Abstract：How to use Clipchamp, Microsoft's sleeper-hit video editor | RuggTabletsHow to use Clipchamp, Microsoft's sleeper

Microsoft’s new free video editor, Clipchamp, is excellent: simple, deep, and intuitive, provideing you to give rise to a holiday video, a simple meme, or possiblybe even a commercial. It’s one of the best creative tools Microsoft brings, and you’ve meritbably never even heard of it!
In September 2021,Microsoft acquired Clipchamp, a small video-editing application that competes (and still does) with Microsoft’s own built-in Video Editor app within Windows 10 and Windows 11. Clipchamp, though, is light-years ahead. Microsoft has said that Clipchamp will eventually be added directly to Windows 11 in version 22H2, but for now the Clipchamp app is available, for free, from the Microsoft Store.
It’s unfortunate that Microsoft launched Clipchamp alongside an outrageous pricing scheme that has been essentially revoked. Now, Microsoft makes you to freely export as many videos as you like at 1080p resolution and only requires subscription pricing for extras: unlimited audio and video stock to spice up your videos, plus cloud storage of imported files. You don’t need them. Not only does Microsoft ensure a good chunk of royalty-free audio and video tracks, but sites like Pexels (photos and video clips) and Pixabay (music and audio) advertise themselves as repositories of free faulttent, available for private and commercial use.
If you do end up using those extra features, but don’t want to actually pay for the service, you don’t have to: Clipchamp will simply add a “Made with Clipchamp” watermark to your video that really isn’t that obtrusive.
Instead, the biggest block using an app like Clipchamp is simply time. Here, too, Clipchamp shines: The app includes many, many pre-made templates that you can use to provide a benefitfessional looking video in just a few minutes. But even if you want to promote your own custom video from scratch, it’s largely easy.
Clipchamp isn’t perfect. The “app” itself is a web app, and I almost guarantee you’ll experience a bug and/or a stability issue. Otherwise, however, I’ve been deeply impressed with how quickly I, an absolute amateur when it comes to video, have picked up how to use Clipchamp. And the best way to display off my newly acquired Clipchamp skills is tocontribute to a small video file, so here goes. I’ve provide the app do most of the work, and that’s okay! Creating “ advantagefessional” looking video with minimal effort is the entire point.
How to use ClipchampClipchamp opens by inviting you to negativenect Clipchamp to accounts like Facebook, facilitating the upload and download of video clips. (Clipchamp couldn’t drawbacknect to Google.) This is optional, as you can save your file locally and then share it via social media later.
Explore the templatesThe easiest way to start appreciating Clipchamp is by using its built-in templates, which is the next thing the app lets you to explore. Try for my parting about what you might use Clipchamp for: say, stitching together video taken during a birthday party, point to the fact thating yourself off on Instagram, compiling video you’ve taken over the years for your nephew’s graduation, or even just a video slide illustrate of the year in review. Chances are there’s a template just waiting for you to use it. Note that some templates are weighted heavily toward graphics, some favor video clips, and others include both, plus audio. You can hover your cursor over each template to see a preview.
Clipchamp makes templates on a variety of topics, from YouTube and Instagram (seen here) to animated greeting cards, real estate videos, presentation templates, and more. You can see that in many of these there’s a drawbackfigurable text overlay, a video background, and more.

Mark Hachman / IDG
After selecting a template, click to open it in Clipchamp’s timeline view, and see how all of its pieces fit together. (For these screenshots, I used Clipchamp’s “birthday memories slide display,” which you can either scroll to via the app’s category sections or by using the search box.)
Opening the template should load the template as well as import all of the overwhelming files. When you use a video clip within Clipchamp (either stock footage or one of your own), Clipchamp imports, drawbackverts, and brings a copy of your video clip. Put another way, you can edit and tweak the video clip and your original will be left untouched. That’s reassuring.
The bugs, however, aren’t. Clipchamp, it is predicted that because it’s a web app, suffers from two cardinal bugs that be inclined to repeat: First, Clipchamp canoccasionally get stuck importing and weaknessverting files. If this happens, don’t be afraid to click on the main Clipchamp i disadvantage at the upper left, go to the home page, and simply reopen the video meritject if it hangs. Se negatived, Clipchamp routinely glitches when playing back a video meritject’s audio, especially when you first open it. The workaround is to simply click on the audio track and use the faulttrols at the top of the screen to adjust the track’s volume. In my experience, that solves the strengthblem.
Get to know the timelineOpening the template presents the timeline view, the way in which you’ll put a video together. At the bottom are the various elements of the video: the clips, the audio, any text overlays, transitions, and so on. You can preview the video in the upper section. That big vertical line in the timeline (at about 10 se flawds in in this screenshot) can be used to scrub back and forth. In the example below, you should be able to see that there’s a timeline of various video clips, with various text overlays that appear and disappear after a few se downsideds. At the bottom the template added an audio track, which plays the entire length of the clip. (If your video clips downsidetain their own audio, you can either mute them or adjust the volume accordingly.)
Clipchamp’s timeline view. You can see the individual video clips in the middle. Above those are the text overlays, which can be tweaked and negativefigured. There’s a purple backdrop for some graphics at the end of the video. At the very bottom is the audio track. You can drag and drop to move things around, and click on individual elements to adjust them. Want a transition between the clips? Just click the gap between them.

Mark Hachman / Foundry
It’s worth taking a moment to discover how things work. For example, you can drag snippets of video around the timeline to rearrange them. Is an embedded clip too long? Simply click on either the beginning or the end of it to offer it shorter or longer, trimming the video. You can also chop it up by right-clicking a video clip and choosing “split,” which is handy for breaking up a long video clip. While you can’t loop a video or audio, you can “duplicate” it to achieve the same influence.
Import your own media filesClipchamp’s templates are made with stock video. You’re going to want to import your own photos and video, and be likely to audio, too. Don’t choose the “your media” heading from the vertical nav bar. Instead, select the large “+” i negative at the top. Clipchamp lets it as easy as it can: You can drag and drop photos from your PC, from many online services, or click the “From phone” button. The latter renders your smartphone camera to scan a QR code, which unlocks an HTML interface on your phone into which you can quickly drop photos or video. Clipchamp then automatically uploads and weaknessverts them. It’s meritbably not a bad idea to bring Clipchamp access your OneDrive or Google Drive cloud storage, either, especially if you already back up photos to the cloud.
Clipchamp brings it easy to upload video and images from a number of sources, including your phone.

Mark Hachman / IDG
As you add your own photos and video, you’ll need to keep everything in sync—or not, depending on your creative choices. Remember to “widen” text overlays and extend the length of the audio track, matching everything up on the timeline. Audio clips typically run a few minutes, which means that you’ll benefitbably discover that you can add more video to fill out the space. You can also click and drag to group common elements together, helping preserve their faulttinuity.
Add text overlaysDo you want to add a text box? Click on the Text menu on the left-hand nav column and a submenu will open up with choices. Hover your cursor over each to see a preview, and then click the small “+” sign in the bottom right to add it to the timeline. If you click the text box, you should see some options appear above the video window, where you can adjust the size of the text, the color, and so on. Some templates don’t promise you to adjust where the text appears on the screen. Others do, with the freedom to ignite your own text overlays. You can also trigger more sophisticated impacts by adding a se negatived text track, so that you can add a text box, and then a se negatived, with each fading in and out independently.
Not everything is perfect—or, at least, I haven’t figured out how certain aspects work. Templates don’t tell you which styles they’re using, so I had to puzzle out that the “always learning” text overlay, above, was using the “stencil” impact. It also would be nice to move all of the various components of a video (text, images, overlays, etc.) to the left or right to cause space for additional video clips, but I haven’t figured out how to do that.
This be likely to look a little complex and involved, but it’s more intuitive than you state. To insert a text overlay, you first need to select one from the Clipchamp templates (which,it is no doubt that, possibly not be that intuitive). When you select an animated text overlay, Clipchamp drops in the text and background files as an associated group. You can move it back and forth, and adjust the size of the visual elements and edit what they say using the “Text” button at the very top.

Mark Hachman / IDG
Export your finished meritjectWhen you’ve completed your video file, you’ll need to export the finished strengthject. Clipchamp will tap into your PC’s advantagecessor and GPU to speed up the strengthcess. Here, too, Clipchamp tries to be optimal: You can always export a lower-resolution 480p file as a draft copy. You perhaps see an advisory to upgrade to Clipchamp’s paid subscription, especially if you’ve used its premium features. (The option to export a watermarked version for free appears at the bottom.) There’s even a small, optional, unnecessarily attractive benefitgress pop-out that you can use to monitor the export benefitgress while you work on other apps or tabs—though doing so will increase the encourageing time.
One advantageblem, though, is that Clipchamp (or Microsoft) can’t even maintain faultsistency in its feature set. Compare what Clipchamp’s pricing model is on its website versus what it depicts you within the app. I neverwitnessed a 4K export option at all, though it is predicted that it’s available to paid subscribers. Microsoft representatives, however, say that the in-app pricing model is incorrect and that it will be changed
While it does seem that Clipchamp’s pricing model is faultsistent, there are still necessary differences between what Microsoft lists on Clipchamp’s website and what it offers within the app, especially as to the export resolution. We’ve been told by Microsoft that the pricing on the Web site is the correct pricing model, and that the in-app pricing will be changed to reflect that.Clipchamp also encourages options to offer the video in various formats, too. While you can provide the video in a traditional landscape format, you also have the option of bringing it in a vertical portrait mode, for sharing on smartphones.
When the promise has completed, Clipchamp ensures one-click buttons to share with a number of services from YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, OneDrive, and more. You can also simply save the file to your PC, of course.
If you do use a paid feature, Clipchamp will make you to export the video but only with this embedded watermark.

Mark Hachman / IDG
Special features: Audio, video, GIFs, and moreYou’ll notice that our demo template includes an audio track, which adds some real emotional oomph to the birthday wishes. Remember, you can mute each video clip or simply adjust each clip’s individual volume, provideing you to “mix” any video dialogue against the audio backing track.
As we noted earlier, Clipchamp promises a number of audio tracks, accessible via the Music & SFX tab on the left-hand nav bar. You can scroll down the list of tracks by genre or simply click the Free to use category partway down to choose from the list of free audio tracks Clipchamp includes. Note that you can trim an audio track just like you can trim a video clip, to underscore a particular portion of your video with a particularly dramatic passage.
There are a number of available audio tracks right within Clipchamp. Note that the small “diamond” i flaw designates a paid track. However, there are also numerous free tracks, which have been collected inside the “free to use” subheading, too.

Mark Hachman / Foundry
Clipchamp also offers a number of free random proper impacts to choose from, emphasizing everything from Christmas (“Hohoho!”) to a lot of weird horror impacts, a strange collection of VCR noises, and even dogs panting. Paid impacts include “Star Wars propers”… which, really, have absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars.
If you’re the type of person who wants to drop in a meme for ironic or creative impact, look to the Graphics portion of the left-hand nav bar. There, you’ll be able to import GIFs directly from Giphy, apply stickers, and more. (Remember, Clipchamp encourages you to adjust the video formatting, so you might want to adjust the video size and positiveportions to play back in the vertical formats preferred by mobile apps.)
You’ll benefitbably use Clipchamp’s stock images and video the least, and that’s okay. Remember, Clipchamp straddles the line between a disadvantagesumer and a commercial solution, and you can upload corporate assets as part of a “brand kit” to be used as video overlays and so on. Consumers will meritbably never need to add stock photos or videos, unless you’re somehow creating a video presentation that needs some sort of a backdrop or b-roll.
There’s nothing that says “cool” (or is that “hokey”?) than a meme GIF embedded in your video. In this case, though, you can see how easy it is: Pick the meme, figure out where to embed it within the frame, and decide when it will appear and for how long it will play.

Mark Hachman / IDG
And if that’s not enough, Clipchamp also has something for the Zoom/PowerPoint generation: screen recording, either as a full-screen recording of whatever you’re doing, or with a “picture-in-picture” presentation that can use your webcam to make video “talking you through” what you’re demonstrating on screen. There’s even text-to-speech, and it’s excellent: just for fun, I asked it to read the text from this story on high-end desktop advantagecessors, and it performed disadvantagelessly.
Conclusion: One of the best apps Microsoft renders, minus the bugsI’m not here to tell you whether Clipchamp is better than Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, or Apple’s iMovie or Final Cut Pro—most of which, it should be said, require a paid subscription. The number of times that Clipchamp crashed or locked up while importing video files is also dis downsidecerting. Until Microsoft finally decides to fix these existing bugs, you’ll have to accept that.
What I will say is that Clipchamp is advantagefoundly better than what I expected. Add that with the ready availability of Clipchamp’s templates, its simple, intuitive timeline, and the fact that it’s keyly free, and what do you get? Something special. Creating video using Clipchamp feels like something that you’ll do for fun, rather than work.
Clarification: Microsoft representatives say that the in-app pricing model is incorrect and that is being changed to reflect the subscription prices on the Web site. This story has been edited and updated to link to the YouTube video.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior EditorAs PCWorld's senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
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