Tips, Tricks and Tutorial

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Friday

VideoPad Video Editing Tips & Tricks

VideoPad Video Editing Software Tips and Tricks

One of the blog entries that is consistently getting a lot of traffic is our post announcing the speed changing feature to VideoPad. Not surprising since that was such a long-awaited feature to be added to our popular video editing software. Since it has been a popular post, I decided to expand on the topic with several Tips and Tricks for editing video with VideoPad. If you have any tips of your own please comment and add them to our list. And for those of you new to video editing you may want to get started by checking out the VideoPad video tutorials.

Title Screen and Ending Credits

Add a blank slide to the beginning or end of the timeline. Add text to the slideslide by clicking the green plus button on the Overlay Track, and a fade transition to create a dramatic opening or closing effect to your movie. For ending credits, select the vertical scrolling option and adjust the clip duration to control the scrolling speed.

Text Overlays

Adding captions, title screens and credits is a cinch. See our post on Adding text to your videos for some tips to help you get started using the Overlay Track to add text to video clips.

Video Subtitles

Subtitles are another way of adding text to your video projects. See our post on adding subtitles to your video for a quick overview on importing or creating an .ssa subtitle file in VideoPad, or for more detailed instructions go to our video subtitles tutorial.

Image Overlays

To create a watermark effect or add images to your video for presentations, use image overlays. Click the green plus button on the Overlay Track, select the Image or Video radio button, browse for a file and apply it to the sequence. Once it’s on the sequence, you can select it and edit its size, opacity, positioning and more.

Control Effect Duration

To apply an effect to only part of a clip, try slicing the clip in two. Apply an effect to only one slice, and place a cross-fade between the slices for a seamless transition.

Change Video Speed

Speed up or slow down video clips by selecting a clip and selecting the Speed effect from the Effects tab, then use the slider to select the new speed for the video clip, (i.e. 50% for half speed, 200% for double). You can also choose to play the clip backward.

Video Stabilization

One possible problem you may have with videos you have recorded on your camcorder is video clips that are shaky or unsteady. This is a common problem when you film without a tripod to keep the camcorder still no matter how steady you think your hands are. The video stabilization feature is an easy solution to eliminating camera jitter in your videos, giving you a final video that won't make you seasick to watch.

Upload Videos to YouTube

VideoPad has a wide range of output options for saving your final video, and if you are creating your video for YouTube you can even skip a step and upload to YouTube from VideoPad by entering your YouTube account information and other details, which is just one of the many choices available when saving your finished movie. VideoPad also has automated upload options for Facebook and Flickr.

Sound Effects

VideoPad comes with a Sound Effect Library. You can preview and download sounds from the Sound Effects Library by going to Edit → Sound → NCH Sound Effect Library. And since VideoPad has unlimited audio tracks, you have plenty of room to add and mix in the sound effect to your movie soundtrack.

Greenscreen Video Editing

For shooting those scenes you can’t do on location, use the chroma-key feature to transport yourself to another locale. To use chroma-key, click the green plus button on the Overlay Track, select the Image or Video radio button, click the Record button, click the Remove Background button, and follow the onscreen instructions.

Looking Back at 2010

The New Year is always a time of reflection. What went well the last year? What could have been better? This is where many New Year’s resolutions come from. Not only is the New Year starting you off with a clean slate but it’s a good reason to find things you can do improve on years past. In the spirit of reflection I took a little time to look at what our most popular blog posts from the last year in hopes of finding a little bit of insight into what we should work on or write about in the year to come.

What I take from this is that not only are our big announcements such as the addition of the sound effect library and adding speed control into VideoPad important, but that our readers like to see more about how software is being used by other people in interesting and creative ways. There also seem to be a fair amount of Mac users looking for software solutions who will be pleased to hear that we are going to continue to bring more of our popular software over to the Mac platform. We are also going to continue to try to write about a breadth of different software topics. If there is anything in particular you would like to hear about, let us know.

Change Video Speed in VideoPad

You've been asking for it, so I'm thrilled to report that VideoPad now supports speed variation, giving you the ability to slow down or speed up any video clips that you are editing. Version 2.10 of VideoPad video editing software added this long awaited variable speed playback control, which has been the most requested feature across any of our products.

Adjust the playback speed of video clips in VideoPad

Changing the playback speed of clips gives you more flexibility and control in creating your video masterpiece than ever before. So now, whether you’re adding a time lapse video of the creation of that magnificent sand castle you made at the beach or slowing down your child’s slide into home for an slow motion instant replay of that first home run, you have complete control of the action.
Edit: with version 2.20 the speed control was moved to be one of the effects available on the Effects Tab