Rendering and exporting

From the studio to your audience.

Open Edit & preview on any moment. Trim with minutes:seconds, rearrange sections, change captions and choose a layout. Save preserves the edit; Create video prepares a new export without replacing your old downloads.

Formats & layouts

Choose vertical 9:16 (1080 × 1920), portrait 4:5 (1080 × 1350), square 1:1 (1080 × 1080) or landscape 16:9 (1920 × 1080). Studio Full frame uses a centered crop. Top-half layouts fit the original picture into the upper half of a vertical video and keep the speaker’s audio.

The bottom half can stay blank or show uploaded B-roll. Add a description of each upload, then match it to the conversation. Matching compares transcript topics with those descriptions; it does not identify objects in the footage. You can place, trim or remove every suggestion. Short footage loops silently.

Free stock B-roll

In the editor's B-roll tab, search NASA, Wikimedia Commons and Openverse (and Pexels and Pixabay when they are switched on), or press Suggest stock for this cut for footage matched to what is being said. Chosen items go into your media library with their licence. CC BY items need credit: Peakframe adds it to the post text, the publish pack and the downloads page. Photos show for up to 10 seconds with a slow zoom. Check each licence before publishing: some stock shows trademarks or recognisable people, and NASA material must not suggest NASA endorses anything.

AI images

When AI images are switched on, the B-roll tab has an AI image box: describe a picture, choose its shape and press Generate · 1 credit. Write AI prompt on a suggested moment drafts the description from what is said. Your description is sent to Google. AI images are marked AI in your library, and a clip that uses one says so on its downloads page, in clip.json and in each platform's posting tip, so you can switch on the platform's AI label. A failed image is not charged.

With or without captions

Select No Captions to export a video without burned-in text. New studio exports also include clean.mp4, regardless of the caption style you chose. Your plan watermark remains. SRT and VTT files carry optional, separate captions timed to the edited video.

Editor layout and shortcuts

The editor is laid out like CapCut. On a computer the tools sit in a rail on the left, the clip in the middle, and the inspector, a panel on the right, shows the open tool's settings. Selecting something swaps the tools for its own: a section brings Split, Speed, Volume, Freeze, Transition and Crop; text brings Edit, Style, Animate and Keyframes; a caption brings its style, animation and position. Press Esc to go back to the whole clip and the main tools.

Open Canvas and pick a Ratio to change the clip's shape. Selecting the video shows a small toolbar above it for cropping, flipping, speed and freezing. Play and the frame-accurate time sit in the play row under the clip. Drag the top edge of the timeline to make it taller or shorter, hide it to give the clip more room, or watch in full screen.

The keys match CapCut: Space plays, Ctrl/⌘ B splits, Delete removes the selection, F freezes a frame, ← and → step one frame (Shift: one second), N turns snapping on or off, Ctrl/⌘ + and − zoom the timeline, Ctrl/⌘ . hides it and Shift Ctrl/⌘ F opens full screen. Press ? to see them all.

The editor on your phone

On a phone the clip fills the top, with the play row under it, then the timeline and a toolbar along the bottom. Tap a tool and its sheet slides up over the timeline: the everyday choices come first, and Advanced unfolds the finer controls (it stays open on that device). Tap ✓, the tool again or your phone's Back to close the sheet. Selecting something swaps the toolbar for that item's tools; ‹ goes back to the main tools.

The playhead stays in the middle of the timeline: swipe the timeline to scrub through the clip (let go mid-swipe and it glides to a stop), pinch to zoom in or out around the playhead, and double-tap the ruler to fit the whole clip. The timeline shows the video and captions rows, plus text, B-roll and music once the clip has them; tap a row's icon for its menu (hide or mute, lock).

Tap an item to select it, and drag a selected item's handles to trim it. Long-press an item and move your finger to move it, or long-press and let go for its menu; the menu's Select more lets you tap other items to add them to the selection. Long-press a keyframe diamond to move it.

Turn the phone to landscape to watch the clip larger: the timeline button in the play row brings the timeline and tools up over it. On a desktop or a wide tablet (1024 px and wider) the same tools sit in a rail on the left, and the sheet becomes a panel on the right that stays open.

Some phones can’t play every video format: an upload in AV1, VP9 or HEVC (a WebM saved from YouTube, an iPhone recording) gets a phone-friendly preview copy a few minutes after it arrives, and the editor uses it on every device. Your exports always come from the original.

Editing on the canvas

Edit straight on the picture, as in CapCut. A tap on the canvas selects what is under your finger: a text first, then the captions, then a B-roll, then the video; tap empty space to go back to the clip. A tap never changes anything.

Drag a text or the captions to move them, and use two fingers to pinch (resize) and twist (turn) whatever is selected. A selected text has four corner buttons: delete, edit the words, duplicate, and a handle that resizes and turns it with one finger. Double-tap a text to edit its words. The captions move, resize and turn together, as one block, so every caption follows. While you move something, guides show when it is centred and it snaps to the centre (and to straight angles as it turns); a quick drag carries on past the snap. With a mouse, drag the same way and use Ctrl + scroll (or a trackpad pinch) to resize.

To reframe the video or a B-roll, select it first with a tap, then pinch to zoom and drag to pan the picture inside its box. Moving the video turns Follow speaker off for the clip, starting from what was showing. If the item has keyframes, a gesture changes the keyframe at the playhead or adds one there. Each gesture is one step: Undo puts it back. A locked track's items don't move.

Every value has an exact field too: a text's Style sheet and the captions' Position sheet hold X, Y, size and rotation, and Crop & frame holds the video's or the selected B-roll's zoom, pan and fit. Arrow keys nudge a selected text or caption block (Shift for bigger steps).

Transitions and frame rate

Transitions: open Transitions on the left and pick a style: Dissolve, Dip to black, Dip to white, Wipe left or right, Slide left or right, or Zoom in. It goes on the selected cut, or the cut nearest the playhead; the small + on any cut on the timeline adds one too, and Apply to all cuts sets every cut at once. The next section starts during the transition, so the clip gets shorter by its length. A transition can last from 0.1 to 2 seconds, and at most half of either section it joins.

The sound crossfades with the picture. Under the overlap, the captions switch from one section's words to the next at its midpoint; the Transition tab tells you when a transition covers words, so you can shorten it or trim the sections. Select a transition on the timeline to change its style or length, or remove it.

Frame rate: the Frame tab sets the export to 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60 frames per second; 30 is the default, and 50 and 60 are on Creator Pro and Team. The editor's timecode and frame steps follow the choice. In the editor files, clip.otio carries the transitions; clip.edl has dissolves; for clip.xml and clip.fcpxml the readme lists each transition to add.

Keyframes and section audio

Text keyframes: select a text, move the playhead and press a diamond (◆ Position, Scale, Rotation or Opacity) in its inspector. One keyframe holds all four at that moment. Then move the playhead and drag, resize or rotate the text, or change its numbers: at a keyframe that changes it, anywhere else it adds one. The text moves from keyframe to keyframe; Smooth eases into a keyframe and Linear moves at an even speed. Previous and Next jump between keyframes. On the timeline the selected text shows its keyframes as diamonds: click one to go there, drag it (or press ← and →) to move it to another frame, and press Delete to remove it. A text can have up to 32 keyframes; trimming its start keeps each one at its moment in the clip.

Video keyframes: the Frame tab has the same diamonds for Zoom, Pan and Opacity. A video keyframe sits on a moment of the recording, so it stays on the same footage when you trim, speed up or freeze a section. Lower opacity shows the background behind the video.

Section audio: select a section and open its Audio tab. Volume goes from −30 to +12 dB (double-click the slider for 0 dB); Fade in and Fade out last up to 3 seconds and at most half of the section, and the waveform shows them. The export applies them after evening out the loudness, so a quieter section stays quieter. Under a transition, the volume moves from one section's to the next across the overlap. If your browser can't route the episode's sound, the preview still plays and says: Boosts above 0 dB are not previewed here; the export has them. In the editor files, the readme lists each section's volume and fades.

Drafts and the timeline workflow

Drafts: the editor keeps your unsaved changes as a draft about two seconds after each change; the top bar says Draft saved. A draft is yours alone and is separate from the numbered versions your team sees. Reopen the clip and your draft comes back, with Discard beside it. If someone saved a newer version since your draft began, you choose: Restore my draft or Use version N. Save version clears your draft.

Right-click menu: right-click a section, text, B-roll, a freeze or empty timeline (or press Shift F10 or the Menu key; on a phone, long-press) for the actions that apply there, each with its shortcut. Ctrl/⌘ C, X and V copy, cut and paste text and B-roll; pasted items keep their spacing and start at the playhead, and B-roll pastes only into clips of the same episode. Ctrl/⌘ D duplicates right after the original. Shift Delete is a ripple delete: it removes the item and closes the gap on its track.

Several at once: Ctrl/⌘- or Shift-click adds or removes items, or drag a box across empty track space. Drag any selected text or B-roll to move them together; delete them together, keeping at least one section.

Hover preview: with the eye button on (S), the clip shows the moment under the pointer while the playhead stays put.

Track controls: each track header can mute (video) or hide (text, captions, B-roll) its track, and lock it. Muted and hidden tracks leave the exported video too, as in CapCut, and a note beside Create video says so; captions files are still written. A locked track can't be dragged, trimmed, pasted onto or deleted until you unlock it. The video sections show the sound's waveform, and B-roll shows a thumbnail.

Speed, freeze frames and the look

Speed: select a section on the timeline; its Speed tab opens. Pick 0.5×, 1.5×, 2× or 3×, or set anything from 0.25× to 4×. Keep voice pitch stays on unless you want the sound to follow the speed. Captions, text and B-roll placements move with the words they sit on; B-roll footage itself always plays at normal speed.

Freeze: press Freeze (or F) to hold the frame at the playhead for 2 seconds. Speech pauses while it holds and music keeps playing. Drag the striped hold on the timeline to make it between 0.5 and 5 seconds, or select it and press Delete.

Filters: the Filters tool gives the whole clip one look, with an intensity slider. The Picture tab adds brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, tint, highlights, shadows, fade and vignette on top. The look applies to your recording; B-roll, stock, logos, text and captions keep their own colours. The preview uses the same numbers as the export.

Background fills any part of the frame the picture does not cover, such as a fitted picture or the B-roll layout: black, a colour, or a blur of your recording. The preview of the blur is close rather than exact. Flip horizontally mirrors the recording in place, which fixes a mirrored webcam.

Every handoff carries the speed. Final Cut (clip.fcpxml), the EDL and OpenTimelineIO also carry freeze frames; Premiere XML (clip.xml) leaves a gap where a frame holds, and editor-readme.txt lists each one so you can add a frame hold there.

Choose the right handoff

Use Clean video, captions & editor files on a finished clip for download links and step-by-step instructions. Unzip the editor bundle first. Source timelines preserve the sections; caption styling, B-roll, framing and audio treatment are flattened into the MP4. The source episode is downloaded separately to avoid duplicating a large recording in every bundle.

Automatic checks cover file structure, frame alignment and rendered timing. Import behavior can vary by native editor version; review the imported timeline before finishing your edit.

Adobe’s FCPXML compatibility note · Apple’s XML guide · CapCut’s subtitle guide