Clipchamp has a clever new feature that makes editing videos a lot easier and faster. Instead of trimming the video, just delete parts of the transcript, Clipchamp will do the rest.
Clipchamp can already make a text transcript from the audio of a meeting or conversation. Microsoft Word can also convert prerecorded audio into a transcript. Our book Dictation and Read Aloud with Office has a chapter devoted to Word’s Transcript feature.
The new trick lets you remove parts of the transcript and Clipchamp will then delete the matching part of the video. Good for meetings that get side-tracked or interrupted.
How to edit video by transcript
After loading the video or project, choose the Transcript from the right-side panel then Generate Transcript.
Clipchamp will create a text version of the spoken words with time-marks for the start of each segment.
Select a block of text in the transcript, the relevant part of the video is also selected in the timeline. There are two choices:
- Delete – will remove both the text and the video.
- Edit text – to change (fix) the transcript.
My only caution about this feature is that the cuts aren’t always elegant but as an edited version of the meeting it’s probably enough. For a video going to a wider, public, audience you might prefer manual, more subtle editing.
Captions has moved
The Captions option in Clipchamp has moved from the right-pane. All those features are now under the CC (Closed Captions) button.
- Edit transcript and captions – will let you change the text without editing the video.
- Download as .srt – SRT is a standard closed caption text file format.
Who gets it?
Video editing via Transcript should be available for ‘work’ users now.
Personal Clipchamp users will have to wait, “coming soon” is Microsoft’s phrase.
Look on the right-side of the video editing page, if there’s a ‘Captions’ item instead of “Transcript” you’ll know that more patience is required.
