Editing in Wistia

Make edits to your videos directly in your Wistia account.

For the most delightful experience, we recommend sticking to Chromium Browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera).

Need to make easy edits to your videos? You’re in luck! All Wistia users have access to editing right in Wistia! To get started, click “Studio” in the left-hand side menu of the All Content page, or click “Edit Media” directly from a video’s page in your account.

Worried about the length of your last webinar? No worries. We currently support editing and exporting videos up to three hours long!

Begin by Clicking “Studio” from the All Content Menu.

Once you enter Studio, you’ll notice the ability to switch between your drafts (videos that are currently being edited and have yet to be exported) and recordings (private to you until exported!). Choose a draft or recording and click “edit” to make changes!

From the media page, click “Edit Media” in the left-hand navigation. From there, you’ll be immediately brought in to start editing.

From here, you can play through your video, trim out content, stitch together intros or outros, add transitions or background music, and more.

Note

We don’t currently offer the ability to edit Channel episodes, but stay tuned!

Navigating within the Editor

Let’s start with some new terminology! The playhead is a visual indicator that shows where you are on the timeline while playing back your video. As you play your video, the playhead will move across the timeline beneath the video, and the timestamp will appear right below to give you a better sense of exactly where you are.

You can play and pause the video by clicking directly on the play button or by hitting the spacebar on your keyboard. Need to make a precise edit? You can also zoom in (and then out) of the timeline by clicking the zoom icons on the right-hand corner of the screen above the timeline.

To edit or watch any point in the video, click anywhere on the timeline and the playhead will jump to that spot. You can also drag the playhead to your desired location.

Splitting, Rearranging, and Deleting Content

Splitting a video allows you to break up your video into multiple clips, so that you can reach any part of the timeline to trim, rearrange or delete.

To split your video, drag the playhead right to the point in the video where you want to make edits and then click “Split.” From here, you can split your video up into as many clips as you’d like. You can delete individual clips by selecting and clicking “Delete.” Or, you can remove the beginning or end by clicking and dragging either end of a section to trim it.

Changed your mind or made a mistake? Click “Undo” until you feel better about your edits. If you go back too far, that’s okay! Click “Redo.”

Once you’ve split your video in clips, you can click on a desired clip and move it anywhere on the timeline: click on the clip, hold, and drag it anywhere you want.

Want to restart your edit session for a clean slate? Click “revert to original!” This action will take you back to the original state of your video for a do-over.

Stitch Videos Together

Have a bumper waiting in the wings? You can add more videos to your timeline with stitching.

Upload a video into your Wistia Content Library, then you can pop that puppy in as a personalized intro, bumper, or any other clip to your editing timeline. To do that, click the + (plus button) floating above the timeline, choose your media, and apply! From here, you can continue adding videos, rearrange, trim, and adjust the audio and formatting.

As you’re editing, you’ll notice a properties panel to the right. That’s where you’ll find things like:

Clip Name: Differentiate clips by naming them
Volume Control: Make sure your audio levels are…level
Clip Transform: The ability to adjust the aspect ratio by individual clip with Fit or Fill

Want to add visual transitions between clips?

To get started:

Hover over the start or end of any clip edges and you’ll be prompted with a + button.
Click the + button, then, you’ll have option to add a transition or add more media right there in your timeline.
From here, the properties panel will open where you can choose your transition style. Right now, it’s fade-but there will be more to come.
And voila! Your transition has been applied.

To see your transitions at a glance, we’ve added an interactive widget right on your timeline. That way, you don’t have to guess where you’ve made them. Need to delete? No sweat. Click the transition widget and select “None” from the menu. In the future, you’ll be able to apply different styles of transitions right from there.

Scrub your video with Text Based Editing

Traverse a transcript to identify sections of your video you’d like to edit.

A transcript is now your partner in crime! If you play your video, not only will the playhead move along the timeline as expected, the text will also be actively highlighted as the speaker talks in the video. You’ll have two distinct ways to scrub the timeline and find moments in your video for precise edits.

The entire transcript container is interactive. You can click individually on words to scrub to that portion of your video, highlight sections for deletion or generally scroll through the transcript.

As a user of text based editing, you can take all current timeline-based actions. You can:

Delete via Keyboard shortcut
Split, which will create a paragraph break in the transcript text as well
Undo / Redo

If you edit the transcript (ie, delete/split) the changes will be reflected on the timeline. If you edit directly on the timeline (ie split, delete, rearrange clips), those changes will be reflected visually in the transcript.

Want to remove a quick “uhm” or “ah”? Select the silence indicators directly and click “delete” on your keyboard!

You are in control of having a visible or hidden transcript! Toggle the transcript button next to the zoom controls to hide or display the transcript.

Use Highlights to find Key Moments in your video

With a click of a button, AI generates a list of the most engaging clips in your video and puts them right on the editing timeline for you.

Go to a video and click "find highlights” under the previewer. Then, Wistia analyzes your transcript and automatically generates concise clips.

Those highlights can be opened in a new draft or get dropped right into Wistia’s video editing timeline, where you can clean up and refine your clips. You can trim up the start and end, cut out anything you don’t want, and then share that highlight directly on social media or embed it on your website. We also generate titles and descriptions for your highlights.

Add Background Music

Don’t you just love it when a video has the best background music? Don’t you just loathe finding tracks and editing them to fit your videos? Us, too!

Click the + button to discover Wistia’s highly curated, royalty-free background music for all of your webinars, interviews, social posts, and more.

To get started:

First, click the + button on the previewer and select “Add background music”
From there, you’ll see a handful of royalty-free Wistia-created tracks
You can tab between Full Track or Intro/Outro based on your needs. Want music for the entirety of your video? Choose a song in the Full track category. Want musical bumpers for the beginning and end of your video? Select a song from the Intro/Outro tab.
Explore by mood to find just the right music and select your track.

You won’t have to do any editing to have the track fit your video. Our Smart Track technology takes the heavy lifting out of editing background music, and it auto-magically adjusts to fit the length of your video. If you choose an intro/outro set, you’ll have the ability to customize the duration by selecting the grab handle on the audio timeline and dragging to your heart’s content.

Saving Your Edits

Are you in the middle of editing, but need to take a break and come back to your work? While you edit, we are auto-saving your draft. Your in-progress drafts can always be found in the Studio (available on the All Content navigation). Your drafts do not count towards your media limit and are available to you as you continue perfecting that polished video.

Select a draft to edit it and move it to a Project, or click the three dot icon to download it, view your in-progress drafts, or delete it.

Finished your editing in one sitting?

Click on the “Export Changes” button on the top right of the page. From here, you can create a new Project to export your edited video to, or select from your current list of Projects. Then, click “Save as copy” to complete the export. You’ll notice that the title of the new version of your video has details about when you last edited it. Feel free to switch up that title based on what works best for your team.

Want to swap out your current video for the edited version in its place? Click on “Save & Replace” instead!

And that’s it! You’ve just edited a video in Wistia.

Have any questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support Team and we’ll be happy to help!