Basic Audio and Video Editing: Cut, Copy, Delete, and Crop
As you know, ActivePresenter 8 is a screen recorder, video editor, and powerful eLearning authoring tool. Therefore, the app offers many powerful yet easy-to-use features to make demo videos, interactive simulations, eLearning games, training courses, etc. In today’s tutorial, we’d like to cover the basic audio and video editing aspects of this software. Specifically, you’ll learn how to cut, copy, delete, and crop videos/audio. Also, you can now find more must-know tips and techniques every editor should know here.
Overview
In fact, ActivePresenter allows you to edit both imported and recorded audio/videos. Right after the capture phase, the software takes you to the editor where you can edit what you’ve recorded. On the other hand, you can import audio and video into ActivePresenter and edit them as normal. Just drag and drop audio or videos from your computer onto the Canvas. Alternatively, click the Insert tab > Audio > From Files… and select an audio > Open. Or select Video > From Files… and select a video > Open.
To enable the basic audio and video editing tools, make sure that you created a range in ActivePresenter. Keep reading the following part to understand what is a range and how you can define or select a range in the app.
Define a range
As you can see, the Timeline pane has four range-editing commands 
that only can be used when a range is defined first. If you haven’t selected a range, these buttons are disabled and you cannot click them.
- Start Marker (1): The green marker representing the starting point of the selected range.
- Playhead (2): The blue line indicating the timestamp that you are currently selecting.
- End Marker (3): The orange marker indicating the ending point of the selected range.
The Start Marker and the End Marker help to define a range. Just click to place the Playhead at any position in the Timeline pane. Then, you can select a range by either dragging the Start Marker or the End Marker. When you drag a marker, the Playhead will stick with it. The selected range is highlighted in light blue color to help you easily recognize it. To clear the selection, double-click the Playhead anywhere on the time axis.
Note:
- These basic audio and video editing tools act differently depending on whether or not you select an object. If you select an object, the tools affect that object only. If not, they affect the slide and all objects falling into the range (the entire slice of the range).
- To get a better view of the timeline, zoom in or out by holding down CTRL while scrolling the mouse wheel up or down, respectively.
Basic Audio and Video Editing Tools
In this part, we will walk you through:
Now, let’s take a look at each of these basic audio and video editing tools.
Cut
In general, even when you work carefully, mistakes happen now and then when you record the screen. A big mistake may require you to start over and re-record everything. Meanwhile, a tiny mistake only needs an “undo” then you can continue recording as if it never ever happened. In that case, just cut the mistake out from the video/audio and you’re done.
Perform some very simple steps and you can cut and remove unwanted fragments from the video/audio. Here’s how:
Step 1: Select a video/audio that contains unwanted fragments. After that, make a range by dragging the end marker. Have in mind that the selected range is limited by two markers.
Step 2: Click Cut Range (4) or press CTRL+SHIFT+X to remove the range. Then, a red stripe appears to show where the two remaining parts of the video/audio are joined together.
Step 3: Optionally, paste the cut content into the same or another slide. To do that, move the Playhead to the desired position and press CTRL+V.
Copy
After learning about cutting a range in a video/audio. Let’s get to know how to use the Copy Range button to copy parts of objects that fall inside the range. Then, you can put them on the clipboard. So, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Select a video/audio.
Step 2: Make a range. Let’s drag the end markers to the position you want.
Step 3: Click Copy Range (5) or press CTRL+SHIFT+C to copy the range.
Step 4: Paste the copied content into the same or another slide. To get it done, move the Playhead to the desired position and press CTRL+V.
Delete
Let’s say removing mistakes is a basic task when you edit videos. So, use the Delete Range button to remove any unwanted audio and video parts. This is one of the basic audio and video editing tools that ActivePresenter offers you.
To get it done, select a range then click Delete Range (6) or press CTRL+DELETE.
Note: The Delete Range button works just like the Cut Range button, except for one difference. While the former is used to delete the content inside the range, the latter “cuts” the content from the range and places it on the clipboard, then you can paste it where you want. In short, Delete Range stands for removing while Cut Range stands for reallocating.
Crop
Often you record extra footage at the beginning and end of a recording. When you edit videos/audio, you want to trim out these fragments, that is to take off either end of the video/audio. As a result, ActivePresenter offers you a basic tool to solve this issue.
Now, let’s use the Crop to Range button to remove everything outside the range. Do as follows:
Step 1: Select a video/audio that you want to trim out extra content.
Step 2: Make a range. Bear in mind to keep the main content in the range.
Step 3: Click Crop to Range (7) or press SHIFT+DELETE. That way, only the part of the selected video/audio that lies inside the range is retained.
As mentioned above, the four tools also work when you select no objects at all. In that case, they affect all the objects falling into the range. For example, if you click Crop to Range while selecting no objects, you retain only the slide content inside the range and delete all the rest.
In short, that’s all about four basic audio and video editing tools ActivePresenter offers you. Make use of them and remember that you can always do even more to create great videos. In addition, visit our YouTube channel and Twitter for more useful tutorial videos and interesting information.
Below are the tutorials about more editing audio/video features that you may want to know: