Video Tools for Freelance Videographers

1. Join the cameras into one file

Video Merger takes two or more clips, lets you drag them into order, and writes a single file. Every clip is normalised to a shared frame size and frame rate, with mismatched aspect ratios given black bars rather than being stretched, which is what you want when a phone clip has to sit beside a camera clip. Choose a 720p or 480p height, or keep the size of the first clip when the master is already small enough.

The join is a hard cut in a sequence, not an edit. There is no picture-in-picture, no split screen and no transition, and each input must be under 500 MB. Use it when one camera follows another in the finished piece, or when several short takes belong in one review file. For a real multi-angle cut, that is an editing job, not a merge.

2. Fix the footage the camera got wrong

AI Video Enhancer is the one cloud step on this page. It accepts a file up to 200 MB and 5 minutes, requires an input with a short edge between 360 and 1440 px and a long edge up to 2560 px, and runs only on Pro. It reduces noise and compression damage and rebuilds detail, which is useful for a dim reception hall or an old clip a client wants reused.

Billing is by output length: about 34 credits per minute at 720p, 67 at 1080p, 134 at 2K and 267 at 4K at 30 fps, so a five minute 1080p clip is a real cost. It also invents texture. On faces and skin that can look wrong, and it cannot recover a feature the sensor never captured. Enhance a test minute, compare it against the original, and keep the untouched master as the source of record.

3. Mark the client preview

Video Watermark draws a text mark or a PNG logo over every frame. A transparent PNG is the stronger choice for a brand mark; text works when the mark is just a name or an email address, and it is limited to Latin characters because the built-in font covers nothing else. Five positions are available, the size runs from 2 to 20 percent of the video height, opacity from 10 to 100 percent, and an outline keeps a white mark readable against a bright sky or a white dress.

Export re-encodes the whole clip, so a long preview costs time. Treat the result as a visible deterrent, not as protection: the mark is burned into the pixels and cannot be removed afterwards, and a determined viewer can crop or cover it. Send a shorter, smaller review copy alongside it, so the preview is not useful as a master even if the mark fails.

4. Compress the delivery copy

Video Compressor exposes quality, resolution, frame rate and output format, and shows the output size after the run. For a client download, 1080p at 30 fps is usually the right compromise; 720p roughly halves the bitrate again and is still fine for a review link or a social cut. Typical savings are 50 to 80 percent compared with the original, and the progress log makes a stalled encode obvious.

Two limits matter when the work is paid. There is no target size field, so you tune by quality and read the result rather than typing a cap. And compression is one-way: archive the graded master before making the delivery copy. Clips under 200 MB and a few minutes long work best because the encode runs in browser memory, so a full ceremony is better delivered in chapters than as one long file.

5. Pull the poster frame

Extract Frames saves a still at a time you type or scrub to, accurate to a hundredth of a second. For a thumbnail or a video-on-demand poster, single mode is the right tool: land on the frame where the couple is in focus and the background is not busy, and export PNG if the platform accepts it. Interval mode and count mode save up to 30 frames per run, which is useful for a contact sheet the client can choose from.

The frame is only as sharp as the source, and the tool reads existing frames rather than interpolating. Export from the uncompressed master, not from the compressed delivery, because a still pulls the compression out of the frame at full size. A scale-down option is there for web use, and it never enlarges a frame.

6. Hand over the audio track

Clients sometimes want the audio on its own: a speech for a podcast, a vows recording for a family member, a music bed for a social cut. Video to MP3 extracts the soundtrack at 192, 128 or 320 kbps, and WAV is available when the audio still has to be edited, at roughly ten times the size. Everything stays on the machine, so an unreleased ceremony is not uploaded to pull a track out of it.

If the audio needs trimming, Audio Trimmer cuts on the waveform with a fade of up to 5 seconds at each end. The limit to plan around is that the extracted track is exactly what the camera recorded: if the wind noise or the room hum is in the original, it is in the MP3, because nothing here removes noise from audio.

What this chain cannot do

• It is not an editor. There is no timeline, no transition, no colour grading, no keyframes and no multi-track audio.
• Merging is sequential. No picture-in-picture, no split screen, and mismatched sizes get black bars.
• Watermark text is Latin only. A Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic mark needs a PNG logo instead.
• The watermark cannot move. It sits in one fixed position for the whole clip and is burned into the pixels.
• Enhancement uploads and is metered. Pro only, 200 MB and 5 minutes per run, billed per output minute, and it can invent detail.
• Compression has no target size. You tune quality and resolution, then read the result.
• No RAW or log pipeline. This is a delivery chain for finished files, not a colour-managed workflow.
• No client gallery. Files are produced locally and downloaded; hosting and review links are outside this site.

Frequently asked questions