Videos are everywhere nowadays. Have you ever wondered how people have become capable video editors overnight? They seemingly have the ability to turn clips into complete videos in the blink of an eye and even add some visual effects that make you think, that this should have been done by some video editing Professional in post-production. Plus, looking at their videos, they are probably more creative in ways that surpass yours. It is time to forget the cliche that video editing has a steep learning curve. With an App called CapCut, Your chance to set off your video editing journey has come.
CapCut is a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, specifically developed to complement the basic video editing features of the famous social platform, TikTok. The app is free to use and promoted as a free TikTok editing app. CapCut Android and CapCut iOS both have similar features that allow you to modify your TikTok videos with filters, stickers, speed changes, background music, effects, and more. In addition, it comes with split, reverse, and other editing tools to make your TikTok videos look more polished and professional.
Let’s jump straight into the features:
Music Library
CapCut comes with an impressive collection of royalty-free music and sound effects that can make a huge difference to your videos. The tracks are high-quality, and you can easily insert them by adding an audio track and controlling its position to match the video.
Filters
CapCut comes with various filters to soften or sharpen your videos and make them seem more professional. There are color-based and season-based filters, as well as a range of beautification tools to enhance video quality.
Effects
What effects do generally is to overlay your video with fresh elements that make it look like it was professionally edited. There is also a wide selection of special effects such as split-screen, retro, comic, dreamy, party, and so on. Within each of these categories, you’ll find sub-categories of effects, which means you can fine-tune your effects to get the exact one that’s right for that video.
Split Function
The best way to use the split function is to have a clear idea of which sections of the video clips you want to use. After that, import them into the app by tapping + and adding videos from your Gallery or Camera Roll. Once they’re inside, select each one to edit it and split it at the points that you’ve already decided. Having a plan before you do it is often the best way, or else it can take up a lot of your time.
Just open a video and move the playhead to where you want to split the file, and tap the Split function. You don’t lose any bit of the video where you split the file because you can do this on a frame-by-frame basis to see the exact split position.
Speed Control
One thing to keep in mind about speed control is the resolution of the original video. If you plan to use slow motion, make sure the original is in high resolution or shot at a high frame rate. For example, 30fps might be good for normal-playing videos but if you’re slowing it down to 0.1x, it might look grainy and amateurish. Try getting the shot at 60fps or higher so you can avoid such issues.
Tap on the Speed icon and choose a preset speed relative to the original speed of the video, such as 0.1x or 3.0x. You’ll be able to see the duration of the video change as you apply these speed changes, which is quite useful.
Reverse Video
Reverse videos are great for short clips with a lot of movement in them. If you need to, you can create multiple clips, reverse them all, and then join them by putting them on different tracks, then positioning them to play one after the other by dragging each one into its place in a sequence. \
To reverse a video on the other hand is a little more tricky, not because the feature is hard to find or use but because you can only work with very short videos. The reason is that the processing at the back end is quite complex and resource-intensive, so larger videos could cause the app to freeze or your phone to crash. If you’re reversing a video, make sure it’s a short clip, or at least make sure your phone has adequate resources (8GB RAM or higher) to process large files.
CapCut is amazing, however, compared to some professional and full-featured video editing software it still has a long way to go in terms of advanced tools and effects.
PROS
- Straightforward interface, working with panels
- Rich copyrighted songs
- A bundle of templates to use
- Trending effects, filters, and transitions
- Availability in more than 20 languages
- Easy to export
CONS
- Added track amount is limited relatively
- Lack of advanced color grading tools that keep the consistency of all clips at a more flexible level
- Accuracy glitches of some features, such as removing background and body effects
- Do not support landscape mode on smartphones and pads
- Cannot set frame rate higher than 60 FPS
CapCut is available for both Android and IOS
