The Best Video Editor For Instagram
Video has changed a lot in the last five years. What used to be 20–30 minute episodes have become 20–30 second clips on Facebook and Instagram.
Every week, most consumers watch hours of video on their Instagram Story, Snap Discovery page, and other vertical video apps. Videos are promoted in Instagram’s video feed, and Facebook has launched both Lasso and IGTV this year to compete with TikTok and YouTube.
Yet the leading software for creating video — Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro — hasn’t changed much. It’s still hard to learn and time consuming.
Last year, my co-founder and I left Google to build better video editing software. In this article I’ll describe why I think Kapwing is the best video editor for Instagram.
Kapwing is a free online web app, meaning anyone can use it in the browser. It’s an excellent video editor for beginners and supports GIFs, pictures, and videos.
Resizing
Instagram makes it notoriously difficult to post videos with a custom aspect ratio. You can’t post a full portrait video, for example, and you can’t post multiple photos in an album big they have different aspect ratios.
Kapwing solves your resizing woes with a three click resizing tool to change the size of your photos and video to square (1:1), portrait (4:5), or vertical (9:16). Add padding around your images to avoid cropping out content.
Adding a custom thumbnail
Unlike YouTube, Instagram doesn’t support custom thumbnail uploads for videos. It’s hard to maintain visual consistency on your account when you can upload a “cover” frame to your video posts.
Kapwing’s Video Maker makes it simple to attach a photo frame on the front of your video so that you can set it as the thumbnail/cover.
Story design
Stories consume more of people’s watchtime than Instagram feed videos do. Kapwing’s Studio was designed to enable beautiful, minimal layouts and templates. With a vertical video (9:16) size default, you can arrange your media, embed text and stickers, and make images appear and disappear.
Kapwing also has a collection of Instagram Story templates to give creators inspiration for their designs.
GIF to MP4
Instagram doesn’t allow people to post GIFs :( When you upload them to Instagram from your phone camera roll, GIFs are converted to images and lose their animation. What do you do with all of your favorite GIFs from Twitter and Giphy??
Kapwing has a free tool for converting GIFs to videos so that you can publish GIFs to Instagram. You can upload or import a GIF by pasting the link, if it’s on another website like Giphy. You can also loop your MP4 to make it longer.
Memes
Instagram meme accounts like @girlwithnojob and @fuckjerry have millions of followers. While they used to post just text and image memes, video memes have become increasingly popular. Instagrammers need a way to generate memes quickly and easily, especially when dealing with video elements like animated stickers, sound effects, and video clips.
Kapwing’s free meme generator helps people make memes from pictures, GIFs, and videos. You can choose a meme template or pick a custom format. The Kapwing Studio lets you resize to square, import directly from YouTube, and embed a caption on your meme.
Add music
Instagram has experimented with a native “Add Music” feature for Stories, but it hasn’t rolled out globally yet. Otherwise, there’s no way to replace or enhance the soundtrack of your video.
If you want to add music to your Story or a video in the feed, you can use Kapwing’s Add Music tool to combine your video clip with a popular song. You can replace the audio of your music, add a sound effect, or merge in background music.
Borders
Thin white borders are popular on Instagram for photos, but many border apps don’t support videos. Use Kapwing’s Studio to add a white border around your video or make it a custom color by entering a hex code.
Kapwing also has a collection of custom Instagram borders you can use to decorate the video frame.
Filters
Instagram’s templates work on videos, but Instagram is only accessible in the app. To add a filter to a video on your computer, try Kapwing’s Video Filter Tool. You can adjust brightness, saturation, and coloring or add a unique filter from the Kapwing library.
Subtitles
85% of social media browsers watch with the sound off. Publishers must add subtitles if they want to reach an audience with ads or brand video clips. Yet Instagram doesn’t have a straight-forward way to embed captions into videos.
Kapwing’s Subtitle Maker is the easiest and most popular web-based tool for adding subtitles directly to a video. Creators can manually type and time out the subtitles for a short video or upload an .SRT file.
Rewind
Instagram added a “rewind” effect for videos recorded on the Instagram Story camera, but there’s no way to rewind a video you’ve already taken. Creators can use Kapwing’s Reverser to apply the rewind effect on an existing video clip or a video they find on YouTube. The backwards effect can be weird or humorous.
Trimming
Instagram videos must be shorter than 60 seconds, and Instagram Stories must be shorter than 15 seconds. Use Kapwing’s Trimmer to make a long video clip shorter so that you can post it to your feed or cut it up into chunks.
Repost
The cheapest way to produce video content is to repost videos you’ve already made or videos you find on the web. Kapwing lets you do both. Creators can download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and Imgur and remix them before posting. With their permission, it’s simple to add a watermark to give credit to the original creator.
Make it longer
Instagram videos must be longer than 3 seconds. If you have a very short video, like a Snapchat clip or a Live Photo, Kapwing has a looper so you can make it longer and meet Instagram’s 3 second requirement.
Audiogram
To post a song, podcast, audio track, speech, or voiceover to Instagram, you must first combine it with an image or video. Kapwing’s Studio has a fast, free tool for adding music to an image. To publish an audio file, just upload an image — like cover art, a graphic, or a screenshot — and combine the soundtrack. The image will automatically extend to the duration of the audio.
Hyperlapse, Slowmo
Make your video faster or slower with Kapwing’s Video Speed Changer.
Stop Motion and Boomerang
Instagram’s camera and related apps have effects for a Stop Motion effect and a Boomerang. But if you capture a video outside of Instagram, how do you retroactively apply these video effects?
Kapwing’s Stop Motion Maker helps with both. The tool turns an average video into a stop motion with a frame delay, adding artistic flair to your clip. It also has a checkbox for turning video clips into Boomerangs, meaning they’re played forwards then backwards. Spice up the action with these memorable effects.
YouTube Trailer
Many influencers publish teasers of new YouTube videos on Instagram. But, since YouTube videos are longer than Instagrams, publishers cut their YouTube video down into segments to advertise on Instagram. You can use Kapwing to make a video of cuts from a new video and promote it on social media.
These are the tasks we considered when building Kapwing to be the best video editor for Instagram! If you want to publish a picture or video and need to apply a small edit, try using Kapwing instead of installing a new app or a fancy desktop program.
Also, please reach out to us if you have ideas for new features/tools we could add to improve the Studio!
