YouTube’s rolling out an updated editor for Shorts, which will separate your project into different audio and video tracks, making it easier to make specific changes and updates to your content.
As you can see in this example, the updated Shorts editor, which will be available within the Shorts composer flow in the main YouTube app, will give you more control over each element of your project in-stream.
As explained by YouTube:
“When you’re creating a short, you’ve told us how critical it is to be able to make all of your edits to a video in one place, to be able to really make something you’re proud of […] Now, everything is visible in one place, including all of your video clips, overlays, and audio. You can trim and reorder the clips via simple drag and drop, while you can also zoom in to make precise edits.”
The updated project layout is similar to the format available in Instagram’s Edits app, or ByteDance’s CapCut, providing more capacity to manage each specific element in more precise ways.
Except, this display will be built into YouTube itself, so you won’t need to download a separate app to create better Shorts clips.
And YouTube says that this is just the beginning of its coming editing updates:
“We’re making a lot more key improvements, like being able to do slip editing, being able to do splitting, and adding media directly from timeline. We also plan to continue to expand edit with AI to make it even easier for you to craft your vision with Gemini Assistance.”
On AI editing, YouTube recently launched its new “Extend with AI” option, which enables Shorts creators to imagine a new editing to an eligible Short, by creating it with AI.
Which sounds super weird, and not particularly creative. But this is just one of the coming AI creation options YouTube has in mind to help creators build more engaging Shorts clips through expanded means.
Indeed, YouTube says that its goal with AI is to enable “more creative freedom with less friction.”
I’m not sure that it’s hitting the mark just yet on the creative front, but YouTube is exploring more ways to integrate AI tools that will provide more options in your process, alongside these updates to its video editing tools.
YouTube says that the updated Shorts editor is coming soon.
