Zooming in and out on videos is one of our favorite features because it serves so many goals.

Here is just a couple of ideas on what you can achieve with it:

• Focus. Drive the attention of your viewers to a particular area or an object in your video.
• Clarification. Zoom in to give your audience a detailed view of the object you’re talking about in the video. It’s especially relevant for technical tutorials. We use quite a lot on our YouTube channel, actually.
• Drama. Ta-da! Apply the zoom-in effect just before changing a scene to create a more dramatic transition. Or gradually zoom out on a video to achieve the illusion of scaling.

And we’ve just scratched the surface!

So if you want to start using the zoom-in effect in your videos, you’re on the right page. Below, you’ll find a newbie-friendly step-by-step guide to using zoom in videos. We’ll show you both the instant zoom and the gradual zoom effects. At the end of the article, we’ll also link to the popular zoom-based effects: pan and zoom, zoom fade, and smooth zoom blur transitions.

Before starting, you’ll need to download VSDC Free Video Editor – the software we’ll be using for the tutorial. It’s absolutely free, places no watermarks on your video after export, and has no format limitations.

Download VSDC Free Video Editor (Windows only)

Now, VSDC is a non-linear video editor and provides several ways to apply the zoom-in and zoom-out effects. In this tutorial, we’ll take the easiest approach and show you how to zoom in on a video using the cropping tool. The idea behind it is that you “crop out” the area you need to show closer and set it up to take over the entire scene for the desired time.

Ready to dive in? Follow the instructions below.

How to zoom in on a video instantly

Once you’ve downloaded and launched VSDC on your computer, import a video you’ll be working with. Ideally, it should be high-quality footage so when you zoom in, it won’t look pixelated.

1. When the video is added to the timeline, place the cursor at the moment in time when you’d like the zoom-in effect to go into action.
2. Then go to the “Video effects” tab and select “Transforms --> Crop”.
3. A pop-up window with the object’s position settings will appear. Leave everything as is and press Ok. This way, the effect will start from the cursor position and last until the end of the video.
4. If you want the zooming effect to last just a few moments, simply grab the borderline of the layer and drag it to the left.
5. Now go to the Properties window on the right-hand side, scroll down to “Crop effect settings” and click “Crop tools”. You’ll see a contoured frame on the video.
6. Resize and move the frame to the area you want to zoom in on a video – see the illustration below.
7. Go back to the Properties window and use the “Apply effect” button. You’ll see that the part of the scene you selected is now cropped and enlarged in the Preview window.
8. Return the cursor to the beginning of the scene and check the result. Stretch, shrink, or move the Crop effect layer on the timeline if needed.

How to zoom in on a video gradually

Gradual zoom looks smoother and makes a perfect transition between scenes. In VSDC, gradual zoom can be applied via the cropping tool, too. Half of the steps will repeat the above-described path, so feel free to jump to step #5.

1. When the video is added to the timeline, place the cursor to the moment in time when you’d like the zoom-in effect to go into action.
2. Then go to the “Video effects” tab and select “Transforms --> Crop”.
3. A pop-up window with the object’s position settings will appear. Leave everything as is and press Ok. This way, the effect will start from the cursor position and last until the end of the video.
4. Now go to the Properties window on the right-hand side, scroll down to “Crop effect settings” and click “Crop tools”. You’ll see a contoured frame on the video.
5. Resize and move the frame to the area you want to zoom in.
6. Now go to the Properties window and scroll down to the “Cropped borders” menu. There are 4 borders there: Left, Top, Right, and Bottom. Notice that each one has a coordinate and a dash in front of it. Click on the dash once to switch from “Constant parameter value” to “Linear parameter change”.
7. Once you do that, each border will have 2 coordinate values: one for the beginning of the effect and one for the end of the effect. That means zooming will be stretched over time.
8. Set the initial values for each border to the following:
   • Left - 0
   • Top - 0
   • Right - 100
   • Bottom – 100
     Notice that the final values should remain untouched since step #5. Having the initial and the final values differ is the whole point of gradual zoom.
9. Use the “Apply effect” button and preview the result.

Now, using the same logic, you can apply a gradual zoom-out effect. The only difference here will be that the values 0; 0; 100; 100 should be set for the final coordinates of each border.

Remember, you can always adjust the duration of the effect as well as the time it starts and finishes. To do that, grab the Crop layer and move it back or forward on the timeline. Once you’re happy with how the effect looks, go ahead and save the video to your PC using the “Export project” tab.

Awesome effects and transitions involving zooming in on a video

Hopefully, you’ve got the idea and now will be able to replicate the zooming effect for your projects.  Once you get the hang of it, you might want to check out the following video tutorials showing how this feature can be used for adding dynamics to your video:

• Pan and zoom effect. Also known as Ken Burns effect and originally used to add motion to still images, it allows for focusing on details and panning across the scene.
• Zoom blur transition is one of the most popular transitions on the Internet. It creates such incredibly capturing dynamics that will probably save even the most boring video.
• Zoom fade transition looks great when applied to titles as well as images or videos and might serve well for opening scenes.

Some of these tutorials employ VSDC Pro features available in the premium subscription. However, the subscription is only $19.99, it’s valid for a year and is certainly worth the money if you’re enthusiastic about video editing.

Subscribe to VSDC YouTube channel for more inspiration!

Do you need to protect your clips from being copied? Or willing to promote your brand through video content? Video watermarks are a proven way to do that. They may appear as text or as an image, and they can cover most of the visual part - stretched to the dimension of the video - or sit quietly in the corner.

If it sounds like something you’ve been looking for, keep reading this tutorial. We’ll show you how to add a watermark to a video using free video editing software called VSDC. After you read the instructions, placing a watermark over a video will take you two-three minutes or even less. And unlike a watermark on a picture, this one won’t be easy to remove because it will be literally embedded into each frame of your video (in fact it’s highly unlikely anyone will be able to remove it at all).

Download VSDC Free Video Editor here

Technically, a watermark is an added object placed over footage and visible throughout the entire video. In other words, you need to have an extra layer in your project where a watermark - your text or your logo - will be located. We’ll start with a text watermark and then show you how you can create a watermark with your logo or any other image. You may want to check out the video tutorial before reading the text instructions below.

How to add a text watermark to a video

After downloading and launching VSDC on your computer, go ahead and import the video you want to place a watermark on.

1. Once it is placed on the timeline, you’ll need to add a text to your video. The corresponding icon is located on the left-hand side of the menu and looks like a “T” letter.
2. When you click on the “T” icon, the “Object’s position settings” window will pop up. Choose “Whole parent duration” in the first column.
3. Place the cursor on the scene to create a space for the watermark. If you misplace it – no worries, you’ll be able to move the watermark at any moment.
4. Type text in the field you’ve just created. You’ll notice that a text editing menu has appeared at the top of the interface – use it to design your watermark.
5. Play around with the settings changing font, size, thickness, and other parameters of the text. If you want to use a specific font, and it’s absent from the dropdown menu, download it to your PC first – and then VSDC will “pick it up” automatically. There are multiple websites where you’ll find free fonts to download, here is a list of them.
6. Here, you can decide how thick the borders of the letters should be and adjust the text opacity to make the watermark transparent. The latter is located in the “Text color” tab – see the illustration below.

7. Click on the watermark with the left mouse button and use the dragging motion to place it exactly where you want in the scene. If in the process of editing, you’ve added more files to the timeline, make sure that the text layer is the same size as your entire project. You can stretch the layer manually if needed.
8. Once ready, go ahead and save the video to your computer using the “Export project” tab.

How to add a logo watermark to a video

If you need to add a watermark to a video, and you need it to be an image – say, your logo or any other creative – you can do that too. Ideally, you want to use a high-quality PNG image with a transparent background, however, colored logos will do as well. Here is how the process goes step by step:

1. After you import the video to VSDC, go ahead and click on the “Add object” icon. Select “Image” and upload the creative from your computer.
2. In the “Object’s position settings” window, select “Whole parent duration” in the first column.
3. Move it around and resize if necessary.
4. Go to the “Tools” menu located at the top of the interface and click on the icon that looks like a wrench – the Opacity setting will be available there. Adjust the scale until the image is at the right transparency level.
5. Make sure the layer with the watermark on your timeline is exactly the same size as the entire video unless you only want it to appear for a particular moment.
6. Save the video to your PC using the “Export project” tab.

Now that you know how to add a watermark to a video, go ahead and explore our 3 most popular tutorials:

• How to apply a slow-motion effect to a video
• How to create a picture-in-picture effect
• How to blur objects in a video to hide them from the viewers

Way too often decent videos come with a low-quality sound. The reasons vary: unexpected noises in the background, wind whistling, or even a microphone mistakenly covered by the operator’s finger. As a result, while editing the footage, you might need to remove the sound from the video and replace it with music or a voice recording.

There are several ways to do that including two-click tricks that will let you mute a video in literally 3 seconds. In the article below, we’ll describe three methods and explain the benefits of each. We’ll also look into further steps you might want to take – say, removing audio noise or changing the volume of a part of the audio.

For the tutorial, we’ll be using free video editing software named VSDC. It’s designed for Windows OS and requires minimum system resources.

Download VSDC Free Video Editor

Essentially, there are two ways to remove sound from a video: by muting it and by deleting the original audio track completely from the file. The former is the easiest and the fastest option if you just need to silence the video. The latter is more convenient if you want to replace the original audio with a new soundtrack. Let’s go over each method.

How to remove audio from video: method #1

We’ll start with a quick trick where the original audio track remains a part of the file but becomes absolutely silent. To try it out, import a video file to VSDC Free Video Editor and follow these two steps:

1. Use the right mouse button to click on the video you need to mute.
2. Select “Audio effects --> Amplitude --> Silence” as illustrated below.

Now, essentially, what you do is add a “Silence” layer over the video. It means the audio remains a part of the file but gets muted by the filter. And since you can easily shrink, stretch, and move layers with a mouse, this method will work for silencing the entire video or muting just a part of it. For the latter, adjust the size of the “Silence” layer with a mouse and move it to the part of the footage you need to mute.

Quick tip: if the main reason you want to remove audio from video is the background noise, you might also consider noise-reducing filters available in VSDC. A detailed tutorial on noise reduction is published here.

How to mute audio in a video: method #2

That first method was easy, wasn’t it? Now, the next method is two clicks longer (which makes it 4 clicks). Here is how to perform it:

1. Import a video you need to mute to VSDC Free Video Editor.
2. Use the right mouse button to click on the video and select “Properties”. The “Properties window” will slide in from the right-hand side of the editor.
3. Scroll down to the “Audio track” field and switch to “Don’t use audio”.

This method gives you less flexibility. When you use it, you technically choose to disregard the sound of the selected file entirely. That doesn’t, however, prevent you from adding an audio file to the project and using it as a new soundtrack.

How to remove sound from video by deleting the audio track: method #3

If you prefer, you can go one step further and delete the audio track of your file completely. To do that, follow the steps below:

1. Use the right mouse button to click on the file you need to mute and select “Properties” from the menu. The “Properties window” will slide in from the right-hand side.
2. Scroll down to the very bottom and use the light green “Split to video and audio” button. Once you do, you’ll see that the soundtrack now appears as a separate layer on the timeline.
3. Select it and hit Delete.

Having a soundtrack layer separated is also convenient when you need to cut out or modify a fragment of the audio. Here is a detailed video on how to change the volume of a part of the audio in VSDC.

How to replace audio with another soundtrack or voice commentaries

We’ve shown you 3 methods to remove audio from a video. Now, let’s see what to do next. In most cases, you don’t want your video to stay silent, so you might need to upload a new soundtrack. To do that, just click the “Add object” button and choose “Audio” or use the Shift + A keyboard combination. Once the uploaded audio track is on the timeline, adjust the sound to go along with the video by moving the new track along the layer. If you need to trim the file or cut out a part of it, use this tutorial. Splitting audio files in VSDC works exactly the same way as splitting videos.

Finally, if you need to record voice comments for the video, you can do that right in VSDC as well. The voice capturing tool is available in the free version of the program and it allows you to create voiceovers with minimum effort. You’ll be able to add the voice recording to the timeline as a new layer and adjust it just like you would do with any other audio file. Watch our instructions on adding voice over video here.

Now that you know how to mute, remove, and replace an audio track, go ahead and try it for yourself. Pick the most convenient method and start your montage experiments!

Drop us a message on Facebook if you have any questions and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more tutorials.

The most difficult part of any presentation is to maintain the attention of the audience, especially when there are numbers involved. Data visualization typically works well, however still pictures and diagrams won’t impress anybody these days. That’s why infographics have become so popular, and therefore – animated charts as well.

Animated charts used in a presentation can help you illustrate business growth, analyze market trends, and visualize development predictions.  In the instructions below, we’ll show you how to create dynamic animated charts in a free video editing software called VSDC.

Download the latest version of VSDC here.

How to start working with charts in VSDC

Once you’ve installed and launched the program, open the “Editor” tab and click the “Add object” button located in the menu at the top of the interface. Select “Chart” from the dropdown menu to add a chart to the scene. You can also use the dedicated icon in the menu on the left-hand side or the Ctrl + C combination. In the pop-up window you’ll be asked to confirm the object’s position on the timeline – just click Ok. A generic chart template will be placed in the scene once you perform this action.

Note that the “Add chart” icon on the left provides 3 options: adding a chart, a diagram, or a “Series” layer. These are the layers that help you fine-tune a chart on different layers. Each new layer is opened with a double-click on the previous one. Thus, by clicking on the “Chart” layer twice, you move to the “Diagram” layer and so on. One chart can contain several 2D diagrams.

Chart setup layers in VSDC

Let’s review each setup layer for you to have a better understanding of where to resort for a necessary parameter.

Chart

This is the first layer you start working with and it allows for setting the general appearance of the chart. Here are the parameters available here:

• The time of chart appearance in the scene and its duration time;
• Colors of axes, borders, and background;
• Axes and borders titles;
• Data direction and alignment.

Diagram

When you make a double click on the “Chart” layer, you get to the second level of settings, called “Diagram”.

The settings on the “Diagram” level are similar to the settings on the “Chart” level. The main difference is that here you’ll be able to edit each diagram individually when there are multiple diagrams in a chart. Here are the properties you can work with:

• Diagram style (2D diagram, 3D pie, funnel, pyramid, etc.)
• The time of the appearance in the scene and the duration time for each diagram;
• Diagram title;
• Colors of each diagram axes and background;
• Format of axes and borders titles.

Series

The last layer you get to by clicking on the Diagram level twice is called “Series”. It allows for adjusting the data displayed in the chart. Here is what you can set up in particular:

• The moment of data appearance and its duration time in the scene;
• Chart legend, its format, color theme and location;
• Series properties style (for instance, if you’ve chosen a 3D diagram style earlier, you’ll need to choose a corresponding properties style such as Pie 3D, Torus 3D, etc.);
• Format, color, and location of the chart data;
• Labels shape, colors, and size;
• The appearance dynamics of the data, etc.

How to create and design a chart in VSDC: basic principles

Now, let’s go over creating a 2D chart in VSDC in details. Follow the steps below.

Step 1. We’ve already touched upon the first step of creating a chart. You need to open the “Editor” tab and click the “Add object” button. From the dropdown menu, select “Chart” to get a generic chart template with several bars as illustrated below.

Step 2. Using the right mouse button, click on the “Chart” layer and select “Properties” from the menu – the “Properties window” will slide in from the right-hand side.

The first menu section here is called “Common settings”. This is where you can type a name for the chart layer, its precise location in the scene, the time of appearance and duration. Note that you can set up the appearance moment and the duration using frames or milliseconds.

Step 3. To add a title right to the chart object, scroll down to the “Titles” section and type the desired name in the field called “Title 1”.

Step 4. To edit colors of the chart, go to the section called “Chart object’s colors” and either select colors manually or apply one of the presets. For example, in the illustration below, we’ve chosen the black preset to apply the black-and-white style to the background, the legend, the data, and the borders.

Step 5. To change the color theme of the gridline area, open the section called “2D diagrams appearance” located in the same “Chart object’s colors” menu. For example, in the illustration below we’ve adjusted the following parameters:

• Background – black and gray (comes in the selected color preset).
• Axis color – light blue.
• Interlaced color and Interlaced color 2 - black.

If you have added multiple diagrams to the chart, you can set up the distance between them as well as their style and position regarding each other – horizontal or vertical, rotated or not.

Step 6. Finally, you can set up colors of the chart’s legend: its background, text, frame, labels as well as the legend’s position. In the example below, we’ve left the color theme selected with the preset, however, we’ve changed the legend’s position. Check the following parameters:

• Horizontal alignment – center
• Vertical alignment – near outside
• Direction – left to right
• Column count - 0

Step 7. The next step will be filling bars with color. If you want to have the Gradient effect, you need to select 2 colors for each bar. In the menu on the right-hand side, bars are indicated as “Entry 1”, “Entry 2”, etc. For example, in the illustration below, we’ve filled each bar with a gradient of the same tone colors.

The arrows “up” and “down” in each entry field allow you to apply the selected color to the previous or the next bar. The X icon removes all the changes made to the entry.

All the parameters selected in the “Properties window” for the “Chart” layer are applied to the entire chart. If you want to modify the appearance of each diagram in the chart, make a double-click on the “Chart” layer and select the diagram you want to work with.

How to design the appearance of a selected diagram

In case you have multiple diagrams in a single chart, here is how you can edit each one independently.

Make a double click on the “Chart” layer to get to the “Diagram” layer. On the timeline, you’ll see each diagram as a separate layer. If you want to add a diagram, you can do it manually by clicking the “Add chart” icon and choosing “Diagram” option this time.

Make a right mouse button click on the diagram you want to edit and choose “Properties” – the “Properties window” will slide in from the right-hand side.

1. The “Common settings” menu is similar to the one for the “Chart” layer.
2. The “Diagram properties” menu allows to choose the diagram style (2D diagram, 3D pie, funnel, etc.) and the direction of the bars – horizontal or vertical.
3. The axis X and Y settings allow for choosing colors, thickness, and other parameters for each axis. Secondary axis X and Y are exactly the same as the primary ones and located on the opposite sides of the chart.

Finally, you can change the axis titles here. Specifically, you can edit their font, format, angle, and other parameters as illustrated below.

If you want to go into the details, you can also adjust the thickness of tick marks, change their number, length, and everything in between to make your chart unique and impeccable.

Range

The reason why “Range” is described in a separate paragraph is that it is directly related to chart animation settings.

First of all, you should find the field “Axis X – Range – Auto range/View auto range” and switch both settings to “False”. Do the same for Axis Y. The “Auto range” allows for setting the minimum and maximum axis values. Meanwhile, the “View auto range” parameter allows for setting the minimum and maximum axis values that will be visible during the chart playback. You should always make sure that the former has higher values than the latter.

How to set up range parameters

To illustrate everything we’ve just said above, let’s select the following settings in the Range menu for our example chart:

1. Auto range field:

Minimum value:

• Initial value – 0. This is the minimum possible axis scale value for the first frame.
• Final value – 0. This is the minimum possible axis scale value for the last frame.

Range size:

• Initial value – 100. This is the maximum possible axis scale value for the first frame.
• Final value – 100. This is the maximum possible axis scale value for the last frame.

2. View auto range field (these parameters define the displayed axis scale limits)

View minimal value:

• Initial value – 0. This is the minimum displayed value for the first frame.
• Final value – 10. This is the minimum displayed value for the last frame.

View range size:

• Initial value – 20. This is the maximum displayed value for the first frame.
• Final value – 70. This is the maximum displayed value for the last frame.

You can see how your video presentation changes as you input various values by using the “Preview” button on the left-hand side above the timeline.

                  First frame                                                                                                                          Last frame

If in the process you’re facing format issues (for instance, when your scale starts with 1 instead of 0), go to the “Series” layer and select the “Numerical” Argument scale type in the Series properties menu.

How to work with the “Series” layer

The final layer is called “Series” and it includes parameters related to the data displayed in the animated chart. Make a double-click on the “Diagram” layer to open the “Series” layer, then use the right mouse button to open the “Properties window”.

The “Common settings” menu is similar to what you’ve seen on the “Chart” and “Diagram” layer. That’s why let’s go straight to the “Series properties” menu.

Legend. Here you can change the title of the legend. Keep in mind that it will only be visible if all the data on this layer (bars in our case) have the same color. To achieve that, you need to select “False” in the following field: “Style – Border – Color each”. Here is what it will look like:

Range. Now, let’s switch to the Range menu settings. Just like you’ve seen on the “Diagram” layer, there are minimum value and range size fields.

Similarly, the minimum value includes two parameters:

• Initial value. Here, you need to put the number of bars that will not be displayed during the first frame. In other words, if you type “2” as the initial value here, the first two bars will be skipped, and the playback will start from the 3^rd one.
• Final value. Here, you need to specify how many bars will not be displayed during the final frame. So, if you type “5”, that will mean bars #1-5 will not be visible in the last frame.

Note that the color from the bar that gets excluded from the playback is applied to the following bar displayed during the playback. To be more precise, if the first bar is yellow and the second bar is blue, but the first one will not be displayed during the first frame, the second bar becomes yellow automatically during the playback.

Range size also has two key parameters:

• Initial value. Here, you decide how many bars in total will be displayed in the first frame. For example, if you put “2”, there will be only 2 bars displayed in the video starting the first one (indicated in the Minimum value field).
• Final value. Here, you decide how many bars will be displayed in the last frame. For example, if you put “10” – there will be 10 bars visible in the last frame (starting from the first one displayed.

How to set up properties for a particular bar in the diagram

You can edit each bar in the diagram using the “Series” layer. Bars are indicated as “Point 1”, “Point 2”, etc. So, for each point, you can set up initial and final parameters – value, titles, and colors that will be displayed at the beginning of a video and at the end.

To do it, use the “Set values” button and select “Set arguments” from the pop-up menu. Once you do that, proceed with typing the initial value and the step.

• Initial value. This parameter defines the value on the Axis X for the first bar in the diagram. By default, it’s always 1 – see the illustration above.
• Step. Here, you set up an interval between bars. By default, it’s always 5.

After you set the values, click «Process» and then «Ок».

The second menu option once you click the “Set values” button is called “Set random values”. It creates random Axis Y values for all the bars. The more times you click on this option, the more random values will be applied.

Similarly, the following “Set colors” option allows for setting random colors for the bars or using a palette.

How to work with charts from Excel files

In addition to everything above said, you can build charts based on the data from an Excel spreadsheet uploaded to VSDC. To activate this feature, go to “Series – Set values – Import from Excel”. For correct upload, you need to format the data the following way:

In the illustration above, the “Argument” column contains Axis X values for each bar, and the “Value 1” column contains values for Axis Y.  If you need to export chart data to an Excel file, proceed to “Series – Set values – Export to Excel”.

How to set up chart dynamics

We’ve finally approached the most exciting and the shortest part of our instruction – applying dynamics to a chart. The point of a dynamic chart is that its elements (bars, for instance) change their values on both Axis as the video continues.

To apply dynamics to a chart, you need to open the following setting on the “Series” layer: “Series properties – Points”. Then, select the point you’re planning to apply dynamics to and find the “Argument” or the “Value” field. Click on the three-dot <…> icon and you’ll see a straight trajectory in the timeline.

This trajectory corresponds with the value of the chosen bar on the Axis X or on the Axis Y – depending on whether you chose the “Argument” or the “Value” field. By making double clicks on it, you can create control points and drag them around modifying the trajectory. By dragging control points up and down you apply positive or negative values for a particular chart bar in a chosen time moment.

Below is an illustration of dynamics applied to the Point 1.

Now go ahead and try to design your first animated chart in VSDC!

Looking for more awesome tutorials? Check out our YouTube channel and ask any question on our Facebook page.