Pros:
- Comes inbuilt with Windows 11
- Equipped with various editing features
- Comes packed with a screen recorder.
- Customizable video templates
Cons:
- Exporting videos at times is a little time-consuming
Clipchamp Video Editor
Clipchamp Review 2024: Details, Pricing, & Features
You have several raw clips fresh out of your smartphone or camera. You transferred them to your Windows PC and are tasked with arranging them into a spectacular video. What you need next is video editing software to edit the clips. In this post, we are going to review Clipchamp video editor, the inbuilt free video editing app for Windows.
What Is Clipchamp Video Editor?
Clipchamp is a video editing software that comes straight from Microsoft. It lets you edit sections of a video, cut them in a logical sequence, and add effects. It offers an easy-to-use interface, several templates and effects that can get you started. It also has an easy-to-manage timeline and many other great aspects.
What’s special is that, though Clipchamp was acquired by Microsoft in 2021, with Windows 11 2022 update, it has become the operating system’s native video editor.
Initially, it was a browser-based online editor, after the Windows 11 2022 update, it has become Windows’ native video editor.
During the course of this post, you’ll find out that while Clipchamp fairs up pretty well as a free video editor, it lacks some features that some other alternative video editing software have.
interface
Clipchamp for Windows 11 has a decent and simple interface. If you are someone who is starting out with video editing, Clipchamp helps you learn the ropes in a faster manner. Whether it be importing projects, navigating through various menus, using templates, or anything else, every task is hassle-free.
Talking of templates, Clipchamp offers several templates for a variety of situations. It’s rather an enjoyable experience to explore the various templates it offers.
The first time you click on the + icon, this is the interface you’ll meet with.
As can be seen from the screenshot –
From the left-hand side, here are the things you can do. You can import your media or choose from text, effects, transitions, audio effects, and various others. You can directly drag and drop a media file from a location on your computer into the interface, quite like any other video editing software.
The middle area or the timeline is where you can drag and drop media files (audio and video) and templates. We liked how the timeline prompts you to add categories of elements. By clicking on these prompts, you can further get access to custom audio and text templates.
From the right-hand side, you can add captions, tone down or up the volume, apply fade in and out effect, adjust colors, change the overall speed and apply several other filters.
Each time when you select an option from the right-hand or the left-hand pane, you can further collapse the subsequent area by clicking on the “<” or”>”
Features
1. Easy Video Editing
Right from importing videos, to adding templates, special effects, music, and other elements, everything falls into place in a hassle-free manner. Clipchamp video editor makes editing multiple tracks easy. The timeline is simple to look at and equally easier to manage. You can easily drag and drop clips, audio and effects into the timeline and manage it.
2. Easily Rotate, Trim, Split and Crop Clips and Perform Other Transformations
With the help of Clipchamp you can rotate, trim and crop your videos easily. The moment you import a media, you can click on the clip. As you can see in the screenshot below, a small menu appears on the left.
Here you will find options for fit/ fill, crop, picture-in-picture mode, rotate, and flip vertical/ horizontal. When you click on the Crop option, handles appear on all sides using which you can crop the clip exactly to your liking.
Let’s get down to another important feature and that is trimming unnecessary clips –
It could be that you do not want the whole clip and wish to work with just some parts. For this, you can move the marker or play head to the exact portion from where you want the clip to split, right-click and then select Split as shown below –
See the II in green? You can drag it back and forth to trim your clip. We recommend that while you do this play your clip once so that you get an exact idea if you have trimmed or split the video clip correctly.
3. Screen and Webcam Recorder
When you download the free Clipchamp video editor for Windows, you also get a screen and webcam recorder.
You can capture the on-screen activities on your desktop or your webcam. For that, you can choose to record your entire screen, a particular window, or a particular tab. Apart from that, you can also share your system audio as well.
This is a feature that not even some of the best video editing software have to offer. Although, if screen recording is your ultimate goal, you can opt for a more feature-rich screen recording software like TweakShot Screen Recorder.
Another reason why you may want to invest in a screen recording tool is that Clipchamp restricts you to a limit of 30 minutes. Here, you may not be able to select the quality, output format, etc.
4. Customizable Templates
Clipchamp offers several customizable video templates using which you can create professional videos.
You can further customize the templates with text, background music, videos, and other elements. There are templates for every occasion like intro/ outro, gaming, specific events, etc. There are even some which are specific for social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, etc.
5. Text To Speech
Clipchamp video editor lets you convert any given text to speech. Therefore you won’t need any third-party software for that task.
You can choose from several languages. What we liked here is that for every given language, Clipchamp offers several voices for males and females, voice styles, speech speed, and voice pitch. More specifically there are 170 AI voices and 70 different languages supported.
Once you have entered the text, you can even preview the speech and check if it is up to your liking. To use the Text to speech feature –
- Click on Record & create from the left-hand side pane.
- Select the Text to speech feature.
- Choose the fields shown based on the text you want to type and your intent – Language, Voice, Voice style, Speech speed, and Voice pitch.
6. Detach Audio
Sometimes, even though our video file is good to go, it is the audio that needs to be worked on. For instance, it could be the task of removing background noise or increasing the base, etc.
Clipchamp video editor lets you detach the audio from your video file and download it as an mp3. You can take this file and import it into any audio editing software like Audacity. You can then refine it and import it back to Clipchamp.
For detaching the audio, drag and drop the video file into the timeline –
- Click on the file again
- Select the Detach audio option.
Here, it would have been better if a few audio editing tools such as noise removal and a few other tools were given.
7. Create Brand-Consistent Videos
Assuming that you frequently publish videos for your brand, it is important that your videos are consistent. In that respect, the Clipchamp video editor offers you logos, fonts, and colors that you can make exclusive to your brand. You can easily set these elements and apply them to any video you create thereby maintaining quality and consistency.
8. Content Backup
Imagine having worked very hard on a video. Sadly, you lose it to a computer crash or you have accidentally deleted it. Clipchamp video editor can save you from such instances. You can back up your video files online and even pick them up from where you had left off earlier. The only drawback here is that this is a paid feature.
Updates
Clipchamp regularly rolls out updates on product improvements, new features, and more, and it also keeps you notified of the same. To stay updated, it is important that you keep the platforms on which you are using Clipchamp updated.
If you have downloaded the app from Microsoft Store in Windows 10, click on More (…) > Downloads and updates > Get updates. On Windows 11, open Microsoft Store, go to Library, and click on Get updates.
If you have Clipchamp preinstalled on your Windows 11 PC, all you need to do is keep your Windows OS updated to the latest version.
Pricing
80% – Good
Clipchamp video editor is free to use if you use your own media or use one of the free audio, image, or video stock footage. However, if you want to use premium stock footage or use other features like the content backup facility and brand kit, you can opt for a premium variant.
| Variant Name | Price | |
| Essentials | $11.99 | Monthly |
| Essentials | $119.99 | Yearly |
Free Vs Premium – What You Can Expect?
How To Use Clipchamp Video Editor?
1. Download Clipchamp for Windows (if it is not present on your Windows PC) or simply search for Clipchamp in the Windows search bar and click on Open from the right-hand side.
2. You can either choose from one of the templates on the home screen. But, for this blog, let’s start from scratch. To do that click on the + icon placed somewhere at the bottom right-hand side.
3. Click on the Import Media button. You can either import files from a location on your computer or from cloud storage mediums like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Photos and even from your smartphone.
4. You can even drag and drop files directly onto the interface.
5. To move the clip back and forth, hover over your mouse onto the clip and when the hand appears, drag the clip to move it back and forth. If you want to trim the video, click on the two parallel lines II to trim or re-expand the video.
6. You can drag and drop the various templates, stock videos, effects, and other elements that you can access from the left-hand side. As for adding color correction, captions, adjusting colors, increasing volume, and changing the color scheme, select an appropriate option from the right-hand side.
7. Once you have created a video, click on the Export dropdown and select a resolution.
Customer Support
For a free video editor, Clipchamp offers great customer service. This means if at any point you get stuck with a feature or want to learn something new, you’ll always have some content to refer to. In case you seek assistance from an expert you can also contact them.
When you open the Clipchamp video editor, click on your profile picture on the right-hand side. Next click on help and you can access a wide range of articles and FAQs that cover various aspects of the video editor and techniques that you can refine.
What if you have doubts regarding functionality, bug, or any other issue that you feel only an expert can resolve? There is a chat option that you can access on the website, on the bottom right-hand side. Or, you can also access the same by clicking on the? icon. Here you can further click on the Send us a message and elaborate upon your query.
Wrapping Up
If you are someone who is starting out with video editing or have to perform edits without adding extensive effects, Clipchamp video editor for Windows can suffice. It is easy and fun to use and it will keep you engaged for hours. Found this review interesting, do let us know in the comments section below. For more such content involving listicles and top software reviews, keep reading Top10PCSoftware. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Flipboard
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Is Clipchamp free forever?
Yes, Clipchamp is free forever provided you use your own media, use basic tools, or stock media which is free to use. You can evidently see the features and media that come under the premium subscription.
Q2. What is better than Clipchamp?
There are many video editors such as Adobe Premiere, and Adobe Aftereffects that offer more granular control than Clipchamp.
Q3. Is Clipchamp good for YouTube?
Yes, Clipchamp is good for creating videos on YouTube because it is easy to edit videos and it offers dedicated templates through which you can create videos for YouTube.
