From the course: Editing Mastery for Short-Form Content Using CapCut

Overview of CapCut desktop features

- If you're creating content for social media, CapCut is definitely, hands-down, one of the best editing tools out there, not only for beginners, but for experienced editors as well. And the thing is, I used to edit all my videos on Adobe Premiere Pro for years. But once I discovered CapCut, I completely switched over. And here's why. First, it's incredibly user-friendly. The interface is simple and you don't need to spend hours learning how to use it. And second, it's built for social media, basically, meaning it has all the essential tools for short-form content like templates, auto caption, trendy effects, and easy to use transitions, and a lot of other things, which we're going to talk about. And third, it's fast and efficient. So you can edit high-quality videos without long render times or complicated export settings. So in this course, I'm going to walk you through everything you need to know on how to use CapCut to create engaging videos quickly and effectively. So let's dive in. Alright, let's start with an overview of CapCut's desktop version. Now, even though this course is focused on the desktop version, don't worry. Once you learn all of that, you're going to have no trouble using the mobile app because the core tools between the desktop and the mobile app, it's basically the same. So if you get comfortable editing here, switching between desktop and mobile will be super easy. Now, when you first open up CapCut, you're going to see a starting dashboard. Let's take a look. Create Project is where you start a new video edit from scratch. Clicking it will bring you to the editing dashboards, which we'll talk about in details later. Below the Create Project button, you're going to see some extra tools, like Record Screen, Auto Cutout, and Image Enhancement. These features help with quick edits, but we'll be focusing on the main editing tools in the course later. All your saved projects appears here so you can quickly pick up where you left off. This left panel basically keeps everything organized so you can quickly move between projects, access to your share files, or collaborate with others. Share history is if you've share or exported videos, you can track them here. Space is essentially for collaboration. If you're working with a team or other editors, you can create or join Space to share projects with them easily. Now that you know where everything is on home screen, let's dive into the editing interface. Alright, once you open up the editing interface, on the left side is your media panel. This is where you can access all of your imported media files, but it's more than just a media library. You also find other essential features like audio, text, stickers, effects, and more. We're going to explore these tools further in the course. Over here at the bottom is the timeline, right? Like I said, this is where you arrange and edit your clips. You can trim, cut, adjust layers, and fine-tune your videos here. On the right-hand side, that's your player. This is where you can preview your video edits in real time. It lets you see how your changes look before exporting. In the middle is your editing control panel, and this is where you find essential tools like scaling position adjustment, rotation, blending and stabilization, and all that kind of fun stuff.

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