Hi I'm Josh Lowensohn with CNET.com, and I'm going to show you how to use YouTube's video editor
to make a movie out of several clips.
While a little basic when compared to software-based video editing tools, YouTube's video editor
works right in your browser, and does all the hard work on Google's servers, meaning you can edit HD
video on just about any computer, as long as it has an Internet connection.
The first thing you're going to want to do is head on over to YouTube.com/editor. Here you'll see a list
of all your uploaded YouTube videos on the left hand side, a storyboard on the bottom, and a preview
of the finished product on the right.
One thing to note right up front is that you cannot actually upload videos to the editor, your videos
need to be on YouTube first. If you're just dumping a few clips from your digital camera, our advice is
to do upload them as "unlisted." This sends them to YouTube, but they won't show up to people who
have subscribed to your YouTube channel, or in the service's search engine.
In case you don't recognize one of your uploaded videos, you can play it by hitting the little arrow that
shows up when you mouse over a clip. This opens it up in a pop-up window.
When you've found something you like, you can simply grab it and drop it down into the storyboard, or
hit the little plus icon in the top right hand corner of each clip.
Once the videos are on the storyboard, you can re-arrange them freely. The storyboard is also where
you do all the editing. To start an edit, just mouse over any clip in your storyboard and click the scissors
icon. This will open up your video in a pop-up window where you can drag to change the beginning and
end point.
To get a finer level of control over these in and out points, you can click on the small arrows on the top
and bottom of the clip's timeline. YouTube is calling these "nudges" since they only change the length
of the clip one way or the other by a fifteenth of a second. To see your changes after making a nudge
or two, just hit the play button.
It's worth noting YouTube currently does not let you split a clip, so if you want to use a different part of
the same clip, or just repeat something again, you drag the video into the timeline multiple times, and
trim it down to just the parts you want.
If you want to add some audio to your project you can pick a track from YouTube's AudioSwap library
in the "audio" tab on the top left. Just like videos you can preview these before adding them to your
work, then drag them down into the storyboard. Keep in mind that adding an audio track to your
movie will wipe out all the sound that was there before. And after you've done this there's no way to
go back without starting a new project.
When you've got your clips in the right place and added the music you want, you can give it one last
look by hitting the play button in the preview module on the right. If everything looks good, you just
give it a name, hit the publish button and YouTube does the rest.
I'm Josh Lowensohn and this has been a how to on using YouTube's video editor. Happy editing.
