Merge videos into one

Clips that do not match

Phone videos, camera footage and screen recordings rarely share a shape or a frame rate. The merged video has one of each, and Octoolo fits every clip to it:

• Shape: the clip you add first decides it: Landscape 16:9, Vertical 9:16, Square or Portrait 4:5. Press Esc so nothing is selected and you can change it under Shape on the right.
• A clip of another shape shows whole with bars beside it (Fit, with bars), or covers the frame with its edges cut off (Fill, cut edges). The bars take the Background color you pick, and zoom and position fine-tune what stays in view.
• Frame rate: the merged video runs at 30 frames a second unless you choose 24, 25 or 60. Pick 60 when most of your clips were filmed at 60 and the motion matters.
• Sideways phone clips stand upright on their own; one filmed the wrong way round needs a Turn left or Turn right.

Photos can go between the clips too. Each shows for 5 seconds, and Shows for changes that to anything from half a second to 30.

No transitions, but softer joins

Clips meet with a straight cut, the way most edits do. Octoolo has no dissolves or wipes between two clips yet. What it has is a fade on each clip: set Fade Out at the end of one clip and In at the start of the next, up to 3 seconds each, and the picture dips through black while the sound fades with it. Half a second is often enough to hide the jump between two takes.

Because clips always sit end to end, a merged video never has stray black frames between them. Deleting a piece closes the space on its own, and dragging a clip to a new place pushes the rest along. Ctrl Z takes back any step, up to a hundred of them.

Getting the sound even

Every clip brings its own sound, and clips from different devices are rarely equally loud. Click a clip and set its Volume anywhere from 0 to 200%, or switch on Mute for one full of wind or chatter. Those settings travel with the clip, so you can still drag it to another place in the order afterwards.

To lay one song under the whole merged video, drop it on the Music lane below the clips. It plays straight across the joins, and whatever runs past the end of the video is cut off. Add music to a video covers fades and voice-overs.

Merging recordings for their sound alone, such as a talk filmed in three parts? Export also has Sound only, which saves the joined sound as MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC or Opus.

Long projects and many clips

One export takes up to a thousand clips, far more than most merges need, and their length is limited only by your disk. A few habits keep a big merge easy to handle:

• Press Fit under the preview to see the whole timeline at once, and + or - to zoom in on one join.
• Files you add once the timeline has clips wait in the media list on the left. Press the + on a card to put that clip at the end, or drag it to the place it belongs.
• Save the project (Ctrl S) in the Project menu to keep the edit as a file you can open again, besides the copy Octoolo keeps as you work.

Need the merged video as MOV or MKV rather than MP4? Convert video files takes it from there.