Echo360 Video Editing

[Eri Pfaff]

Thisarticle discusses cutting segments and inserting media specifically. See Using the EchoVideo Video Media Editor for an overview of the buttons and commands available in the editor. See Trimming and Splitting Videos for instructions on removing the beginning and end portions of videos or splitting videos into multiple separate videos.

Before you begin using the Insert Media feature described here, we recommend you refer to the Known Issues section at the bottom of this page. It lists some issues you may run into if you are not aware of them first. As the issues are addressed, they will be removed from that list.

Finally, if you find you need to remove a great deal of any given video, and especially if the intent is to insert a different video, you may find it easier to simply replace the entire track with a track from the other video. See Adding, Removing, and Replacing Video or Audio Tracks for more information.

You may find that you have some recordings that could be made better and easier to watch by removing some segments from them. Perhaps it was a longer class with a break in it, but the recording continued during the break. Or something happened during the session being recorded that you do not want to keep in the posted version of it.

Cutting segments involves identifying each end of the location you want to remove, making cuts at those locations, and then selecting and deleting the segment between them. All cuts are editable and temporary until you choose to Save (or Save As), which applies your edits. And you can always revert to the original if things don't go as well as you'd planned.

Once the cuts are in place, and you delete the segment, you can review the edited video in the playback panel. The playback will skip over any removed segments, so you can see how the recording will look when it is saved.

Furthermore, the timestamp box will also be in sync with the playhead and provides location granularity up to 100ths of a second. You can TYPE into this box to move the playhead and cut marker to a very precise location that you cannot get to via scrubbing or playback.

The Trim Handles allow to you drag either end of the segment in either direction, to change where it begins or ends. This can be particularly useful when used with the "zoom in" feature, to place the cutouts exactly where you want them.

The EchoVideo video editor provides an option to insert any video you own into another video. You can add a video into some portion of the original video or you can insert one or more other videos at the beginning and/or end of an original video to stitch multiple media together into one.

All of these may include removing one or more sections of the original to replace them with different media. Or just adding media to the end of another. As noted in the procedure below, removing anything to replace it with something else is optional. Inserting other media into a video will simply lengthen the resulting video by the appropriate duration.

Once again, we encourage you to practice using this feature, in conjunction with the Save As command, to create a new and distinct video file. That way you can make further edits to the new file if needed, or discard it if you don't want to keep it.

If you removed a section first, as the figure in the above procedure shows, then inserted media, notice there are "blank spots" around the inserted segment. These are circled in the below figure. You can leave these in, as playback will skip over those, and when the changes are processed, the resulting media will have the remaining segments stitched together.

You will also see changes in the timeline (likely) where the duration of the newly created video has changed. In the above screenshots, notice that the original video was just under 5 minutes long. The inserted video was 20 minutes long. The resulting video is just under 25 minutes long.

Side note: The change in duration is also why those blank spots circled in the above figure look so much smaller than the original area cut. The duration of the cuts didn't change; the timeline ratio did.

Review the "edges" around the inserted media by placing the cut marker/playhead just before each transition location, then click Play in the playback panel. Playback will show what users will see, playing through the original, directly to the inserted part, and then back to the original. OR if you inserted media at the end (or beginning) of the original video, playback shows the end of one and then moves seamlessly into the other.

If you are happy with the result, click Save or Save As as appropriate. REMEMBER: if you Save instead of Save As, the original media is changed. You can always come back and revert to the original (shorter) media, but you will lose all of your changes from any editing session.

Finally, as with any media, processing may take some time, especially if you created a very long video by inserting smaller ones into the same original. Furthermore, if you click Save, you will NOT see your changes to the original media until processing is finished. Be patient.

That's right, we don't restrict you to "single into single" or "dual into dual" when it comes to inserting media. You might have a physics lecture and want to add a segment you got from a Calculus instructor explaining how to do a certain relevant equation. The Calculus instructor's video shows them talking while also showing the display on the computer. When you insert that video into yours, the resulting video will now be dual stream. Keep in mind though, that for the single-stream video segments, one panel simply shows a placeholder. When the inserted segment appears, both streams are shown to the user viewing it.

You can insert an audio-only file INTO a video. AND you can insert a video file into audio-only media. For the portion of the resulting media that is playing the audio-only part (whether it's the original or the inserted part), the video panel shows a placeholder.

NOTE, however, that you cannot REPLACE the audio of a video file by inserting an audio file. NOR can you replace any segment of an audio file with video + audio media (unless you remove the segment you want to replace first). That process is called "overlay" and is not part of the insert media feature.

As indicated in the description and the procedure above, removing a segment to insert another video is wholly optional. When you insert a video, the original and the new media are automatically stitched together, and the resulting media is simply lengthened by the duration of the insertion.

BE CAREFUL: EchoVideo has an 8-hour limit to videos that can be processed by our system. If you are using the Insert Media feature to stitch together multiple videos, and your resulting file is longer than 8 hours, you cannot Save / Save As; the options are grayed out until the media is 8 hours or less. The expected duration of the new media is shown below the title, and above the editing panel.

In some cases, you may want to edit the video you want to insert first. Then save it (or save as) and select the edited version to insert. But you do not have to. Once the media is inserted into the original video, it acts just like any segment of the original. You can cut segments out of it, or use the trim handles to trim in or out the ends of the inserted item. The instructions for these features are also on this page, so review those and give them a try. You might find it more convenient than having two separate editing sessions.

AND editing the inserted segment after inserting it has NO EFFECT on the media file you selected to insert; it remains in your Library untouched. The inserted media is more like a "copy" of that selected media, and is just seen as a portion of the video you added it to. For example: You select a 20-minute video to insert into another video. You edit the inserted segment down to only the 10 minutes you want. The originally selected 20-minute video is the same as it ever was. Your edits only apply to that media as a segment of the video you added it to.

The brief important part of this is if you insert media, and then decide it isn't the one you wanted, you cannot just select it and delete it. You have to use Undo to "un-insert" it. Furthermore, if you split a video by inserting something into it, you cannot delete those separate segments. If you want to remove those, cut them out first.

Scenario: If you insert media into the MIDDLE of an existing piece of media or a segment, like the procedures above show, the original video/segment is now TWO. They are no longer seen as a single unit that has simply been separated. And the inserted media is a third separate segment.

Reusing the image from the procedures above, the below figure shows a video inserted into another video. In this case, there are THREE separate and distinct segments to this media now, and they are labeled. The example happens to have cutouts on either side of the insert, but there would still be three separate and distinct segments to this media even if there were no cutouts and the media had just been inserted without cutting first.

Furthermore, you are also not able to delete the entirety of any segment BEFORE or AFTER the inserted media, because they are now separate segments (even though they came from the same original). If you select either segment, the Trash Can icon will not be available.

Using the above figure as an example, you cannot select segment 1 and delete it, nor can you select segment 3 and delete it. If you don't want one of these in the final product, delete it first, then insert your media. You can shorten the end segments as needed but you cannot remove them altogether.

NOTE that this IS NOT true for just cutting segments from a video (without inserting). In that case, they are seen as separate parts of a whole, and those individual cutouts can be deleted (as long as you don't try to delete all of them).

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