There’s no effect. And then as soon as it hits that point on the timeline, the effect will start playing. Now this one’s a little bit jarring, so I probably wouldn’t want this. So here I’ll click on that effect and then hit backspace and that will delete it. Up on top, here I’ll minimize video effects, and there’s also another category called body effects. And this one’s similar to the enhance effects where CapCut has an understanding of your body on the screen and it applies the effects accordingly. Here too, we have a massive collection of different effects. Here, if I scroll down a little bit, this one called revolving text looks interesting. Here I can click on it and then drag and drop it down onto my timeline, and just like we did earlier, I can adjust how long this effect appears for, and here we can see a preview up above. Now, again, the thing that’s really neat is it has an awareness of where my head is and it rotates the text around my head. That’s pretty cool. You can even apply multiple effects simultaneously. Here I could take this effect and I’ll drag it down onto my timeline. So here I can have two effects at the same time. That might be a little bit overwhelming, but it is possible. Especially as you start adding lots of effects, it could start cluttering your timeline. Here I’ll delete these two effects. I’ll select it and then press backspace and then select this and press backspace. You can also take one of these effects and you can drag it directly onto the clip on your timeline. Here I can see that the effect has been applied. I can click on these handles to adjust the length of the effect. And here I can take another effect and also drag it down onto my clip. To edit multiple effects on a clip, here I can click on this and I can toggle between all of the different effects. There are all sorts of really neat effects that you can play with. Here, if I scroll down, one really interesting one is you can apply a face mosaic just in case maybe you’re part of the witness protection program. As I go down, here you could even apply an emoji to your face. So, all sorts of fun effects that you can play with. This brings us to tip number three and perhaps one of the most important tips. You want to ensure that your video has good audio. So how do you make sure that your audio is good? Do you just listen to it to hear if it sounds good? Well, there’s a better way to do it. Here when I play my video, here you’ll notice the levels or the monitor right here, but still, how do you know if it’s good or not? We can click on this icon and this opens up a tool over on the right-hand side that we can use to monitor our audio levels. When I play the video, you’ll see that the audio spiking around maybe -18 DB, and it looks like it’s averaging between -20 and -30 DB, and that’s a little low. Ideally for dialogue, you want to average between -12 DB to -15 DB. So, I need to raise the gain on this clip. There are two different ways that we can adjust the volume. Over here on my timeline, I can select this clip and down at the bottom, you’ll notice these lines. These are the waveforms as you’re speaking. Here, as I hover my mouse over this white line, you notice that my mouse icon changes. I can click on this and I can drag the volume up and here you see it adjust the DB up, or I could drag it down. Now you don’t want to go too high because you can start clipping your audio. One alternative way to do it, with this clip selected, I’ll go to the top right-hand corner and click into audio, and here I can also adjust the volume. And a good way to do this is to actually play your video clip. So here I’ll start playing it, and as it’s playing, I can adjust the decibels right here, and down below. I can now see where it’s falling. So, it looks like this might be a little bit high, so I’ll bring it down just a little bit. And right now, it looks like it’s averaging right around that -12 to -15 DB. That’s exactly where I want it. Overall, the audio tools in CapCut are mostly bare bones. You don’t have things like a compressor or an equalizer or a de-esser, but right down here you can remove noise. Let’s say there’s a fan running in the background or an air conditioner. You can toggle this on and that’ll eliminate that noise. And if you just want to have some fun, you could also apply different voice effects. Like I can make myself sound like an elf. Let’s hear what that sounds like. We also have rainbow cookies. We have snickerdoodle. This brings us to tip number four. You can very quickly and easily adjust the dimensions of a video clip to make it so it works well on TikTok, Instagram, or let’s say YouTube Shorts. Here I have a video clip on my timeline and it’s currently in 16 by 9 dimensions. But for TikTok, I need 9 by 16. Right down here, I can click on this ratio button. And when I click on this here, I can adjust the dimensions. Now with TikTok, it needs to be a 9 by 16. So, I’ll select this. And here it automatically fits my video clip to these new dimensions, but I have these big black lines on the top and on the bottom, and I want this to look good. Here, I can take these handles and I can drag my video clip, so it fills up the entire frame and here I can drag it over so I sit right in the center. Now, when I play it back, that could work on TikTok. That looks pretty good. Coming soon. CapCut will also have a feature where even if you move, say, your head or you move across the image, it’ll automatically track the subject, so it keeps you in the frame. This brings us to tip number five. You can use shortcut keys to make your editing so much faster. In the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on this icon that says shortcut. And here we see all of the different shortcut keys that you can use. I would recommend spending some time to learn some of these different shortcut keys. You have different timeline shortcut keys, player, basic, and also other. You can click on any one of these shortcut keys and you can customize it to whatever you want, and in this list, you also have a number of different presets that you can choose from. Let’s go back to the timeline and I’ll show you some of my favorites. Here on the timeline, and one of the most valuable ones is you could press control B and that automatically splits the clip exactly where your mouse cursor is. You can also press the V key to disable clip. So here I have a sticker. I’m not sure if I want to keep it, but I also don’t want to delete it. I could click on that and press V and that disables it. I can press V again and that brings it back. You can use control and your mouse wheel to zoom out or here I can zoom in. You could also use alt with your mouse wheel to move to the left or to move to the right. You could press your up or down arrow keys on the keyboard and it’ll jump to the next or the previous clip. And you could press the home key on your keyboard and that’ll bring you all the way back to the beginning of your project. This brings us to tip number six. You can either speed up or slow down video clips on your timeline. Here I have an epic video of my son coming down a water slide and hitting the water. Now I really want to accentuate the part where he hits the water, so I think it would be nice to slow it down. Here I’ll click on the video clip on my timeline and in the top right-hand corner, there’s a category for speed. Here I can adjust the times or the duration. So, let’s say I want it to be a little bit slower, here I can lower this and we could go at 0.6 X or alternatively, I could also increase the duration here. Let’s say maybe eight seconds. Now, when I play this video clip back, you’ll notice that the entire thing is slower. But what if you just want to say, slow down or speed up one part of the video? In the top right-hand corner, we can click on this option called curve and you can apply different speed ramps or curves to the clip. As an example, I’ll select bullet and here if I scroll down, you can see that it starts going fast, then it slows it down and then it speeds it up again. Let’s preview what this looks like. Here, I’ll go to the beginning. Let’s play it. There it slows down and then it speeds up again. You can make adjustments here to change when it slows down or when it speeds up. Now, I found that one of the easiest ways to do this is to simply use shortcut keys. I’ll select none and then go over to the timeline. So right here, as he’s hitting the water, this is when I want to slow it down. I’ll press shift B and that adds one of these speed points. And here, there he splashes in the water and then I want to speed it up again. I’ll press shift B again and that adds another speed point. This is basically a customized curve. And here we can see the curve down below. Now, currently, the speed hasn’t changed. I can go down to my timeline and I can click on this speed point and I can now drag it out just to change the speed of this selected portion. Now, when I play it, we see him coming down and then he really slows down as he hits the water and then he speeds up again. This brings us to tip number seven. You can make beautiful looking thumbnails directly in CapCut. Here, I have different items in my media bin that I would like to use for a thumbnail. First, I’ll pull down my background onto the timeline and let me expand it so it fills up the full frame. Next, I want to put myself on this thumbnail. I’ll drag this down and I’ll place it right up above. I can’t see the background. So here I’ll select my image on the timeline and here up in video, I’ll select the Cutout category and here I’ll select Auto Cutout. Now, that’s removed the background behind me. I’ll position myself a little bit closer to the edge of the frame here, maybe right at about there. Next, I can pull in the CapCut logo and I’ll place that up on top. Here I can adjust the dimensions. So, there I’m pointing at CapCut. And next, let’s insert some text. I’ll select text and let’s go with default text. I’ll place it at the very beginning and let’s say CapCut. And right over here, I can select different effects. Let’s go with this black with white bordering it. I’ll go back to basic and here I can increase the font size and here I’ll position that right under the logo. So just like that, you can pull together thumbnails so quickly and so easily and they look pretty good. To export this from CapCut, here I’ll click on the hamburger menu and right over here, there’s the option to export a still frame. I’ll click on that and here I could choose where I want to export it to. I could also choose the resolution and down below, I could also choose the format and then I can click on export. Tip number eight, you can add transitions to your video and then combine it with a sound effect to make it that much more epic. Here I have a video clip of my son watching a dinosaur and I would like to add a transition between these two clips. Up on top, I’ll click on transitions and right here there’s a pull in transition. I think that’ll be nice. Here I can drag it down and place it in between my two clips. Now when I play it, here you see it jumps in on that close up of the dinosaur, but I think it could use a little bit more oomph and I think some sound could really help with this and really help sell the effect. Up on top, I’ll click on audio and right here, it’s currently in music. I’ll minimize this and you have a category called sound effects. Right up here, I’ll click into the search field and then type in a whoosh effect. I’ll search and here I have several different options. You could preview any one of them by clicking on it. That sounds interesting. Let’s listen to this one. I think this will work perfectly. Here I could take this sound effect and I could drag it down onto my timeline and here I can align it with my transition. Here now we can play it to hear how the transition sounds. That sound effect really adds to the transition and really sells it. This brings us to tip number nine. You can track objects very easily. Here I have a video clip of me holding my hand up and moving it around and I want the CapCut logo to float over my hand. Here I’ll pull the logo onto my timeline and here, let me adjust the size so it’s a little bit smaller and I’ll position it right up here. Up in the top right-hand corner, with this item selected, I can click on this text that says tracking and here’s the option to do motion tracking. When I select that, here I see a yellow box. I’ll drag it so it sits over my hand. Here I’ll reduce the size a little bit so it just covers my hand. Let’s bring it right to about this size right there. Now I’ll move my play head to the beginning and here I’ll click on start so it starts tracking my hand. And look at that, it has now finished tracking my hand. Now when I play the clip, you’ll see the logo moves alongside my hand. That’s pretty cool. Tip number 10, you can very easily add a voiceover to your video. Here I have a video project on my timeline and I would like to add a voiceover to it. Right up here, I’ll click on this icon to record a voiceover. Right over here, I could select my input device or my microphone. Here I could set the volume. I could also decide if I want to reduce echo or mute the project while I’m recording. I’ll make sure this is checked and here I can click on record. Here I see a countdown timer and it’ll now play my video and I can record my voiceover. Once I’m all done, I’ll click to stop and here I can close out this dialogue and this has now added another audio track underneath my video. And here I’ll go back to the beginning and we could listen to it now with the voiceover. Now it sounds like the voice is a little bit low, so here I can click on this and I can increase the volume of my voiceover. Let’s listen to what this sounds like. Timer and it’ll now play my video and I can record. Tip number 11, if you’re noticing choppy performance while you’re editing your video in CapCut, there are a few different things that you can change to make things buttery smooth. First in the top left-hand corner, click on this dropdown menu and then go down to settings. And right over here, let’s click on performance. Right down here, we see the option to turn on proxy mode. Make sure that this box is checked. With that turned on, it will generate a proxy file for all of your video clips in your media bin. And here you’ll see some texts that says proxy. What this is, is a lower resolution version of this video clip for editing. And then when you go to render your final video, it’ll use the original clip as part of that render. Also, right up on top, let’s click on the hamburger menu and here there’s the option to set the preview quality. You can choose based on quality or performance. If you want things to run smoother, select performance, and that should help make sure that things are much smoother while editing. This brings us to tip number 12, and this is the last tip of today. Here I have an outro for a video and I would like to include a subscribe visual right on here. And there are a few different ways we can do this. Up on top, let’s click on text and within text templates, there’s a category for social media. When I click on this, we have all these different options. Here, I can add a TikTok logo onto this video. Here, I’ll extend it, so it overlays the entire video. Right up in the preview area, here I can reposition it, so it’s in the bottom right-hand corner. Up here, I could also type in some texts to go along with this visual. Instead of using text, right up on top, I can also click on to the stickers category, and right here, let’s scroll down a little bit. Maybe I’ll go down to icons. Here, we have some subscribe visuals. I can click on this and drag it down onto the timeline and here, just like we did with the other one, I could position this right down below. Now, when I play my video, here you’ll see me asking if you would consider subscribing, and here, we see the visual overlaying my video. All right. Well, hopefully you picked up some new tips and tricks that you could use in your next video project. To watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing and I’ll see you in the next video.