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- Editing Your Footage
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You have a few options for editing your video footage and it is really up to your own personal preferences and how much storage is available on your iPad. Take a look at the descriptions of the features of each program and try one out. If you decide you'd prefer to use a different program, don't fear -- the options and techniques are similar in each (Camtasia and Clipchamp are almost identical), so the skills you learn in one program will translate to the others.
iMovie is a good option if you want to keep everything on the iPad. You can trim your footage and make quite a few other edits without using another computer. However, it can be tricky to use a touch screen with video editing software and if you are recording multiple lengthy videos, you may run out of storage on your iPad.
Camtasia is a good option if you want to use campus computers for your editing. It is available on all campus computers and even the laptops that you can borrow from the library. You will have to load your video footage into Camtasia but using your Humboldt Google Drive account is a fairly easy solution.
Clipchamp is a good option if you want to use your personal computer or if you want to edit from multiple devices. It is browser based so it even works on Chromebooks. By syncing to Google Drive, you can edit from any device that has a browser (Chrome or Edge browsers only).
These slides show how to use the three editors and has animated gifs showing the basic steps for using various features.
iMovie is available for free on Macs, iPads, and iPhones and has many built-in features like soundtracks and photo effects that make it easy to use.
Camtasia is a fairly easy to learn yet powerful video editor that is available on Cal Poly Humboldt campus computers. It is primarily used for creating screen captures (recording your computer screen) but is also great for editing film.
To edit a video on multiple devices (like if you start editing in the library computer lab and then continue in the Founder's Hall lab the next day) be sure to save your project as a standalone project .
Clipchamp is an easy to use and fully featured video editor for Windows and is also available as a browser-based Chrome and Edge webapp. It allows you to create videos with all of the basic features you'd want. Including openly-licensed content like music, images, and even video clips that you can use in your project.
The browser-based version of Clipchamp is great on Chromebooks and has all the features you need for small projects but working on big projects with multiple files over a browser may cause playback lag and other unwanted issues. The browser-based version also has freemium content that you want to avoid so that you can use it for free. Premium content is marked with a diamond icon, so avoid that to keep your project free.
To edit a video across multiple devices (like if you want to start editing on your home computer and then continue in the library computer lab the next day), be sure to sync your project to your Google Drive account. You will first want to upload your video files to your Google Drive and then you can import them into Clipchamp directly from your drive. See the video below for instructions.