For the most delightful experience, we recommend sticking to Chromium Browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera).

Need to make easy edits to your video or audio? You’re in luck! All Wistia plans have access to editing right in Wistia. To get started, click into the media you’d like to edit and select “Edit.”

From here, you can play through your media, trim out content, stitch together intros or outros, add transitions or background music, and more.

The media you can edit depends on your permission levels. Account Owners and Managers can edit any media, and anyone with 'Can manage' permissions on a folder can also 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 User Roles page for a breakdown on user roles and permissions.

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 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 zoom in (and then out) of the timeline by clicking the zoom icons on the right-hand corner of the screen above the timeline. Or, you can use the toggle next to the zoom icons to further tailor the timeline to your editing needs. This will allow you to switch between the waveform view and thumbnail view.

To edit or watch/listen to 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.

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 them and clicking “Delete.” Or, you can remove the beginning or end of a clip by clicking and dragging either end of a section to trim it.

Changed your mind or made a mistake? Click the backward arrow to undo until you feel better about your edits. If you go back too far, that’s okay! Click the forward 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 the “Revert” icon. This action will take you back to the original state of your media for a do-over.

Have a bumper waiting in the wings? You can add more video or audio to your timeline with stitching.

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 the “Media” icon from the 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.

Traverse a transcript to identify sections of your video or audio you’d like to edit. Click the “Transcript” icon in the left-hand menu to get started.

When you 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 words and sections to keep or delete, or generally scroll through the transcript.

As a user of text-based editing, you can take all current timeline-based actions. You can:

If you edit the transcript (i.e., delete/split), the changes will be reflected on the timeline. If you edit directly on the timeline (i.e., split, delete, rearrange clips), those changes will be reflected visually in the transcript.

Globally resize your video to fit one of our defined aspect ratios.

In the editor, click the "Aspect Ratio" dropdown above the video preview. You’ll have the option to adjust the aspect ratio to:

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.

To zoom into individual video clips 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 clip and drag the video clip itself to reposition it.

The menu below the video provides options such as Fit Canvas, Fill Canvas, and Reset. It also displays the scale percentage.

If you’re editing a Wistia Recording and you’ve recorded with both your screen and camera, you can decide among different layouts for the media.

To change the layout throughout a recording, select the "Layouts" icon from the side panel.

This will provide you with various layout options for your streams. The options include:

Within the Layouts menu in the editor, clicking "Background color" allows you to select a solid or gradient background to display behind your video.

Select the "Solid" option to choose a custom color or one from your Brand Kit, or select "Gradient" to choose from preset or custom gradient colors.

If you choose a gradient background, there are a number of options to customize this further.

You can select a "Linear" or "Mesh" gradient from the "Gradient type" dropdown menu. Within each gradient type, you can select a preset gradient or a primary color.

Lastly, each gradient type has an "Advanced settings" section. This is where you can add more customization to how your gradient displays, including animation, texture, and a spiral effect.

To improve the audio quality of an entire video, click the "Suggestions" option in the side panel and enable "Enhance Speech."

You can use this editing tool to remove silence from the beginning and end of your video in just one click!

When you open the editor, click the "Suggestions" tab. If we detect two or more seconds of silence at the start or end of the video, you’ll see the option to trim intro 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 in a few ways.

Click the “Music” icon in the left-hand menu to discover Wistia’s highly curated, royalty-free background music for all of your webinars, interviews, social posts, and more.

To get started:

You won’t need to make any edits to ensure the track fits 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.

Want to add visual transitions between video clips? To get started, click the beginning or end edge of a clip and select “Transitions” from the left-hand menu.

Click “White Fade,” “Black Fade,” or "Add transition" to apply it.

You can also click the hex code box to select a custom color and add a specific hex

code.

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? Select the transition tile, then click the trash icon above the timeline or click "Delete transition" in the Transitions panel. You can also click the "Undo" arrow if a transition was your most recent edit, or you'd like to undo the last few edits.

In the Captions tab of the editor, choose from a variety of branded captions styles and fonts. Toggle the setting on to generate burnt-in captions for your video. Burnt-in captions will always be visible on the video file in Wistia and when downloaded.

Click directly on the captions in the video preview and open each dropdown menu to customize the color, size, font, style, and position. The caption style you choose will be applied to the whole video and cannot be altered for a specific clip or segment.

If you stitch another media to your edit session with captions enabled, captions will automatically be added to the new media as well.

To add an animated zoom to your clip, start by clicking the Zoom icon in the side panel of the editor. Place the playhead where you'd like the animation to begin, then click "Add zoom."

You can adjust the Zoom level with the slider to determine how close you'd like to get to the subject. The Focal point can be dragged freely to capture the precise area you want to highlight. You can also disable the animation for a more instant result.

On the timeline, the zoom duration can be adjusted by dragging the boundaries. To delete a zoom, select it on the timeline, then click "Delete zoom."

As you’re editing, you’ll notice a “Clip info” option in the side menu as well. That’s where you’ll find things like:

For a full list of available shortcuts in the editor, open the Keyboard shortcuts menu from the side panel or hit the "?" key on your keyboard.

Once you’ve completed your edits, select the “Finish & exit” button at the top right of the editor. You’ll have two different saving options.

The “Replace current video” option in the dropdown menu will function as an update to the existing media, essentially replacing the original media with the edited version. All customizations will transfer over to the newly saved media. This will also automatically regenerate the transcript, and your analytics will start from scratch.

Click "Save as new video" 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.

And that’s it! You’ve just edited your media in Wistia.

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.

Have any questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support Team, and we’ll be happy to help!