A guide to adding and editing videos with ease

In VSDC Video files can be easily incorporated into a video project and edited right there. They are supported in various formats: H.265/HEVC, H.264, AVI, QuickTime (MP4/M4V, 3GP/2G2, MOV, QT), HDVideo/AVCHD (MTS, M2TS, TS, MOD, TOD), WindowsMedia (WMV, ASF, DVR-MS), DVD/VOB, VCD/SVCD, MPEG/MPG/DAT, Matroska Video (MKV), Real Media Video (RM, RMVB), Flash Video (SWF, FLV), DV, AMV, MTV, NUT, H.264/MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, MJPEG, WebM, Vp8, Vp9, BRAW (Blackmagic RAW).

Adding a Video

  1. There are several ways of adding a video file to your project:
    • From the Add object drop down menu on the Editor tab;
    • From the vertical toolbar on the left from the scene;
    • By using hotkey shortcut Shift + V;
    • By simply dragging a video file from the file explorer on your PC to the scene area.
  2. Define the location within the Object position settings window or leave the default settings by clicking the OK button. You can change them any time later directly on the Timeline area.

Video Object Settings

If you want to adjust the parameters of a video file, select it on the timeline and navigate to the Properties window which is located on the right from the scene. The following options are available:

  • Video: here you can select video files available in the project's resources and upload new ones. Also, the following options are available there:
    • HW decoder: use this option to enable hardware acceleration when working with HD videos for the decoding of the video data to go faster.
    • Processing mode: here you can select the type of processing: either software or hardware processing.
    • Deinterlacing: use this mode to reduce the noticeable flaws of an interlaced video and improve playback quality. Here you can select a deinterlacing method.
    • Sync audio: use this option to synchronize your audio and video before export.
  • Resolution: here you can adjust the width and the height of your video.
  • Video duration: here you can set the duration of your video file and cut out the beginning of the end of it using the options Start/End trim.
  • Cutting and splitting: here you can cut unnecessary fragments out of your video or split it into parts.
  • Cropped borders: this option allows you to cut the borders of a video using cropping tools.
  • Stretch video: this option specifies if a video is stretched or not while scaling.
  • Resize mode: this option refers to how a video is scaled or resized to fit within the scene. By default, the program uses the Linear interpolation mode to resize. To prevent the loss of video image quality you can select one of the advanced resizing methods, such as:
    • Nearest neighbor interpolation;
    • Cubic Interpolation;
    • Supersampling interpolation;
    • and Lanczos interpolation.
  • Background color: if the video doesn’t cover the whole scene, so its edges can be seen, this option determines whether the background should be filled with color or not. The Color may be selected right there.
  • Loop mode: this feature allows you to select the way the video will be played. In order to use this mode, you need to set the duration of how long you want the video to be looped.There’ll be a red marker right in the place where the original video should end.The following options are available:
    • Hide the image at the end of the video: after the original video ends, black screen appears;
    • Show last frame at the end of the video: after the original video ends, the last frame remains on the screen till the end;
    • Loop video: the video playback is looped so it restarts automatically;
    • Play entire video: the video is played once up to the end notwithstanding the length, so it may significantly slow down.
  • Playing backwards: you can enable this option and make your video play backwards by setting Yes.
  • Speed: you can speed up or slow down the video by adjusting this option. The default setting is 100% (normal speed).
  • Reframing mode: you can use an algorithm that allows for improving slow-mo videos with a low fps rate by creating additional frames. Here the following options are available:
    • Simple reframing (your slow-mo footage looks originally without frame interpolation; it’s a default mode);
    • Blending (helps you achieve a smooth slow motion video effect by filling the space between frames);
    • Optical flow (the software analyzes neighboring frames and, instead of duplicating them, it creates new unique ones).
  • Audio stretching mode: you can also adjust the way the speed of the audio file is going to be changed - Tempo change(to change the tempo keeping the pitch the same throughout the audio file) or Rate change (to change the speed and tone of the sound), select the mode (Music or Voice) and use Antialiasing to make the sound smooth.
  • Audio volume: here you can make the audio track sound louder or quieter.
  • Audio track: here you can select the audio track that is used or mute it. This option is for multichannel video files.

There’s also a number of buttons located on the timeline that can help you play your audio track, adjust the volume, etc. Here’s a detailed article about how to work with the timeline.

Video Effects

How to Apply Video Effects

  1. First, you need to select your video file on the timeline. Then go to the Editor tab and click the Video effects button on the Ribbon command bar to select a desired effect within the appropriate category from the drop-down list. Another option is to right-click the file on the timeline and select Video effects from the drop-down menu.
  2. After that, you will be able to set the effect position respectively to the media file in the Object position settings window. You can leave the default settings clicking the Ok button and change them any time later.
  3. The selected effect will appear on the Timeline area as an object inside the video file. It represents a colored block that occupies a single line and is located on a separate tab on the Timeline. To go back to your video file, you need to proceed to Scene 0. And if you want to access the effect again, just double-click on the file on the Timeline. The effect processes video in real time.
  4. Change the effect position and duration if you need it to affect only a particular moment in your movie. To change the duration, place the mouse cursor on the block’s boundary and when it becomes a bidirectional arrow, move it to the left or to the right.
  5. Each effect has a few common and several individual settings that you can change within the Properties window. You can also select one of the available Presets or create a custom one in the Template window.

List of Available Effects

VSDC Editor is equipped with comprehensive support for almost all well-known formats and codecs, both for importing and exporting. Moreover, it comes at no cost. Explore the detailed table below for more information:

Group

Effect

Description

Adjustments

Color grading

Use it to apply the tools from the Color Correction panel to selected parts of a video.

Auto levels

Use it to automatically correct colors in your video or image file.

Auto contrast

Use it to automatically correct contrast in your video or image file.

Auto gamma

Use it to automatically correct gamma in your video or image file.

Recover after auto gamma

Use it to cancel the gamma correction effect.

Brightness / Contrast / Gamma

Use it to perform some color adjustments.

For brightness: negative values give a darker image and positive values give a brighter image.

For contrast: negative values give lower contrast and positive values give higher contrast.

For gamma: negative values give a darker image and positive values give a brighter image.

Red/Green/Blue

Use it to adjust red, green and blue levels in your original video or image file.

Hue / Saturation / Value

Use it to perform some color adjustments.

Hue: shifts the hue of every color, giving unnatural colors.

Saturation: makes colors to be desaturated or over saturated. The minimum value gives a black and white image.

Value: makes the picture lighter or darker. The minimum value gives a black screen.

Hue / Saturation / Lightness

Use it to perform some color adjustments.

Hue: shifts the hue of every color, giving unnatural colors.

Saturation: makes colors to be desaturated or over saturated. The minimum value gives a black and white image.

Lightness: makes the picture lighter or darker. The minimum value gives a black screen.

Luminance/ Chrominance (YUV)

Use it to reduce bandwidth for chrominance components and transform colors in your video or image file.

LUT

Use it to make footage look professional with one click presets.

Color twist

Use it to adjust colors in the footage by working directly with the RGB color channels and changing tone values.

Grayscale

Use it to transform colors of the picture to the gray part of the spectrum.

Equalize

Use it to make colors more saturated.

Equalize histogram

Use it to apply a quick filter for increasing an image contrast.

Colorize

Use it to adjust red, green and blue levels in the black and white version of your file.

Sepia

Use it to transform the color spectrum to brownish and yellowish photo paper.

Reducing bit resolution

Use it to give your image a fancywork look choosing an appropriate Dither type and changing the Noise and Levels values.

Posterize

Use it to reduce the apparent number of colors in a clip, changing gradients into flat areas of color.

Solarize

Use them to make video images reverse in tone.

Parabolize

Dark areas will appear lighter and vice versa.

Temperature

Use it to correct colors in video or images taken with incorrect white balance. Negative values make the image cooler and positive values make the image warmer.

Tint

Use it to change the lightness at the set value.

Inverse

Use it to invert the colors of an image.

Negative

Use it to replace every color with its negative color, like a film negative.

Black and white

Use it to turn videos into classic retro movies.

Threshold

Use it to determine how much contrast there is between neighboring pixels for the sharpening to affect them.

Filters

Box blur

Use it to create a kind of square distortion effect in the image.

Stack blur

Use it to imitate a moving pile of colors.

Gaussian blur

Use it to reduce contrast between adjacent pixels according to a mathematical equation.

Motion blur

Use it to apply the dim effect in a specific direction useful for extreme sports footing.

Sharpen

Use it to increase contrast and bring the images into better focus.

Pixelize

Use it to fade an image into pixels.

Wiener/DeNoise

Use it to apply a soft blur with a slight offset.

Noise

Use it to add some texture to an image by way of tiny pixel dustings.

Diffuse

Use it to make the selection look less focused.

Emboss

Use it to give an image a 3D look.

Minimal

Use it to emphasize the dark pixels in an image.

Maximal

Use it to emphasize the light pixels in an image.

Median

Use it to replace each pixel with a pixel that has the median color value of neighboring pixels.

Oil paint

Use it to attach an oil painting that looks similar to that of the Prisma application.

DeLogo

Use it to remove an unwanted object in a video.

Transforms

Flip

Use it to flip an image horizontally or vertically.

Perspective

Use it to transform the perspective in an image horizontally or vertically.

Skew

Use it to skew the entire image horizontally or vertically.

Shift

Use it to move your image along X and Y axes.

Rotate

Use it to rotate the entire image.

Resample

Use it to multiply the entire image.

Zoom

Use it to magnify or reduce the image.

Mirror

Use it to duplicate a part of the image.

Crop

Use this tool to remove unwanted video borders preserving the original aspect ratio.

Distort

Use this effect to apply one of the distortion presets to the video: Faceted glass, Fish eye, Swirl, Whirlpool, Twirl, Polar, Explode, Wave, and others.

Lens distortion

Use this tool to fix images or videos shot with wide angle camera lenses.

Transparency

Fade In

Use it to make the video smoothly appear on the screen.

Fade Out

Use it to make the video smoothly disappear from the screen.

Custom transparency

Use them to adjust the transparency of the video or image file.

Make opaque

Make transparent

Clipping

Use it to create a picture in picture effect adding a part or a whole image to your video.

Borders

Use it to create a frame around a photo or video.

Background remover

Use it to remove the background of the video and apply a chroma key effect.

Special FX

TV

Use it to imitate bad quality of the broadcast video signal. There are four types of TV effects available.

Matrix

Use it to make the effect of falling code from the Matrix movie.

Glitch

Use it to create distortions like old VHS tapes.

Face landmarks

Use it to quickly add a motion tracked face mask to a video.

Al art generator

Use it to turn your media into unique stylish masterpieces by using over 20 presets.

VirtualDub filter

Use it to import VirtualDub plugins.

360 and 3D

360 to 2D

Use it to flatten 360° footage to a panorama angle.

3D to 2Dr

Use it to convert 3D footage from stereoscopic view

Nature

Lens flare

Use it to imitate a strong source of light, such as sunlight both in the frame or outside of it.

Bokeh glare

Use it to add a soft blurry background to your footage with lights shining through it.

Raindrops

Use it to add the effect of falling raindrops to your video or achieve the foggy glass look.

God rays

Use it to create the illusion of three-dimensional rays of light passing through the gaps in the atmosphere or added object.

Fire

Use it to make a realistic fake fire on the video.

Water

Use it to add raindrops falling into the water on your video.

Smoke

Use it to create a smoky look of various intensity.

Plasma

Use it to apply the effect of liquid plasma to the entire image or a part of it.

Particles

Use it to add floating particles to the footage: leaves, snowflakes, or anything else.

Shadow

Use it to create a drop shadow effect for text and objects in video.

Transitions

Paper burn

Use it to create a transition that imitates a burning piece of paper opening the following scene or media object.

Flow transform

Use it to create a fractal-driven image distortion.

Shattered glass

Use it to make shattered glass effect transitions.

Paint brush

Use it to gradually cover the video with brush strokes, or reveal the next image from under a coat of paint.

Chess

Use it to lay a semi transparent checkerboard on your video or image.

Wipe

Use them to apply a transition where one shot replaces another by traveling from one side of the frame to another or with a special shape.

Push

Mosaic

Use it to look through a grid of lines on your video or image.

Page turn

Use it to turn a video image like a page of the book in various directions.

Diffuse FX

Use it to gradually fill the screen with black pixels.

Fade FX

Use it to gradually fill the screen with various textures.

Creative Ideas for Working With Video Files in VSDC

This software can be downloaded from Free Video Editor description page.