Windows 11 now includes a free video editor that makes it really easy to pull together professional looking videos. Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today we are going to walk through step-by-step how you can use Clipchamp. This is Microsoft’s new video editor that they’re including for free with Windows 11. Clipchamp includes all of the editing essentials that you would expect. You can trim. You can split. You can add text. You can add transitions, but there are also some really nice to have features. For example, you can record your screen and your webcam at the same exact time, and one of my favorites, there’s a tool that allows you to convert text-to-speech in over 70 different languages. Check this out. You should subscribe to the Kevin Stratvert YouTube channel. Ah, you like how I threw that in? One of the biggest differentiators. You also have access to stock videos, images, sound effects, and music, that you could directly insert into your project. You might be wondering, doesn’t Windows already include video editing software, and it sure does. On both Windows 11 and on Windows 10, you can search for video editor, and this will launch the Photos app, which includes a video editor built in. It’s probably one of the least well-known features included with Windows. As much as I like Microsoft products, this is one that I don’t use, and the reason why is that it’s lacking a lot of core features. For example, there are no transitions. You don’t have a timeline view, so you can’t layer one video on top of another, and also, you can only export up to a maximum quality of 1080P, and with this beautiful face, you wouldn’t be able to see me in as much detail. Moving forward, Windows will include two separate video editors and Clipchamp is definitely the better one out of the two. Clipchamp is currently preinstalled with Windows 11 if you’re a Windows Insider. Simply go down to your start menu, and then search for Clipchamp and then you can launch the app. If you’re not an Insider, it’s going to be preinstalled on Windows 11 soon, but in the meantime, you can get the app directly through the Microsoft Store. Simply launch the Microsoft Store and then search for Clipchamp. You can then click to install the app. When you launch Clipchamp for the first time, you’ll land on the start page. There are a few different ways that you can kick off a new project. In the top right-hand corner, you can create a new video from scratch. You could also start from a template, or you could start from a recording. You can record your screen and camera, just your camera, or just your screen. At the very bottom, you can also get back to recent project. One thing you might have noticed throughout this experience, there are a number of different upsell messages. If we click on upgrade, here you can see what you get for free and what you can get if you go premium. The free plan is pretty bare bones. You get access to all of the main editing functionality, but you can only export your project at 480P. You also don’t get any access to any of the premium stock content, and that’s one of the biggest values of this app. If you’re pulling together, say a video ad for Facebook, that might be good enough, but for most video projects, you’ll likely find yourself needing to go with one of the premium plans. One thing to keep in mind, Microsoft only acquired Clipchamp back in September 2021, so they haven’t owned the company all that long. My guess is that before Clipchamp makes it to general availability on Windows 11, they’re likely going to make the free plan even more attractive. My hunch is also that if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, that’ll give you access to a lot of the premium functionality, but we’ll have to see what happens. With all that now out of the way, let’s create a new video. I’ll click on this button in the top right-hand corner, and this will allow me to start with a blank slate. This now drops me in the main video editor. I want to pull together an ad for the Kevin Cookie Company to show on Instagram. Clipchamp makes it really easy to change the dimensions of my video. Over on the right-hand side, I can see all of my different dimension options, and when I hover over each one, you can see on what platform this works the best, and here when I hover over one-by-one, I can see that this works the best on Instagram. I’ll select this. Over on the left-hand side, I can click on the plus icon to start adding some media to my project. I can simply drag and drop files over from my computer. I can pull in content from various cloud providers like Box, Drive, or OneDrive, and I can even fetch content directly from my phone. So, I have lots of different options. I’m going to drag and drop some files over from my computer. Within media, I can now see my files and currently it’s set to show me all of my different files, but I can also filter this view. I can click up above to filter it just to video, or just to audio, or just to images. I’m going to leave it set to all. To add one of these files to my timeline, I can hover over it and then click on the plus icon. Alternatively, I could select one of the videos and then simply drag and drop it onto the timeline. Down at the bottom, you’ll see that we’ve added a few clips to the timeline, and the timeline shows us the order in which our videos will play. Over on the right-hand side, you can zoom in on the timeline or you can zoom out. If you hover over these different icons, you’ll also see the associated shortcut key. Over here, I could also fit all of the content to the timeline view. Now of course I don’t want the same clip on my timeline twice. Luckily, it’s very easy to replace it. Here I’ll select a different file and I can simply drag and drop it over this existing clip. Let me now add a few other videos to my timeline. In the top right, you’ll notice the video viewer, and this allows us to preview our video as it’s coming together. You also have the typical video controls that allow you to play, to move forward, or to move back. One thing you might notice is we have these black bars on the top and on the bottom, and that’s because the original video uses a 16 by 9 aspect ratio, but we’re producing A one by one video for Instagram. I can click on the video, and you see these circles appear in the corners. I can click on these to expand the size of my video. Alternatively, I could simply click on it and over on the left-hand side, I can crop it to fill, and here you see that it fills up the entire frame, and now I can drag and drop it to reposition it in the perfect spot. Let me go through and do this same thing to my other video clips. The timeline at the bottom has all of the core editing tools that you would expect. Here for example, the first clip is a little bit long. If I click on this, this exposes handles and I can use that to trim the clip. I could also select the clip and reposition it, so here I could select it and I could move it to the end, or I could move it back to the beginning. I can also highlight multiple clips to move multiple clips at once. I can also split a clip. Here, I’ll select a clip and I can go to the split icon, and when I click on that, that splits the clip. Alternatively, when I hover over, I can see that the shortcut key is S. I can also just press that to split a clip as well. When I select one of my clips on the timeline, up above, I have different tools that I can use to transform it. Here I can apply different filters. I could adjust the colors or here I can even adjust the speed. One of my favorite features and something you don’t find in very many video editors; you can convert text-to-speech. Over on the left-hand side, click on record and create and then select the text-to-speech option. Here you can select from over 70 different languages, and within each language, you can also choose different voices. So, here for example, I’ll select English, United Kingdom, and let me go with Libby. Here I could type in some text and then I could click on the play icon to hear what it sounds like. The Kevin Cookie Company makes the best cookies you’ll never have. There’s something about a British accent that just makes it sound so authoritative. Here I’ll click to insert. This now adds the audio to my media. Here I’ll select that and now I can drag it onto the timeline. At the very end of this video, I want to add a screen recording that shows people how they can order these cookies. Once again, I’ll go back to the left-hand side and click on record and create. Here I’ll select screen recording. Next, I’ll click on record. Here I can choose the window that I want to record. I’ll select this window. This now kicks off the recording. Here I am on the KevinCookieCompany.com and I’ll simply go up and click on the order now button, and this brings up the order form. Once I’m all done recording, I’ll click on the stop icon. This allows me to preview my recording, and everything here looks good, so let me save it. This now places the recording in my media and I can now drag and drop it onto the timeline just like we did earlier. The video is coming together nicely, but I also want to include some music. Over on the left-hand side, I’ll click on music and SFX and here’s one called gentle happiness. I think this might work. On the timeline, I’ll position the play head at the beginning and then here I can click on the plus icon to insert it onto the timeline. It’ll insert right where the play head is. I can now click on the music file, and up above, I have a few different options. Here I could have it fade in. I can also have it fade out. Let me set both of those. Here I can also adjust the volume. I want to make sure that you can hear the text over the music, so I’ll turn the volume down just a little bit. To make my video look a little bit more professional, I want to add some stock video. On the left-hand side, I’ll click on stock video and then I can search for different terms. I’ll type in bake and here this clip looks pretty good. Here I can drag and drop that directly onto my timeline. Down below, I can also insert stock images. At the end of this video, I want to include some text that calls out the Kevin Cookie Company. Over on the left-hand side, I can add text and I have all of these different options that I can choose from. I think this one titled circular looks good. I can drag and drop it over onto my timeline. Now when I click into it, I can modify the text on here. Here I’ll type in the Kevin Cookie Company. Over on the left-hand side, I can also insert graphics, and when I click on that, I have many different options. I’m going to insert a sticker. Here I’ll search for Cookie, and here I see an awesome animated image of Cookie Monster. Here I can add that to my timeline. As I add it to my timeline, you might have noticed that it places some items on top of others. In a sense, these are different layers. Whatever appears at the top of the timeline appears on top of the other items. Here if I move Cookie Monster below the item on top of it, you’ll now no longer see Cookie Monster, because it’s no longer the topmost layer. As I’m pulling together my video, I can also include various transitions between my clips, and there are two different ways that I can insert these. Over on the left-hand side, I can click on transitions and here I can preview all of the different transitions. I can now drag and drop this between two clips on the timeline to insert this transition. Alternatively, on the timeline, I can also click between two clips, and this too will also insert a transition. Over on the left-hand side, you also have something called the brand kit and this allows you to load your fonts, your colors, your logo. So, this way every single video that you pull together is always on brand. However, this is only available with the most premium option. Now that we’ve finished editing this video, let’s take a look to see how it turned out. The Kevin Cookie Company makes the best cookies you’ll never have. Make sure to order your cookies today. Head to the KevinCookieCompany.com and click on order now to enjoy the best. All right, that looks pretty good. To export this video, click on the export button in the top right-hand corner, and here I see that the only option on the free plan is 480P and it’ll include watermarks since I used stock video. I’ll select that option. Here now it exports my video. I can download it. I can also share a link to preview with other people or I can share directly to these various services. All right, well, overall, it’s pretty easy to use and this video looks pretty professional. It’s definitely a step up from the Photos app video editor. The biggest downside once again is it’s fairly expensive to use, but I would expect that as it makes its way to general availability on Windows, once again, the free plan will probably be more attractive, and hopefully if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, that will give you access to most of the premium functionality. Let me know what you think about Clipchamp down below in the comments. To watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing. I’ll see you in the next video.