Microsoft Clipchamp is a user-friendly video editing tool that allows you to create and edit videos with ease. It’s designed for those who may not have advanced technical skills, offering simple features like trimming, adding text, and applying filters to enhance your videos. Clipchamp is available on Windows 10 and Windows 11 through the Microsoft Store, or you can also run it from https://clipchamp.com (Chrome or Microsoft Edge only). Note: You will need a Microsoft or Google email address to use Clipchamp. However, for FDO users, your fd.org address will NOT work due to our enterprise license with Microsoft. You will have to use a personal Microsoft email address such as a @hotmail.com or @Outlook.com. Both the app version and the online version look the same and offers the same features.
My favorite feature is the trimming feature since it’s very intuitive and simple to use. The home screen looks like this:
To start a project, click on the “Create a new video” box. This will open Clipchamp.
After Clipchamp is open, the first step is to bring in the media or video that you would like to trim by clicking on Import Media. You can either drag and drop the media or click on the Import Media box to manually browse to the media file you want to trim. After you import your media file, you then want to drag the media file to the editing\trimming area.
Once the video is in the trimming area, you will see two green handles each at the beginning and at the end of the video. You can click and drag these handles if you want to shorten the video from either end. Below I have shrunk the video from 11:23 minutes to 7:11 minutes. Once I’m happy with the result, I can hit Export and select the video quality I desire. Notice that it will save the video as an MP4 file.
But what if you want to trim a portion in the middle of the video? For this, you drag the white marker to the desired area you want to cut the video (or the area you want the new video to start) and then click on the scissors (cut) icon. As shown below, I’ve made a cut at around 2:27 of the video. I also made a cut around 5:18 which is the end portion I’m looking to trim. Now, I have three video pieces. I only want the video in the middle or video 2 from the diagram below. Now I can delete parts 1 and 3 of the video. All I do is, right-click on each 1 and 3 and select Delete.
Once I Delete part 1 and 3 from the video I’m left with the video I want which is the center portion of the video.
Once you’re done trimming, move the video all the way to the left as well as the white marker so you can play it to make sure you got the part of the video you want before exporting it. NOTE: You are NOT distorting or changing the original file.
Once you click on Export, Clipchamp starts producing your video. You can click on the pencil to give your video a file name. By default, Clipchamp will save your file in the Windows Download folder. And that’s it! You have now trimmed your video!
Although Clipchamp offers a premium version, the free version offers plenty of great features including video editing, screen recordings, text-to-speech, auto caption, and much more.