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Need to make easy edits to your video or audio? You’re in luck! All Wistia users have access to editing right in Wistia! To get started, click into the media you’d like to edit, and select “Edit Media.”
Note
We currently support editing and exporting videos up to four hours long.
Which medias you can edit depends on your permission levels. The Account Owner and all Managers can edit any media, and anyone with Admin permissions on a folder can edit the media there. If a user has Upload permissions in a folder, they can only edit the media they have uploaded. Check out our Manage Team page for a breakdown on user access levels in Wistia.
From here, you can play through your media, trim out content, stitch together intros or outros, add transitions or background music, and more.
Note
We don’t currently offer the ability to edit Channel episodes, but stay tuned!
Navigating within the Editor
Let’s start with some new terminology! The playhead is a visual indicator that shows where you are while playing back your media. As you play your media, the playhead will move across the timeline beneath the previewer, and the timestamp will appear right below to give you a better sense of exactly where you are.
You can play and pause the media by clicking directly on the play button or by hitting the spacebar on your keyboard. Need to make a precise edit? You can also zoom in (and then out) of the timeline by clicking the zoom icons on the right-hand corner of the screen above the timeline.
To edit or watch/listen any point in the media, click anywhere on the timeline and the playhead will jump to that spot. You can also drag the playhead to your desired location.
Note
Waveforms are not currently available in the Editor, however, this feature is on our roadmap!
Trim Extended Silences
You can use this editing tool to remove silence from the beginning and end of your video in just one click!
Note
If you hosted a webinar or used Record to create your video, we will automatically trim the start/end silences when you open the editor. If you want to leave those silences in, click the “Revert to Original” button at the start of the edit session.
When you open the editor look for the Suggestions button in the upper right-hand corner. If we detect two or more seconds of silence at the start or end of the video you’ll see the option to “Trim into and outro silence” in that menu. Just click “Apply” to trim and you’re all set!
Want to add the silences back to your video? We’ve got you covered here, too! You can revert your changes via two methods.
Clicking Revert to Original above the editing timeline
Manually dragging the boundaries of your clip on the editing timeline
Splitting, Rearranging, and Deleting Content
Splitting media allows you to break up your video or audio into multiple clips, so that you can reach any part of the timeline to trim, rearrange, or delete.
To split your media, drag the playhead right to the point in the video or audio where you want to make edits and then click “Split.” From here, you can split your media up into as many clips as you’d like. You can delete individual clips by selecting and clicking “Delete.” Or, you can remove the beginning or end by clicking and dragging either end of a section to trim it.
Changed your mind or made a mistake? Click the backwards arrow to undo until you feel better about your edits. If you go back too far, that’s okay! Click the forwards arrow to redo.
Once you’ve split your content into clips, you can click on a desired clip and move it anywhere on the timeline: click on the clip, hold, and drag it anywhere you want.
Want to restart your edit session for a clean slate? Click “revert to original!” This action will take you back to the original state of your media for a do-over.
Stitch Your Content
Have a bumper waiting in the wings? You can add more video or audio to your timeline with stitching.
Note
It is not currently possible to stitch audio and video files together.
Upload a video or audio file into your Wistia Content Library, then you can pop that puppy in as a personalized intro, bumper, or any other clip to your editing timeline. To do that, click “Media” from the lefthand side menu, choose your media, and click the “+” icon to apply! From here, you can continue to add content, rearrange, trim, and adjust the audio and formatting.
Properties
As you’re editing, you’ll notice a “Properties” option in the lefthand side menu as well. That’s where you’ll find things like:
Clip Name: differentiate clips by naming them
Clip Volume: make sure your media's audio levels are…level
Enhance Speech: enable this option to improve the audio quality of a specific clip
Enhance Speech powered by Adobe Podcast
Note
Enhance Speech is in Beta for all paid plans, from Plus to Premium.
To improve the audio quality of a specific clip, you can find this option by clicking "Properties."
To improve the audio quality of an entire video, click the "Suggestions" option and select to "Enhance Speech."
Note
If you're editing a video that has intentional background noise or existing background music, Enhance Speech may interfere. In this case, we recommend keeping it off. If you're adding music via the Wistia editor, speech enhancement will not interfere with it.
Note
Enhance Speech does not work on videos that are more than one hour long.
Add Transitions
Want to add visual transitions between video clips?
To get started:
Click to the beginning or end of any clip edges and select “Transitions” from the lefthand menu.
Click “White Fade” or “Black Fade” to add your desired transition (or select a media under “Media”).
And voila! Your transition has been applied.
To see your transitions at a glance, we’ve added an interactive widget right on your timeline. That way, you don’t have to guess where you’ve made them.
Need to delete? No sweat. Select the transition widget and click the trash icon to delete.
Scrub your media with Text Based Editing
Traverse a transcript to identify sections of your video or audio you’d like to edit. Click into “Transcript” in the lefthand menu to get started.
When your play your media, the playhead moves along the timeline as expected, and the text will also be actively highlighted as the speaker talks. You’ll have two distinct ways to scrub the timeline and find moments in your media for precise edits.
The entire transcript container is interactive. You can click individually on words to scrub to that portion of your content, highlight sections for deletion, or generally scroll through the transcript.
As a user of text-based editing, you can take all current timeline-based actions. You can:
Delete via Keyboard shortcut
Split, which will create a paragraph break in the transcript text as well
Undo / Redo
If you edit the transcript (ie, delete/split) the changes will be reflected on the timeline. If you edit directly on the timeline (ie split, delete, rearrange clips), those changes will be reflected visually in the transcript.
Want to remove a quick “uhm” or “ah”? Select the silence indicators directly and click “delete” on your keyboard!
Video Highlights for Social Media
With the click of a button, you can compile moments from your video to create engaging clips for social media. Check out our Social Clips guide to get started.
Resize your Video
By Aspect Ratio
Globally resize your video to fit one of our defined aspect ratios.
In the Editor, click the dropdown under the video preview. You’ll have the option to adjust the aspect ratio to:
Horizontal (16:9)
Square (1:1)
Vertical (9:16)
Original
Note
“Original” will only appear if the original video has a different aspect ratio than the other 3 options.
If there are multiple clips on the timeline, they will all adjust to the selected aspect ratio.
Changing the aspect ratio will introduce letterboxing to ensure the video fits the new dimensions.
By Scaling & Positioning
To zoom in on your video in the Editor, start by clicking on the clip in the video previewer.
You’ll see a menu appear below the video and a bounding box around the video. You can drag the corners of the bounding box to resize the video and drag the video itself to reposition it.
Note
For recordings with a layout that features both your camera and screen, you will only be able to scale and position your screen feed. The webcam feed will remain pinned to the bottom corner.
The menu below the video provides options such as Fit, Fill, and Reset. It also displays the scale percentage.
If the video has a different aspect ratio than the frame, “Fit” will resize it so that all content is visible in the frame. “Fill” scales it up so that there’s no letterboxing
Clicking “Reset” will reset the video to its original size/position in the frame
The scale percentage tells you how much the video is scaled up.
Note
Clips originating from the same media will all be resized/repositioned automatically.
Using Keyboard Shortcuts
Ditch the mouse and use your keyboard instead! These hotkeys will make editing a breeze:
Space bar | Play your media |
S | Split a clip |
Delete | Delete selected clip |
Control/Command + Z | Undo |
Control/Command + Shift + Z | Redo |
+ / - | Zoom in and out on the timeline |
← / → | Move the playhead left and right on the timeline |
When clicking on a clip in the video previewer, the following hotkeys will change or become available:
+ / - | Scale the clip up or down |
← / → / ↑ / ↓ | Position the clip by moving it left, right, up, or down |
Add Background Music
Don’t you just love it when a video has the best background music? Don’t you just loathe finding tracks and editing them to fit your content? Us, too!
Click “Music” in the lefthand menu to discover Wistia’s highly curated, royalty-free background music for all of your webinars, interviews, social posts, and more.
To get started:
First, click into “Music.”
From there, you’ll see a handful of royalty-free Wistia-created tracks
You can tab between Full Track or Intro/Outro based on your needs. Want music for the entirety of your content? Choose a song in the Full track category. Want musical bumpers for the beginning and end of your content? Select a song from the Intro/Outro tab.
Explore by mood to find just the right music and select your track.
Click the “+” icon to add it to your video or audio.
If you'd like to adjust the volume, click into the "Properties" tab.
You won’t have to do any editing to have the track fit your media. Our Smart Track technology takes the heavy lifting out of editing background music, and it auto-magically adjusts to fit the length of your video or audio. If you choose an intro/outro set, you’ll have the ability to customize the duration by selecting the grab handle on the audio timeline and dragging to your heart’s content.
Select Layout
If you’re editing a Wistia Recording and you’ve recorded with both your screen and camera, you can decide amongst different layouts for the media.
To change the layout throughout a recording, click the icon that appears when hovering over or selecting a clip.
This will provide you with layout and stream options. You can choose to display your camera view within the screen, display them side by side, just show your screen, or just show your camera.
Saving Your Edits
Once you’re finished with your editing session, you’ll have two different saving options.
First, select the “Save” button at the top right of the editor. The “Save” option in the dropdown menu will function as an update to the existing media, essentially replacing the original media with the edited version, and all customizations will transfer over to the newly saved media. This will also automatically regenerate the transcript and your analytics will start from scratch.
Note
If you select the "Save" option, analytics and time-coded comments will not be retained.
Click "Save as" to save your edits as a brand new media instance. The new, edited media will contribute to your media count. Then, select an existing folder or add a new folder to save your content in.
Note
Audio files will be exported as an audio-only file and will not contain video.
And that’s it! You’ve just edited your media in Wistia.
Have any questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support Team and we’ll be happy to help!