CapCut Tutorial | Video Editing for Beginners (everything you need to know)

welcome to your cap cut video editing tutorial in this video we're going over everything that you'll need to know if you'll be editing using your desktop from importing files to project settings editing features exporting and even some bonus cap cut tips at the end if you're somebody who's looking for a how to edit on cap cut using your phone that's a completely different video so you could use the card above to go and watch my husband's tutorial teaching you how to edit using cap cut using only your phone as always time stamps are below feel

free to use them let let's just jump in so why cap cut I've been on YouTube for 14 years and I can honestly say that cap cut is the easiest video editing software that I've used and I've used a lot so Capa is just super simple to use it's free so name a better combo you can't basically what you're going to do after you have cap cut downloaded to your computer to get started editing a YouTube video you're going to select create project once your project is created this is what it's going to look like

you have a nice blank canvas to start with something that I like to immediately start on which you don't have to start here but I do like to do this is I like to go over here to the details section select modify and I'm going to give my project a name so let's say Stan Vlog you can also choose where you're going to be saving the file to when you do eventually export and then something else that I want to point out is to update your frame rate to whatever frame rate you filmed your content

on so if you're somebody that maybe you vlogged on your phone all you're going to do go to your settings in your phone check to see what your frame rate is set at for your phone settings and you're just going to match that here in your video editing software if you're using a camera like one of these if you're using a camera just check your camera settings and see what the frame rate is set to on your camera and then again match it here when you match the frame rate that's just going to make sure

that the Clips in your video run a lot more smoothly or appear more smooth that's kind of an oversimplification but assuming as a beginner you're not trying to create super cinematic masterpieces that's all you need to know for now okay that's all you got to know my camera is set at 24 frames per second so I'm going to do that then I'm just going to select save this isn't saving and exporting your video this is just saving the file and your project details next to import your footage or your videos audios images whatever you're going

to be using for editing you're going to select this plus sign you could also drag and drop files right here but I'm going to press plus and we're just going to select some of these files press open and immediately my videos are shown in kind of like my media space there are different views here so if you prefer list view or grid view you can change the views you could also sort the videos by the time they were imported Time created by name type duration latest to earliest what I like to do though because as

I continue to edit a video I feel like I add more and more and more files I like to actually create folders to keep my footage organized from the very beginning so I'm going to right click select new folder and we can actually rightclick this folder to give it a name this is going to be my a roll folder a roll is basically any main footage where I'm talking to the camera it's kind of carrying the story line so I'm pretty sure this video I talk to the camera and maybe this video I do too

so I'm just going to kind of drag my mouse to highlight those two videos and then drag and drop them over to the a-roll folder and then I'm going to right click again start a new folder call this folder Boll and Boll is basically any secondary footage that helps support the story line maybe you're not talking to the camera but it's kind of doing more of the showing instead of the telling of the video so we're going to do these files drag them over to b-roll you could continue to add folders for music gifts video

animations or anything you've made in canva anything like that just continue to create videos so that your files are a little bit more organized that's just something that I like to do when you open a folder like I just did to go back to all folders all you simply have to do is go back and you'll see all of your folders here as well now let's start with our editing the basics of getting our video started what we're going to need to do is drag the footage that we want to edit onto our main timeline

here so down here is going to be where you're editing your video so I'm going to open up my a-roll folder and to add this video to my timeline there's a few ways you could go about it you could simply press the plus sign and it'll automatically add it to your timeline another option is to drag and drop the footage you could also highlight multiple clips drag and drop the footage here and another hack that I like to do we just going to pause that is if you have a clip highlighted like this you see

how my mouse changes from the little mouse to kind of more of that bracket I could actually drag and drop and like choose what part of the video I want in my timeline before dragging it to my timeline so video ends kind of here so I'm just going to drag and drop and it automatically like cut the beginning and end part of my video and that was just a pretty seamless this way to add a section of the video that I wanted directly to my timeline now CF Cut's pretty good at guessing what sort of

video you'll be editing but I want to show you this just in case so depending on if you're editing like a YouTube long form video or a Tik Tok video the dimensions of that video they're going to be completely different from each other so what you're going to do is you're going to go here to ratio and choose the ratio of your video depending on the type of content you're creating or editing so if you're editing like a YouTube short Instagram reel Tik Tok video anything that's a vertical video you're going to choose 9 by

16 once I do that it immediately crops my video like this or it immediately adjusts my video to fit into this ratio here to get rid of these black bars let's say you are converting horizontal footage into vertical footage to get rid of those black bars you simply select on the clip and you can like zoom in like this undo or even use the scale to zoom your footage and get it to match to the top and bottom but since this is going to be a YouTube video for me I'm going to actually change the

ratio to 16 by 9 this is going to be my YouTube ratio all right let's talk some of the basic functionalities of your timeline here to zoom in and out of your timeline you could simply simply press contrl Plus on your keyboard that's to zoom in and then zooming out would be contrl minus zooming out or you could use the magnifying glass over here just drag it in drag it out zooming in and out helps when you want to make really precise Cuts so if I wanted my video to like cut right after I said

something I could zoom in to make sure I'm looking at these audio dips okay am my audio dips right it goes down let me use this toggle it goes down right here so then I could select and then make the cut right here where this toggle is so that's where zooming in and out is helpful is making those very precise edits to a clip some basic functions we have the split tool so if you select split it's going to split your clip where your timeline cursor I never know what to call this thing timeline cursor

toggle whatever you want to call it it's gonna split wherever this line is so to do that again let me just undo we're going to drag this over here and then if I want to split this clip in two parts we're going to split and the reason I would split is like maybe I wanted to add something else another file in between the two clips right so we're just separating them to either add a transition here another clip here or maybe you want to put something in between another tool is is the undo button so

you can press undo or crl Z the shortcut for splitting on your keyboard is crl B so if my toggle is here and I press contrl B it automatically splits my clip undo now let's add this clip here and let's say okay it's a little blurry let's say I want this clip to start right here where there's some motion blur what I could do is use this tool called delete left where wherever my cursor is or wherever this line is delete left is going to delete all of the clip on the left hand side it's

not going to delete the whole timeline it's just the clip that's highlighted here so it's just this clip when I select delete left or Q this portion of the clip is going to be deleted so q that is deleted and then you could do the same thing for delete right we're going to cut it here delete write would be this tool or W and we're going to press W and all of this to the right will be deleted just like that a few other final basic editing tools right here we have delete so let's say

I split the clip here and then I want to delete this clip I'm just going to click on the clip that I want to delete press delete or backspace and that clip will be erased here is where you can rotate your clip so you just click and it's going to rotate it and to arrange clips that are on your timeline you simply click and drag and you could like drag the Clips around however you wish you could even layer Clips on top of each other so I could put this clip up here and that just

means whatever clip is on the top is going to be the clip that's playing now if you are layering Clips like this just be sure to to choose only one of the audios because right now with both these clips playing both audios will be playing at the same time and to adjust the audio all you would have to do is select the clip that you want to mute go to audio and then turn the volume all the way down now I just want to give you a few final like keyboard shortcuts that you could use

B if you press B my cursor will change to the split tool so pressing B this is now the split tool so instead of having to use this I just click wherever I want to split my Clips that's super handy if you're kind of more in a flow and then to switch back to the mouse or cursor I will press a and now I can click and drag and drop Clips around for all of the shortcuts that I've mentioned if you're like oh my gosh I don't remember shortcuts there's a little shortcut over here so

just select shortcuts this is going to tell you what all the shortcuts are for cap cut you could even customize them so if something feels weird to you or maybe you're used to editing in like Adobe Premiere Pro and you want some similar shortcuts to what you're used to you can actually switch to different like shortcut templates you could start shortcut two you could customize this save it and shortcut two could be your custom shortcuts whereas shortcuts one is kind of cap Cuts default shortcuts like I said this is everything you need to know this

is the basic so we have a few final basic tools that I want to go over and then we'll get more into like the Intermediate stuff into editing the video adding some more layers so let's just wrap up a few of these basic cap cut features so some more editing options that you have when you have a clip selected and you want to edit just that one individual clip not the entire project but just this one clip there are some editing options here so you can like we talked about earlier you can zoom the scale

in you could zoom it out you could also if your let's say you had a talking head clip like me here at this computer if you noticed the footage was actually kind of tilted you could rotate that like this obviously if it's a minor rotate let's undo then you could just adjust it by like 361 362 and then just like see what that looks like and you could click and drag and move the clip around if you have the pro version of cap cut there is this stabilize option so if you're vlogging and maybe your

hand was a little shaky you can choose stabilize and it'll stabilize your footage for you up here we have audio this is where you can adjust the audio of your clip you could have the audio fade in Fade Out bring the audio up mute it if you want to mute your entire track you can simply just press mute and it'll mute the entire track all the clips that are on that timeline that are on that specific track and by track I just mean let me move up this up I call these tracks other people call

them layers so if I press this it's going to mute only this row and this row won't be muted but that's what I meant by track one track two some people call them layers depending on what you're familiar with you could also change the speed of a clip so you can make it go really really fast or slow it down a little bit if you want to edit a clip coloring you'll come over to adjustments you could have some basic adjustments here like temperature tint saturation exposure so you have some basic stuff you also could

get a little bit more particular if you're comfortable with like color grading and go to hsl go to Curves go to the color wheel and make more specific adjustments so if the yellows were super bright I could bring the saturation of the yellows down bring the tint down to orange so that they're a little softer so you could do things like that reset that's kind of all the basic tools features that you need to know before jumping into the next part of editing I just want to let all of you know that I have a

completely free Workshop that teaches aspiring content creators YouTubers influencers how to come up with four months of content in just 60 minutes so if you're a Creator who's making videos all the time and you're trying to come up with video ideas or you struggle what to post that day and you just feel stressed having to constantly create videos every single day I definitely want to invite you to the workshop I'll link it down below you'll learn how to plan out your content for four months and also create space so that you can create content in

the spur of the moment I think planning ahead is so important as creators because we're already like on the hamster wheel of the algorithms and so when you have kind of like this backlist of videos that are ready to post whenever while also having that freedom to create content that inspires you it's just like that Perfect combo so again if you want to plan out four months of content use the link below you'll get emailed to you a workbook that you can work through during the workshop so that literally by the end of the workshop

you'll already have everything planned out so definitely check that out okay so I just made a few quick edits and what I'm going to do I'm going to drag this one to the top of the timeline again and you'll see that there's this blue line ready I'll do it again blue Blue Line wait where go yeah yeah yeah Blue Line boom this is telling me that the beginning of this clip is matching perfectly with the beginning of the clip under it and I love having that suggestion so I know where Clips line up another way

to trim your clip is right here doing the same thing we did when we dragged the clip to our timeline this when your mouse changes from the mouse to the bracket click and drag your clip in and wait for that blue line now I know again and it's perfectly in alignment with my clip below if you're not seeing those blue lines make sure that you have this selected this is going to be Auto snapping and that's just when you're like dragging things around and it auto snaps boom Auto snapped to a clip drag drag drag

Auto snapped there so Auto snapping is super helpful for those precise edits as well typically when I edit my videos I like to do like all of my a roll first so I do all like the main storyline first talking head stuff I do one pass through chop it up so it has a good flow and then I'll go in and add extra things like b-roll music text transition effects filters all of the things so let's pretend I'm doing my first pass I'm just trimming stuff up keeping the main a roll let's say I really

like this clip it's a good talking head clip and I want to do like a slow zoom into my face or into the clip the way you would do that because I know that's like a common effect that YouTube creators use is like that slow Zoom make sure you're under the video Tab and here on scale you're going to select add key frame so you're going to add the key frame at the beginning of the clip where you want the zoom to begin so we're going to press add key frame then we're going to drag

our little toggle over to where we want the zoom to stop so let's say it zooms and I only want it to zoom here and then it's going to stop zoom and be back to where it was I'm going to then where my cursor is just leave it there I'm going to zoom in to where I want it to zoom let's say I want it to zoom there now it automatically added the second key frame when I play it back it's going to slow Zoom so it stops zooming here keeps the long zoom and then

cuts to the next clip so that's how you can do that slow Zoom effect within cap cut all right now let's import some more b-roll for our video for broll I personally use story blocks which is a stock media subscription service this has just been my go-to default since 2021 if you're somebody who's been subscribed to me for some time you already know this I've been talking about them since 2021 so basically what I used to do when I would create a video and I wanted those other visual elements to help carry what I'm talking

about I would record all of my b-roll myself that would just take so much time so much time when I first started as a YouTuber I had no idea that like stock footage was even a thing or a thing that I as a Creator could use so when I first started I definitely wished that I used story blocks or I should have used story blocks there's been so many instances in my career as a Creator where I'm like should he use story blocks like when John and I we got engaged back in the day and

we actually created a commercial or an ad for the ring company that we got our ring from and so we went out to the sand dunes and we were filming this video and it was super elaborate and John was getting Drone footage and he actually crashed his drone into a sand dune and like may have broken in one of the blades and we had to just wrap up filming and kind of just had to okay let's just use what we have and make the best commercial that we can so that was definitely a moment where

it's like should have just used story blocks you know if we're making a fun little video in the sandunes should have just gone story blocks and type in sand dunes so basically I'm just stoked to say that this video's sponsor is story blocks so story blocks has an unlimited library of diverse and highquality media for one unpredictable subscription cost they have everything you need to create high quality video with over a million 4K HD footage templates music sound effects images and so much more it's so easy to use from searching to editing to exporting literally

this video is a vlog for like Napa Valley so I went to the stand trip some other girl brought a drone and I was like man I wish I'd brought a drone no I didn't because I have story blocks and I could literally just use any of these shots of Napa Valley in my Vlog the best part is anything that you download on story blocks is 100% royalty free which keeps you legally covered so you can focus on what you love doing which is creating and not having to worry about double-checking the legal rights on

clips that you find and what to use so to get started with unlimited stock media downloads at one set price head to story blocks.com modernmillie or just click the link in the description below so this b-roll is actually b-roll that I got from story blocks and as you can tell it looks super quality on my timeline and really up levels the quality of my video I don't have to just talk about Napa Valley and be like oh my gosh we made it we're in Napa Valley I can show that we're in Napa Valley and I

think that's really cool we're going to press B we have that smart snapping on so we have that blue line suggestion select a and now I can backspace delete that footage now some other things that you could add to really uplevel your video is audio music sound effects all that fun stuff cap cut does have kind of a library of music that you could go through just make sure to check the copyright rules on them because some of them you wouldn't be able to use in videos what you could do if you're not sure if

music is good copyright free I like to just sort by commercial use so any materials that are good for commercial use will be listed here and then choose from these when you export you can actually run a copyright check so I think that's another option that could be really cool to do when you find a song that you like let's just say this is the song that I'm going to use you would drag and drop it onto your timeline the music actually goes under everything so we're going to put it at the bottom and then

to edit the things like volume or the fade of it we're going to go here to adjust your volume just drag it here like make sure you play it back so that you could hear what you're saying over the music your voice is more important than the music if it's just like a b-roll section where it's just visuals you can bring that audio up so let's actually press B on our keyboard because we'll be able to split things so we'll split the music press a delete let's Press B again split it here because as you

can see see here is where I'm talking so here's where we want the volume very low but here is where the B- roll starts so we could actually bring the volume back up now obviously if you play it back it's going to be really intense and loud so what you can do is add a fade in to your music and make it fade in for like maybe 3 seconds so it's not as intense not as blaring for your audience's ears and then you even have a Fade Out option as well next we're going to add

text there's so many really great text options with CF cut so to add text you can simply select the plus sign and this is going to add your text just doubleclick the text to write start writing we made it to edit your text you can edit it here basically if this text is selected you'll be able to edit everything here so you'll be able to edit what it says the font side bold underline italicize color and even the preset style I really like using this one I feel like it just makes it easy to read

no matter what the background is and you can drag and drop the text wherever you want it to be placed in your video you can make the text big small and even play with things like the opacity so if you wanted to kind of fade it out a little bit you could do that to drag and drop the text again it's pretty simple wherever select the text and then click and hold you'll be able to drag and drop it throughout your timeline all right we're starting to get some good layers here we have music we

have text you can add things like stickers the pro ones will obviously be if you only have the paid version of cap cut but any that don't have the pro symbol you can use throughout your video same thing with effects effects are what go on top of your clip so it happens during your clip whereas transitions help connect two clips so if I wanted to blur this video I could just drag and drop an effect onto the video and it will affect the whole video you could also make it for a portion of that clip

so if I just drag it to the top anything under this blur effect will be blurred so here and now it's blurred anything under it the b-roll is under it so that's going to be blurred yeah so these effects can go on top of any clip where then again transitions those help connect two clips together so a free one is mix we're going to drag and drop mix and going to connect this here now these two clips that are on the same timeline got a little transition effect nice close captions you can add if you

have the upgraded version of cap cut if you have the free one you only get five uses filters and adjustments let's talk about these two because we talked about adjustments already for individual Clips so if I just wanted to edit this clip I go here and I can make those proper adjustments but if you actually wanted to edit your entire timeline so it all had the same look and feel to it that's where you would come here for filters and adjustments any adjustments that you make here or if you want to use a filter it

would be applied to either all of your Clips or a portion of your clip so I'll show you that so one that I like to use a lot you'll see me use this on Instagram all the time is the orange blue effect I love the contrast of orange and teal it's always been my go-to it's been my brand colors for a very long time as well so this is the one that I use the most so I'm going to drag and drop this onto my timeline everything under my filter will have the effect added now

when I do filters what I recommend is is not doing it at the 100% intensity that's going to just look overly edited overly done I like to bring it down so that it's more of like a subtle effect maybe 30 or under so I'll probably just do 25 26 and now everything under this clip will have a little tint of orange teal going as you're editing your video if you're curious how long that video is let's say you're trying to post a short and you need it to be under 60 seconds that time will be

here so this time code tells you how long long your video is and this time code tells you where your toggle is at that moment now I do have one final bonus tip for you and this could drastically change your editing experience but before I tell you that if you've learned one new thing so far in this video be sure to give it a thumbs up so that I know you've learned something new and if you've learned two new things by the end of this video consider subscribing to my channel because it is a great

way to encourage me to continue to make free content like this for you every single week all right the final bonus tip if while you're editing your video starts to lag or maybe your laptop isn't the highest quality laptop in the world and you're finding edits are taking really really slow what you could do to help the load time on your project is come over here to the player press the three lines go to preview and then switch to best performance so best quality is this is showing me the video at Full Resolution that's the

preview it's like okay if I filmed in 4k it is showing me everything at 4K so I'm going to switch to best performance and this is just going to make sure the editing runs a little bit smoother as opposed to looking at a quality preview if you didn't already in the beginning give your project a name be sure to give your project a name you're going to choose where to export that file to so if you have a hard drive that you're using you save it to the hard drive if you're doing downloads documents just

make make sure it is being exported to the correct place for resolution I keep my resolution at 1080p because that's the standard resolution for all social media platforms Instagram YouTube Tik Tok so I always keep my resolution 1080p don't need no 4K for me for format just make sure that you're exporting an mp4 then of course double check your frame rate make sure your frame rate matches the frame rate that you filmed your content on once everything looks good to go you press export and you're all set now now if you're ready for your mobile

cap cut tutorial be sure to watch this video next and I will see you in the next one follow your joy bye