Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Learn more!
This tutorial will show you how to utilize CapCut, a free all-in-one video editor, to edit your gaming videos. You can use this on your phone, MacBook, Windows computer, or any browser.
In this tutorial, you will learn the simplest and quickest way to edit your gaming videos! To get started, be sure to download CapCut or have it pulled up wherever you are going to be editing these videos. You can download it here!
Step 1: Getting Your Video Uploaded
First, you’re going to need to create your free account. After doing this, you’ll be brought to the home screen and you’ll start by pressing ‘Create new video’.
This will bring you to a screen asking which aspect ratio you want to edit your video in. For YouTube videos, you need to use a 16:9 aspect ratio. However, if you’re making a video for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels, you need to use a 9:16 aspect ratio.
For this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to edit a YouTube video using the 16:9 ratio. Once you have this in place, you’re going to need to upload the video that you want to edit.
On the left-hand side, you’ll have a toolbar with all of the editing tools that you will need to edit your video.
Step 2: Learning the Tools
Let’s go through and learn what each of the tools does and how to use them.
On the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a stretched-out version of your video in what is called the ‘Timeline’. This is where you’ll be able to view every aspect of the video that you recorded and uploaded.
Now, let’s jump into learning some more of the basic terms and things that you’ll need to know for frequently editing gaming videos. The more you edit these videos, the more comfortable and familiar you’ll become with using all of these tools.
Using the Trim Tool
First, let's take a look at the ‘Trim’ tool. To use this, bring the ‘Hotline’ (The line that cuts through the timeline) over the video, you’ll see an option to ‘Splice’ the video.
Next, we’re going to look at how to use the ‘Text’ feature. To add text, head over to the sidebar on the left-hand side. This is going to give you tons of different text templates that you can utilize without having any kind of design experience.
To add this text to the timeline, all you have to do is drag it on top of the timeline to the spot that you want it.
Once you drop this on the timeline, you can adjust how long or short it is by dragging one of the edges out. It will start and stop exactly where you put it, but if you need to shift it around, you can do this on the timeline.
When you want to adjust what the text says, the font, the font size, the opacity, or any of the other text settings, double-click on the text atop the video, and these will be pulled up.
I’m going to change the first text box that currently says ‘HOW TO BE A’, to say ‘Green Bean’. I’ll then change the second text box, which currently says ‘BOLD MAN?’, to say ‘Money Machine’. On either of the text boxes, if you want to separate the words into different lines, all you need to do is press ‘Enter’.
As you adjust the text, you can move it around to be exactly where you want it to be.
Adding ImagesThe next thing we will look at is how to add images to the video. This can also be found as an option in the sidebar You can use any of these graphics to help aid the video that you have recorded. At the top of the ‘Images’ column is a search bar that you can use to find stock images more closely related to the gaming video that you’ve uploaded.
This is a really easy way to add music to your videos, but I would honestly recommend not using this approach as this music can be copyrighted. If there is a copyright on your video because of the audio, it could result in the audio getting deleted or your content getting flagged and not shown to people. These songs might be alright if you’re using them on TikTok, but I wouldn’t recommend using them on any other platform.
I would highly recommend that you instead use Epidemic Sound.
All of their music is high-quality and royalty-free meaning that you can use this on any platform without any repercussions. They have over 40,000 songs and over 90,000 sound effects for you to choose from and use in your video. They even have their music and sounds categorized already to make it easier to find music for your videos.
This allows you to add your Instagram, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and any other place where you might be using this music so that you’re protected against copyright claims. The hardest thing to do is to know what kind of music to be using for your streams.
Epidemic Sound is not free, however, using this link, you can get a 30-day free trial to see if it’s something you want to continue using. With this link, you will also be able to see a list of my favorite music to use in my streams and that I know are popular within the gaming space.For ‘Stems’, leave this on ‘Full Max’, and for ‘File Format’, keep this set to ‘WAV’. Select ‘Download’ once more and then come back over to CapCut.
When you’re back on CapCut, go to where it says ‘Media’ on the sidebar, select ‘Upload’, and then press ‘From Computer’. Now, you just need to find the file in your downloads folder and it will upload to the media area.
The great thing again about using this song from Epidemic Sound is that I can use this without any worry of getting a copyright strike or having the music removed from my video. Not having to worry about this makes having Epidemic Sound incredibly worth it to me. You can of course go ahead and utilize the music in CapCut, but do this at your own risk and know that there may be repercussions to doing so.
Once the song downloads, all you need to do is drag it from the media area to the timeline.
The next thing I’m going to do with this music is make it a little less loud. To do this, click on the button near the top-right that says ‘Basic’. This will pull up your settings and give you the ability to lower the volume.
I’m going to turn the volume of the music down to ‘-29.2 dB’. This will make it better for the viewers and will allow them to hear any other audio that you may have in your video.
Now, we need to adjust the length of the audio since the audio is longer than the video. All we need to do is press ‘Split’ and click on the audio part of our timeline at the same point where the video ends and delete the remaining audio. From doing this, the audio is now aligned with the actual video.
Adding CaptionsSimilar to the other elements, to add these to your timeline, you just need to drag it to where you would like it to be.
There are plenty of great options for stickers, like the ones that are animated circles are great for highlighting things throughout the gameplay that you want to note.
Adding stickers is a good way to keep your viewers invested in your video and they help to direct attention to what you want them to be focusing on.
This is one of the things that I really love and enjoy about CapCut, it gives you the ability to be creative and add lots of engaging elements to your video. These effects make it super easy for people who don’t have design or graphics experience to have these cool elements.
You can customize this and move things to wherever you see fit. If you are playing a basketball game like myself, you can add a lightning bolt effect whenever you make a shot to make the gameplay a little more interesting.
These give a new personality to your videos that most other people aren’t going to have.
Adding Transitions
One of the other things that you’re definitely going to want to add is transitions. These give a nice effect as you’re moving from scene to scene and make the splices that you’ve made less abrasive and noticeable.
You’ll need to drag these into your timeline right in between where you’ve spliced a clip.
Once you add this in, you can watch this back and see how the scenes flow together much nicer than they did before. This is when you can really start to see how you’re elevating what started as a simple gaming video all by using the elements that are inside of CapCut.
Adding Filters
If you want to change the general vibe of a scene in the video, you can use filters as a good way to alter this. Say you want a scene to have more of a moody tone to it, you can use one of the filters to alter how the game looks and achieve this.
Step 3: Exporting Your Video
Now that you have all of your video elements in place, where you want them to be, it’s time to export the video and get it ready to be uploaded to YouTube.
Press the ‘Export’ button on the top-right side of the screen and select ‘Download’.
It’s going to ask you which resolution you would like to download your video as- I would recommend using 1080p, as well as ‘Recommended Quality’, and ‘60 FPS’.
After updating these settings, press ‘Export’ and it will begin downloading. Once it finishes downloading, you can go ahead and upload this directly to YouTube.
If you are going to go ahead and upload it to YouTube, you will also want to know how to create a good-quality thumbnail which you can do here!
If you would like to follow along with a video version of this tutorial, you can click here!
By learning how to use CapCut and utilizing Epidemic Sound, your videos will be taken to the next level and will have a level of professionalism that will set you apart from the rest. Just by using these simple tools that you’ve learned in this article, you can greatly advance the quality of your videos!