So, you’ve spent countless hours watching TikTok videos, training your For You page to match your niche interests, and explaining to others that you are not too old for TikTok. Now you want to post your own. First step? Learn how to edit videos on Tiktok.
We know it can be intimidating to learn (and follow) the editing trends, unwritten rules, and best practices for making videos for TikTok. Luckily, you don’t need professional video production skills to do well on TikTok.
To help you get started on your TikTok creator journey, we’ve rounded up 15 creative tips for editing TikTok videos.
You have two options for creating videos on TikTok:
Or, you can do a combination of adding photos and/or videos from your camera roll and editing them in the TikTok app.
Whether you use the native app or your phone camera, here are our top tips for making creative and visually engaging TikTok videos.
(If you’re literally opening up the TikTok app for the first time, check out our beginners’ guide to TikTok for tips on setting up an account and navigating the platform.)
Within the TikTok app, you can enable a countdown timer that will give you a 3- or 10-second countdown before the camera starts recording.
With this feature, you can record clips hands-free. You can access the timer on the first screen after hitting the plus icon at the bottom of the screen.
TikTok offers many video effects within the app, including filters, transition templates, and A/R effects.
Some of the features can only be applied when you’re filming your video content directly in the app — others can be applied to pre-recorded clips.
One of the most popular and versatile effects is the Green Screen, which allows you to use a photo or video as your background. TikTok creators often use this effect to record themselves reacting to something, do a voiceover narration, or create a clone of themselves.
There are many creative ways to use the green screen, so we recommend keeping an eye out for examples in your feed for inspiration.
In this video, Morning Brew used the green screen effect to insert background photos to create the setting for their story.
On TikTok, when a video ends, it starts playing again from the beginning unless the viewer scrolls away.
Video completion rate is an important metric on the platform, and having viewers watch your video more than once tells the TikTok algorithm that your content is engaging (and should be surfaced on more For You pages).
So, matching the ending of your video to the beginning of it to create a seamless loop can help you keep your viewers hooked — and it can benefit your reach and engagement.
The example above explains how to create a looping video using words.
It only takes a few pieces of inexpensive equipment to upgrade the quality of your lighting and audio compared to your phone’s camera and mic. Good lighting and audio can make your content appeal to more people, helping you boost your views and engagement rates.
Chances are you’ve noticed how popular ring lights have become. They’re easily available and pretty cheap, and they can give you bright, even lighting, even if you’re filming in a dark room or one without much natural light.
Arguably having good sound is even more important than lighting. You’ll notice some TikTokers use the microphone on their wired headphones to record their voice. It’s a slight upgrade compared to the phone microphone, but if you don’t have any gear, making sure to record in a quiet space without distracting background noise will do.
Adding transitions to your video is a great way to hop on trends and keep viewers engaged.
On TikTok, transitions can mean two things:
Below, we’ll discuss the second type of TikTok transitions. If you’re interested in post-production transitions, we’ll cover those in our TikTok editing tools section below.
Jump cuts are quite easy to master and apply to almost all of the other transitions below. A jump cut simply involves placing one clip after another with no effects in between. However, the key to making it seamless is ending the first clip and starting the second clip with the subject (whether that’s yourself or an object) in the same place within the frame.
Our best tip is to film more than you need for each clip so that you can cut down the clips to align the subjects as close as possible. Watch full tutorial to creating jump cut transitions here.
In this example, the creator records the same scene wearing two different outfits, then adds the jump cut in the middle to show the outfit change.
The finger snap is a variation on the jump cut where you snap your fingers to transition to each new clip. Often this transition is paired with a song with multiple beats so that you can align your snaps to the beat (this track was a popular choice for a while).
This creator used the finger snap to transition between a list of different travel destinations:
This one’s fairly simple: to make the transition, you bring your hand or an object up to the camera, making sure to cover it completely. In the second clip, you start filming with the camera covered and then remove your hand or the object.
This creator put her hand to the camera to create a transition between a before & after home makeover.
With this jump cut (pardon the pun), you can use a jump to cut between scenes, creating the illusion that you’re transporting somewhere. This transition takes a little more effort as you need to manipulate framing and camera movements. Watch full tutorial here.
This photographer recorded their subject jumping up and down in two different places, then used the cut to create a “magical” transition between the locations.
This tip is less of a transition style itself and more of an example of how to use transitions, but worth mentioning because of how popular they are.
On TikTok, there are often trending challenges that involve using a jump cut to show a before and after. Some examples: #handsupchallenge, #infinitychallenge.
In the example above, the creator used their arms to create a transition between two different looks as part of the #handsupchallenge.
Many TikTok videos use text on top of video footage, a.k.a. captions.
On TikTok, it’s common to use captions even when in videos without spoken audio to help narrate the video or tell a story throughout the clip.
As a social media best practice, you should always add captions (or subtitles) to videos with spoken audio. This not only makes your social media content more inclusive and accessible but also caters to viewers scrolling with sound off.
Here are our tips for adding captions to videos:
Much like adding text to Instagram Stories, you can add text within the TikTok app. Here’s how:
The text-to-speech feature adds a voice to your video that automatically reads your text. Not only does this make your video accessible, it also makes it more engaging.
To enable text-to-speech:
Note that if you make any edits to your text, you’ll have to re-apply the text-to-speech option.
Here’s a video tutorial:
Auto captions convert any voiceover or spoken audio in your video to closed captions.
To enable auto-captions:
Auto captions are a great way to save time when you have spoken audio throughout your whole video.
Tip: When adding text to videos, make sure you’re not using words that may violate TikTok’s community guidelines. While a definite list of “banned” words doesn’t exist, avoid language related to death, self-harm, sexual content, profanity, violence, and weapons.
A TikTok without sound is like a fish out of water: it’ll flop. The sound you use can play a big part in the success of a TikTok, especially if it’s a trending audio clip or part of your video’s comedic payoff.
We’ve collected our top tips for getting the sound just right to make your TikToks take off.
Don’t let sound be an afterthought. Instead of selecting a song after you’ve finished editing your video, have one in mind from the start. This will allow you to sync video footage cuts to the beat.
Or, you can use TikTok’s handy auto-sync feature to match the sound to your video automatically. Note that this feature requires multiple clips in order to use it. Here’s how:
Trending sounds help TikTokers capture more views from people looking up that sound. However, keep in mind that trends come and go quite quickly, so it’s best to jump on a trend as soon as you have a video idea for it.
Note: Some audio clips are protected by copyright and licensing agreements. If you have a business account, you’ll have access to a limited library and you may not be able to include some trending sound effects in your TikToks.
Bonus tip: Whenever you come across a video with a sound you like, save it to your favorites (so that it doesn’t get lost among your likes). You can do this by tapping and holding down on a video. You can access your favorites from your profile.
Although TikTok is no longer just about recording videos of yourself dancing, there is still a strong trend of aligning a video to the beats of a music track. To do this best, you need to do it manually using a 3rd party editing tool.
Here’s how to edit your video to match a music track:
This video shows a tutorial on how to extract audio from TikTok videos and use it to guide your editing.
Unfortunately, at this time you cannot edit a TikTok or its caption after your video has been posted. However, there’s a quick workaround that doesn’t require re-editing your whole video again.
Here are the steps:
Note that by using this method, you are creating a brand new video and will lose any views and engagements from your previously uploaded video. However, if you’re able to delete and re-upload the video again relatively quickly, you should be able to make up for any lost engagements.
With the ever-increasing popularity of TikTok and Instagram Reels, many TikTok editing apps have popped up for both iOS and Android.
These apps can help you combine clips together, insert music, add video effects, transitions, text, and graphics, and more.
Here are 3 tools you might want to check out:
It seems that there’s no shortage of all-in-one video editing apps. Our top recommendation is InShot, as it provides a ton of powerful editing features for free.
With InShot you can trim clips, split and rearrange clips, adjust speed and volume of sounds, extract audio, add filters and transition effects, and much more.
In this TikTok video, InShot demonstrates which settings you need to create your own version of the “2021 recap” video trend:
Zoomerang is an all-in-one video editing app, with one key feature that sets it apart: it offers in-app tutorials that walk you through how to create TikTok challenges and trending video formats. Best of all, it’s free!
In this tutorial, Zoomerang demonstrates how to use its app to mimic a trending TikTok effect:
CapCut is an all-in-one video editing app made by TikTok itself, so many of the features are tailored for TikTok including trending stickers and custom TikTok fonts.
The app is completely free and can be used on both iOS and Android.
The CapCut TikTok account often posts tutorials about how to edit videos for TikTok, such as how to create this transition between two different looks:
If you choose to edit your TikTok videos in a 3rd party app (mobile or desktop), make sure your video settings match TikTok’s file size and quality requirements.
According to photographer Corey Crawford, the best export settings for TikTok are:
And there you have it: our top 15 creative tips for editing your TikTok videos! Now, you can start posting your first videos on TikTok with confidence.
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