Free Open Source Video Editor With Pre Designed Slideshow Maker

I'm going to give you a full tutorial and then I'm going to give you my final thoughts at the end to help you decide if Canva video editor is for you.

Let's just dive right into it.

💡 Note

In this Canva video editor review, I'm going to walk you through free video maker step by step, and at the end of this tutorial, you'll know exactly how to create high-quality videos using this tool. So if you want to work along with me, here you can try Canva PRO for free (no credit card required)

Canva Video Editing Tutorial

Okay, here we are on the Canva platform. I'm going to select a video.

And there are all sorts of templates like:

And more.

Let's just start with a blank video template and let's get a quick tour of the interface.

Right here in the center is your Canva and this is where you'll be able to see what your video looks like as you're building it.

At the bottom is what's called the timeline so you'll be able to see all the different clips laid out in chronological order.

And on the left is where you can pull all of your elements from.

Canva Templates

We've got templates. If you're familiar with this platform, you know that Canva got lots of video templates for you.

Here you'll also find videos that we've uploaded, we can upload our own videos.

There are other elements we can incorporate as well.

Canva Text

Then there is text.

You could just pick plain text or they have these predesigned text templates. It almost feels endless. There are so many text templates in Canva, which is one of the things that makes Canva really cool.

Canva Audio

Here, we've got audio.

So, there are all sorts of different music tracks that we can pull from separated by category. I mean you just keep scrolling and they just keep going.

Canva Videos

Then we have videos and they have their own stock video that you can pull from.

These are pretty high-quality videos so if you don't have any to upload yourself, you can do that.

You can also search in the search field.

Canva Integrations

You can also link your other social media and file-sharing sites.

So I've got it linked up to my Dropbox. I can pull right from Dropbox; you can pull from Facebook.

And there are all sorts of different apps and integrations that you can pull from.

So they even integrate with other software and programs including:

And it kind of tells you, in what ways you can use those apps in your projects like for example for Bitmoji, you can add your Bitmoji avatars to your designs, which is also pretty cool.

So now that we know our way around Canva a little bit, let's just start building a video.

Canva Video Editing Tutorial

Now let us start with the Canva video editing.

I've already uploaded some videos but if I wanted to add more, I can just drag them into the dashboard.

If it's too long, I can trim it down in the timeline by selecting the box where I can see my video.

And then grabbing the edges and just trimming off some of the lengths, and then I can review it by hitting the play button.

And then if I want to add my next shot, I just hit the plus sign for "add page" and then select the next shot that I want to incorporate.

All right, let's jazz this up a little bit by adding some transitions in between our shots.

So, to do that, we're just going to look down at our timeline, you see this little circle with the plus sign and I can either add a new page in between these shots, or I can add a transition.

And these are the transitions that come with the Canva Pro.

To be honest, there are not enough transitions, and I actually don't really like any of them.

The only one that I find to be decent is the "dissolve" and everything else is cheesy. Really basic.

I'm very surprised that these are the only transitions that Canva offers because Canva offers so much, which is why people love it so much so I definitely think they could do better here.

Now, let's add a little pozas to our project by adding some text.

So, I'm going to select the text menu on the left side of the screen and add any text I like and I just click it and it automatically pops onto this frame that I'm queued up on in my timeline.

So, it's only going to be over this particular shot. Now I can obviously reposition and resize this text and then to modify the text, I just click on it.

But what if I wanted to change these fonts?

I can just select this first text and head on up to the top, leftish part of the screen, and this dropdown gives me all of my fonts.

And you guys, Canva has so many fonts, almost overwhelming, but also awesome.

I don't even know what am I'm going to pick.

So now that I've selected my font, I can make more adjustments to the style. So, I'm going to select effects.

And you can see that there are different style options, so right now it's got an outline and drop shadow look to it.

You can even pick any color of the rainbow using the sliders, or they have free selected colors that are great colors. I actually really like these.

Okay, now that I've got my text all sorted out, let's add some fun to it.

I can head up to the top center of the screen and select animate, and I can make this text do different things.

And in fact, I can apply different animations to the different lines of text.

That looks pretty good to me.

And now the thing I'm going to show you really quick in this Canva video editing demo is I'm going to add our logo to the top right of all of these clips.

So, to do that, we are going to go to logos, where I have already uploaded my logo. I can select a logo and I can shrink it down.

Because I'm selected on this first shot, that is where the logo is overlaid.

Now I could individually bring it into each of these other clips, however, I want the placement to be exactly the same.

So, what I can do is I can click on it in my Canvas, right-click and hit copy, and then select in the next clip, right-clicking in the Canvas and hitting paste, and again for the next clip as well.

Now let's add some music to this. Remember that really sizable music library that Canva offers you?

Just go over to the audio menu on the left side of the screen, and let's select something.

We can preview it by hitting the play button.

All of these pop songs have vocals. If I want to look for clips that don't have vocals, I can head up to the search field and just select instrumentals and hit apply filters.

So I'm just going to select that clip by clicking on it and it's dropped right into my timeline to the end.

I'm going to cue my playhead to the beginning of the timeline and I can hit the play button, or I can just hit the space bar to play it.

And if I want to adjust the volume, I just select the track where I can dial down that volume a little bit.

All right, there's my finished video. One other feature that we didn't really talk about in this Canva video editor review that I do want to show you, and I don't want to miss out on is the ability to record yourself directly into the camera using your webcam.

So, to do that, you could do that from a few different places. You could go to uploads, and if we select this "record yourself" button,

And here you'll see that your webcam image pops up on the screen and you can hit record button to just start recording.

And I do think that that is also very cool. You could also just do audio if you were trying to record a voiceover.

And there's even an option where you could do a screen share and record your entire screen.

You could do a window, you could do a Chrome tab, so there are a lot of options.

And then let's check out our export options.

So first, let's hit this little ellipsis at the top-right of the screen.

You can create a custom link and copy it, and email that link to people, which is really cool. Canva will host it for you.

You can download it, you can share it right to Facebook or to Google Drive or email, or a lot of other ways to share these videos.

Of course, I'm interested in the download option, because I like to see what kind of file types we can choose from.

And of course, it's just MP4 videos. These other file types are really just images. We can share just per page, which is kind of interesting.

And it gave me an HD file type, so 1920 by 1080 is the dimension, even though the original dimensions on these video clips were shot with my iPhone in 4k so it did downsize and degrade the quality of the video clips.

But HD is great, it's still pretty standard so I'm not too worried about that. I would love to see them be able to offer a higher resolution file type in the future.

Canva Video Editor Pros & Cons

So, what are my final thoughts on Canva for video editing?

Canva Video Editor Pros

I think that the user interface on Canva is really intuitive. I love the amount of accent graphics you can add, their stock video library on the pro version of Canva is really good.

There's a lot of stock photos you can pull as well. And I think that it's a really solid editing platform.

Of course, the number of fonts in Canva is astounding as are like the predesigned text layouts that Canva offers and that their designers have already created, so I love that.

I loved how many options there were for the way the fonts could kind of bounce into the frame. I thought that was great.

Canva Video Editor Cons

Where I think Canva might be lacking is in the transitions between video clips. I already said, not a fan of that.

The other thing that I really think kind of bugged me about this editing experience was that I could not adjust the volume on my original clips.

I could not find that anywhere and I have Googled it, and I have spent a lot of time trying to find where I can reduce or mute the audio track from my clips and I cannot find anywhere to do that.

They need to add that because you would hear me talking in the background on these clips, and it's very common in professional video editing software like WeVideo that you might lower the volume, the natural sound on your video clips, or mute it altogether.

So that did kind of aggravate me.

Canva Video Editing Final Words

So that's my Canva video editor review. Whether you want to start your faceless YouTube channel or create professional videos for your brand, Canva covers your back.

What's amazing about Canva is the way that it integrates with so many other platforms.

And just not only the video editing capability on Canva but all the other things that Canva does. That's why people love it so much. It really has beautiful, really trendy, and trendsetting templates, which is really unique.

And I just think Canva is an awesome platform, but I probably don't need to tell you that.

If you haven't checked out Canva yet, here you can get a Canva Pro free trial to see how it works for you.