Over the last couple of months, I've been using Windows 10 a lot more than usual. Part of that is because I was road testing a Samsung Galaxy Book2 but also because the Windows 10 release cycle of two significant releases a year has meant I've not caught up on how the OS has changed, in a practical sense, for me. Last week, my wife asked me to trim a long video she had into four separate parts. Here's how to edit a video using the Windows 10 Photos app.
Usually, when it comes to tasks like this, I jump on my Mac as a lot of my media and image editing workflows are centred around software I have on that computer. But, as fate had it, a blown capacitor on my MacBook Pro's logic board (which is being replaced at the moment) meant I needed to do this on one of the Windows systems at home.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, video editing is done in the Photos app.
- Either by scrolling through the Start menu's list of apps or by using Cortana, launch the Photos app
- Open the video you want to edit
- From the Edit & Create menu, choose the Trim option
- Move the two white spots to the start and end of the section of footage you want to save as a separate video
- Once you have selected the piece of footage you're saving, click the Save a copy button, choose a folder and give it a name
You can also add slo-mo effects, captions and draw on your videos to embellish them.
Although it's not a full-featured editing video tool, Photos is a handy tool for quickly editing a video.
Originally published in Lifehacker Australia on 24 June 2019: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2019/06/how-to-edit-video-with-the-windows-10-photos-app/