You’ve heard of iPhone, get ready for WeVideo. This week is on the collaborative online video editing software.
Learning WeVideo was virtually seamless for me because I have a lot of experience in other video editing softwares. I did not follow any training video and just jumped into it. It was just a matter of hunting for the feature I want and mapping shortcut keys to known functions. However I have some small nitpicks about it. The main user issue with it is its video/text and audio track system. You have to manually click the menu to rearrange the order of the tracks drag and drop systems for rearranging. I think it would be more intuitive if they were drag and drop. Also WeVideo doesn’t automatically create a new track when you try to slot a longer video clip in an empty gap that isn’t as long as the clip. It just doesn’t let you do that. Instead you have to either cut the clip first or create a new track. This is annoying because in iMovie (the software that comes with every Mac) and many other free softwares, it automatically creates the track so you can insert the clip. This can get really annoying if for a project you have one long clip that is multiple takes and it would be convenient to line up the right take in the right location before cutting. More small nitpicks include not being able to extend clips because it’s pushing against another clip that in other software would slide further down the timeline and not being able to copy paste transitions. Also for some reason you can’t drag to change transition duration.
WeVideo is actually pretty versatile with how you can edit clips. If you double click a clip you can get really detailed clip editing like cropping, really basic movement key framing, colour key (making certain an eyedropped colour transparent), colour grading and clip speed.
I think WeVideo is good for basic video editing for an academic project but anything more advanced in editing (ie. precise masks or keyframes or requires a lot of complex transitions, higher quality exports) should be done in a different software. I think there are many other free online video editing sites such as CapCut that are easier to create an account for and have the more intuitive system I mentioned.
I feel very confident in helping others with WeVideo, but the barrier to entry can be tedious because you have to contact [dlac] and wait for account creation. Unless there is specific instruction to use WeVideo or the collaboration feature is absolutely necessary I would direct a student to a different, more quickly accessible editing software. Especially if the project in question needs to be done as soon as possible.