Clipchamp, the default video editing software for Windows 10 and Windows 11, is surprisingly capable for both personal and professional use. It includes all the basic tools you need to produce video projects, some fun effects, and helpful templates for social media posts. That said, uncompetitive export speeds and various upsells are drawbacks. If you find that the free version satisfies your casual filmmaking requirements, then there’s no reason to seek out alternatives. However, if you need more powerful tools and faster rendering performance, you should pay for CyberLink PowerDirector, our Editors’ Choice winner for enthusiast video editing software.
What Is Clipchamp?
Clipchamp is a web-based Windows store app that’s available as a progressive web app (PWA) on any platform. It’s included with Windows 11, though you can download the dedicated app on Windows 10. An iPhone app is now available, too.
Similar to Canva, Clipchamp targets marketers who want to make quick hits on social media using meme-like, template-based designs. But it’s fine for basic clip joining, splitting, and trimming, too. You can even add some panache to your productions via some eye-catching effects.
It’s generally as responsive as a native app, though you might have to wait a bit while content (such as transitions) downloads and your completed video renders. During typical editing, Clipchamp takes advantage of graphics hardware acceleration.
A benefit of Clipchamp being a web app is that you can access a project you create on your PC from wherever else you sign into your account. Just keep in mind that it doesn’t store media in the cloud unless you spring for a subscription. One downside to Clipchamp being a web app is that web navigation sometimes works against you. For example, the back button in a browser might take you out of your Clipchamp project entirely.
How Much Does Clipchamp Cost?
Clipchamp’s free version gets you basic editing tools and some AI capabilities, though it restricts the output resolution to 1080p, limits the stock content you can access, and doesn’t support cloud backup. The Premium tier ($11.99 per month or $119.99 per year) unlocks the ability to export to 4K resolution, brand kit support, content backup (without a mention of a storage limit), premium filters and effects, and premium stock assets. Alternatively, you can get 4K output, a brand kit, and some premium filters and effects as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription.
For comparison, Canva’s free plan lacks some editing features you get with its paid tiers but includes 5GB of online storage, millions of templates, and millions of stock assets. Canva’s $15-per-month Pro plan gets you more of everything, while its $30-per-month Enterprise plan adds team features and more branding tools. Another online video editor with a marketing bent is Promo, which starts at $348 per year.
Other video editing software is also available for a one-time purchase: Adobe Premiere Elements costs $99.99 for a three-year license, Corel VideoStudio charges $99.99 outright, CyberLink PowerDirector goes for $139.99 (or $74.99 per year), and Movavi Video Editor Plus runs you $99.95. Apple iMovie is completely free.
What’s New in Clipchamp?
Here’s a rundown of what’s new since our last review:
Image Background Remover. This tool uses AI to detect the subject of an image and then removes the background, which you can replace with whatever image you want. Unfortunately, this tool works only for still images.
iOS App. Clipchamp is now available for the iPhone, complete with multitrack editing and AI features, like auto captioning, auto reframing, and text-to-speech. There’s still no Android app, but Clipchamp says it is working on one. That’s a bit strange because Windows tends to integrate with Android better than with iOS.
Noise Suppression. This is another tool that takes advantage of AI to detect and remove background noise in video and audio clips. Most enthusiast-level video editing programs have this feature.
Rotate. You can now freely rotate videos, images, logos, and graphics up to 360 degrees. Previously, free users could do so only in 90-degree increments.
Silence Remover. As its name suggests, this uses AI to find and remove silent sections of your video clip or voiceover.
Stock Music. The app has over 200 more royalty-free music tracks than before for your video creations.
Transitions. You now get 20 more transitions, including special-effect options like Bloom, Burn, Glitch, Horizontal Banding, and Pixelate, along with basic standbys like Cross Fade, Fade to Black, Page Turn, Push, and Wipe.
Xbox Integration. You can now access your Xbox clips directly in Clipchamp. In related feature news, Clipchamp adds GIFs, stickers, and royalty-free stock videos and music from games like Sea of Thieves and Minecraft.
Get Started With Clipchamp
To use Clipchamp, you can log in with any email address. If you ever plan to upgrade to Premium, however, you need to log in with your Microsoft account.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
The app’s attractive welcome screen offers templates that help you start developing your video project. You also see tiles for all of your recent projects below these templates. Template options include ads, slideshows, social media posts, and more. Down the left-hand side are choices for other views, including Brand Kit (for more businesslike uses of the app), Template, Settings, and Folders. Note that Clipchamp doesn’t appear to have a dark mode until you start editing a video; the startup interface has a light theme regardless of your system settings.
Creating a Movie Using Clipchamp
You now have two choices for starting your Clipchamp project. You can click Create a New Video or use the automated Create Video With AI process (more on that in a moment). If you go the first route, you see the template options along the left. You also have tools for adding media, music, stock images, text, graphics, and transitions.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
You can add clips from local folders, a webcam, or an online media storage service. With your PC’s webcam, you can choose to show a picture-in-picture with the camera view overlaid inside your project frame.
The app uses a standard three-panel layout, with a source media section, a preview window, and a timeline along the bottom. You can adjust the relative size of any of these panels, but you can’t change the size of interface elements, which isn’t optimal for high-DPI screens. In a nice UI touch, panels on both the left and right side helpfully slide out of the way when you click on a function icon again after using it.
The interface is touch-friendly, as I found on my test Surface Laptop. Video shortcuts like tapping the space bar to play and pause, S to split a clip, and the arrow keys to scrub back and forth are at your service. However, you don’t get pro editing shortcuts like J, K, and L for reverse, pause, and play, or I and O for in and out. A question mark icon opens a search tool for help topics or lets you chat with support reps. You can easily move back and forth in the timeline with the mouse wheel while holding the shift key down or zoom it in and out while pressing the Ctrl key; use the Fit Timeline button if you want to restore the view.
Basic Video Editing
It’s a snap to drag a clip from the media panel on the left or click its plus sign to send it to the timeline. It’s a rather iMovie-like experience in that you can drag above the top track to create a new one. I added 10 tracks without the program breaking a sweat. Other video editors like PowerDirector claim to support up to 100 tracks, though most users are unlikely to ever need more than a dozen.
After I added several clips to a timeline, the program decided that my movie should use a vertical format. That seems to be because the first clip is a vertical clip from my smartphone (the rest of the images are in landscape orientation). It’s simple, however, to click on the format thumbnail at the top right of the viewer and to choose another.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Trimming track ends is a simple matter of grabbing and dragging the mouse cursor on the side of a clip. To split a clip, use the scissors icon. If you grab a clip in the middle, you can drag it side to side or even up or down to a different track. If your editing creates a gap, a simple garbage can icon appears, letting you delete it. But there’s no option to group content on other tracks so that they move together when you move another timeline element, like with many alternatives.
Advanced Effects
It’s easy to crop, move, or resize a clip using handles in the preview window. Right-click context-menu options let you copy, rotate, or flip the clip. You add transitions by dragging one of the 49 attractive options between two clips. The software handles any necessary overlapping automatically. Just don’t expect the hundreds of creative transitions you find in tools like Corel VideoStudio and CyberLink PowerDirector.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Over 40 filters deliver a range of looks, from Disco and Euphoric to Gloomy and Muted. You can hover over them to see what they do to the current clip in the preview window. Clipchamp’s Effects are in a separate section on the right-side toolbar. Effects are stronger than filters, adding motion and effects like blur, cartoon, and zoom. You can apply more than one effect to the same clip, which can be very fun to play with, especially since they appear instantly. New since my last review of Clipchamp is a helpful search box, so you can easily find the effect you want.
Among these effects is a green screen (aka chroma keying) tool that’s instant and accurate. You can even find sample green screen clips in Clipchamp’s Content Library section (though all the ones I found require a Premium subscription).
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Picture-in-picture doesn’t even feel like an advanced effect in the app since a simple right-click option in the preview window lets you snap a clip to any corner. You can then resize it to taste and (now) rotate it as well.
Graphics overlays, including bars, Giphys, and Stickers, live in the Content Library tab. You need to pay for a subscription to get the most out of this section. YouTube creators should appreciate the healthy helping of Like and Subscribe buttons. A search box at the top helps you find what you need among the many categories and subcategories. You can also search here for the other stock media types—music, photo, and video.
Competitors like Corel VideoStudio and CyberLink PowerDirector have extensive libraries with editing and animation options. They also give you a wealth of effects and tools that you don’t see in Clipchamp, like motion tracking and keyframe editing. Those apps also greatly exceed Clipchamp in color grading, though Clipchamp does have adjustments for exposure, color temperature, contrast, and saturation.
Another special effect Clipchamp offers is video speedup and slowdown. Its speedometer icon shows Slow, Normal, and Fast. You can set the speed from 0.1x to 16x, though there are no ramp-up or freeze frame options.
AI-Powered Automatic Movies
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Clipchamp’s automated creation process involves four steps: Upload Media, Style, Length, and Export. You start by choosing Create a Video With AI from the home page. You give the project a title and add media files; you can add a bunch at a time. Then, click Get Started. Next, you either choose a Style or let the program choose one for you. While a Reviewing Media animation plays, you tell the program which styles you prefer by tapping a thumbs-up or thumbs-down button.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
After that, you have to decide between a vertical or horizontal format and choose a time length. For my test clips, this could be less than 30 seconds, about one minute, or full length. I chose a horizontal orientation and a time length of about a minute.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
You also have to choose a music style. I got just six choices, but you can choose from more soundtracks later in the editing process.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
At this point, you either continue to the export step or tap the Create a New Version option. Changing the video’s look with this option was quick, but I wish the option were more prominent, like the big Remix button from the previous Windows video editor; my first results are seldom great. Finally, you press Export or Edit in Timeline. I tried the first option. My one-minute movie took about 40 seconds to export. The program shows its progress and a preview. A vertical bar with a pattern on the side appeared in much of the result, which I wasn’t thrilled with. A Keep Editing arrow button lets you perfect the project in the standard timeline editor, but you can’t use the automatic remixing anymore after that point.
Happily, I could unhide portions of a clip that the auto-edit feature had trimmed. It’s better than a lot of the similar auto-movie features in other video editing programs, but it still didn’t produce a usable end product in my testing. I could at least build on its ideas, however. It doesn’t create titles like other similar tools.
Useful Templates
Templates ease the video creation process for nonprofessionals. They are a strength for Clipchamp, and its YouTube options are especially good. You don’t have to use a template for an entire video. You can just choose an outro template that urges your viewers to subscribe to your channel, for example.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
You get both horizontal and vertical templates for Instagram Reels and the like. You can search for topics, which range from the very personal (Grandparents’ Day) to the very corporate (Marketing Intro). Indeed, Clipchamp has templates for ads, marking, and sales—all useful for small businesses.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Templates include stock footage and background music that you can use or replace. Many of the templates are limited to things like social handles, split-screen layouts, text overlays, and vertical shorts. They’re not full storyboards that tell you what kinds of shots to place where in the production like you find in PowerDirector. Beware, however, that contributors can withdraw stock content, an issue I ran into when trying to open an older project.
Though you can see what kind of content each part of a template requires, I prefer Apple iMovie’s Storyboards (and previous Trailers) feature, which explicitly tells you what kind of clip to insert, like close-up, group shot, and wide shot.
Titles Tell the Story
Clipchamp has dozens of text overlay styles, many with animation, that it groups into sets for Title, Caption, Two-Line, Special, and Intro/Outro. The Special group includes credits, memes, quotes, and ratings. Most styles resemble what you see in advertisements, though you do get a few fun ones, like Glitch, Groovy, and Smoke. I like that these templates don’t lock you into a specific font. You can select from more than 100 typefaces. You also have complete control over font color. Some of the styles let you move around and resize to taste, while other more stylized ones let you only resize and move to the corners or center. One slight knock is that the titles aren’t WYSIWYG; that is, you don’t type right over the video but rather in a sidebar. Some template text also isn’t editable.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Auto-Captions
A nifty Auto-Captions tool is something you find in high-end applications like Final Cut Pro. In Clipchamp, auto-captioning is a one-button affair (well, a second button has you choose the language). You also get an option to filter profanity. The results are impressive, if not perfect, and you can edit them to taste. You can also jump to the spot on your timeline where someone is speaking the captioned words, something Adobe made a lot of noise about when it added a similar feature to Premiere Pro. The same holds for the ability to find and delete filler words, though Clipchamp didn’t find all the “uhs” and “aahs” in testing.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Working With Sound
More than 380 free-to-use tracks are at your service for background music across categories like Corporate, Pop, and Sad. As with other clip types, you simply drag a soundtrack onto your timeline. Clipchamp on Windows 11 lets you separate a clip’s audio and save it as a separate M4A file. (On Windows 10, it strangely saved the audio file as a WebM file.) You can then adjust the volume of both that and any soundtrack with a simple slider.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
The software lets you record voiceover audio and can automatically generate captions from it, as mentioned. You get to the voiceover options from the Record & Create button along the left, which shows big, clear action tiles. As these show, you can record alongside your webcam image or just an audio track by itself.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
An interesting and potentially very helpful option is Speaker Coach, which gives you pointers to improve your narration. It worked for me only when I recorded with both the camera and audio on, even though I’d turned it on for audio-only recording. I didn’t see real-time suggestions, but got the below summary after recording:
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
If you’re microphone-shy, Clipchamp’s AI text-to-speech tool provides more than 400 natural voice styles in 170 languages. You can even set the accent, gender, mood, and pitch for the AI voice.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
I like that you can simply tap the speaker icon within a clip to mute its audio. A new feature that lets you remove background noise is also handy. To use it, you must first detach the clip’s audio. It did an excellent job of removing wind noise from a clip I recorded outside. You also get some sound effects, such as an angelic choir, children shrieking, fireworks, and several gongs. The sound effects that you get for free are an odd collection, with many basics like footsteps and car crashes locked behind a subscription.
Exporting and Sharing
One of the early digs against Clipchamp was that it didn’t let you export HD video without paying a subscription. Free accounts can now export to 1080p. That’s probably good enough for social and personal sharing since you don’t want to be transferring gigabytes of data for those purposes. Outputting 4K, however, requires a subscription either to Clipchamp or Microsoft 365. You can also save your project as a GIF if it’s under 15 seconds.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Buttons on the export screen let you share your movie as a video link from Clipchamp itself, as well as output to cloud storage providers (Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive) and social media sites (LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube). It works well as far as it goes, but you have no control over settings like the file type or bit rate. A test project of mine rendered as an MP4 file at 30fps with a bit rate of 17Mbps and 192kbps audio, but your results might depend on your input media. The option to save your exported file doesn’t appear until after rendering is complete.
In my test 1080p rendering of a 5-minute project consisting of clips of various resolutions from 8K to 720p, Clipchamp took over 5 minutes on a Surface Laptop 3 with a Core i7 CPU, Intel Iris Plus Graphics, and 16GB RAM. I don’t expect Clipchamp users to produce feature-length titles, however. It’s more for 30-second promotions or social videos.
Verdict: A Video Editing Champ?
Clipchamp succeeds as a simple, mostly template-driven tool, and we like its impressive text-to-speech captioning and voiceover tools. Its modern, straightforward user experience is also a highlight. Just don’t expect features like advanced transitions, audio filters, flexible output file settings, keyframe effect editing, and motion tracking. Rendering speeds could be better, too. You can likely get by with Clipchamp’s free tier if you need basic tools and effects for social and promotional videos, but you need to pay for the subscription version to explore all its creative possibilities. For a fuller feature set and better output performance in an equally intuitive interface, look to our Editors’ Choice winner for enthusiast-level video editing programs, CyberLink PowerDirector.
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The Bottom Line
Clipchamp is a free, Windows-centric video editing app that can handle quick social videos and small business marketing jobs, but you have to pay to get all of its features and content.
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About Michael Muchmore
Lead Software Analyst
