Shadowing Practice: CapCut Tutorial for Beginners (2026) – Full Video Editing Guide - Learn English Speaking with Video

CapCut makes video editing easy, and since you clicked on this video, learning it is now going to be even easier.

In under 15 minutes, I'll teach you everything that you need to know about editing your videos like a pro in CapCut.

To sign up for CapCut for free, make sure you click the link at the top of this video's description.

There, you can sign up for CapCut, and if you decide to upgrade to CapCut Pro, you can make sure that you're getting the best available deal.

Let's start by creating a new project, and you can do that by clicking on the big blue Create Project button here at the top.

Let's go ahead and click on that now.

And now we've created a new project.

This is the main interface of CapCut.

So let's take a moment to get familiar with everything that we're looking at here.

Starting from the left hand side, we have our media panel.

This is where you'll import all of your footage, photos, and music.

And you have some tabs up here, and we'll explore these in just a few minutes.

Then towards the center of the screen, we have the player.

While you're editing your video, you can preview everything that you're doing right here.

Then towards the right hand side of the screen we have our details panel.

This will show you your project name, your aspect ratio, resolution, and other details.

And if you click on the modify button here, you can even change your project settings.

Change the name of your project, your aspect ratio, resolution, frame rate, and color space.

I'm happy with these settings, so I'll click on cancel.

Then let's check out the bottom of the screen here.

This is our timeline.

All of the editing that you do will take place right here.

That's pretty much everything that you need to know about CapCut's default layout.

And now let's import our footage and start editing.

I'll start by clicking on this panel right here to find my footage.

I have the three clips I'll be editing right here.

So I'll start by selecting clip one.

I'll hold down shift and click on clip three.

And that will highlight all three clips.

Now I'll go to the bottom right here and click on open.

And now all three of those clips are added into my media bin here.

And now we'll want to add this footage into our timeline.

And there are two ways to do that.

The first way is by hovering over a clip and selecting this blue plus button right here.

And the second way is simply by dragging all of the clips into your timeline and dropping them here.

And now that I've done that, all of my clips are in my timeline and they're ready to be edited.

Now I want to zoom into my timeline so I can see everything that I'm doing a little bit better.

And there are a couple ways to do this.

The first way is by holding down CTRL on your keyboard and pressing the plus button on your keyboard.

Every time I press plus, it's zooming into the timeline.

To zoom out of the timeline, again hold down CTRL and then press the minus button on your keyboard.

Doing that will zoom out of the timeline.

Now the other way to do this, and the way that I prefer doing it, is by holding down CTRL and then scrolling up on your mouse wheel.

Every time I scroll up, it's zooming in, and then every time I scroll down, it's going to zoom out.

I'll zoom in a little bit more here, and I think that's just about right.

Now let's talk about trimming your clips.

Looking at clip 1 here, it's currently about 11 seconds long, which is too much.

So I'll use my playhead to go through my footage

and find a point that I want to trim the footage down to.

Your playhead is this little white marker here in your timeline, and it indicates where you are in your video.

So as I drag the playhead forward in the video, you can see in the player there that it's actually going through the video live.

As I move my playhead backwards, I go backwards in the video, and as I move it forwards, I go forward in the video.

Now looking at my footage here, I think I want to trim the footage down to right about here when the camera gets nice and centered.

To trim this clip down, there are a couple different ways to do it.

The first way is by splitting the clip.

If I go to this small icon right here in my timeline and click on it, it will split the clip where my playhead is.

You can also just press Ctrl and B on your keyboard, so you don't have to keep clicking on this button over and over again.

Now since I don't want everything on this side of the playhead, I will just simply press the delete button on my keyboard to get rid of it.

The next way to trim your footage is by dragging the clip.

So with my mouse here, if I go to the end of my clip, you'll see as I reach the end, it turns into this small icon.

Once it does that, I can hold down left click on the clip, and then drag it into my playhead.

As I do that, it's lengthening and shortening the clip.

Now the final way to trim your footage is by pressing the W and Q keys on your keyboard.

If I press the Q key on my keyboard, it will delete everything on the left side of the playhead.

And now if I take my playhead and go back in, I can press the W key to delete everything on the right side of the playhead.

Now those are the main ways that you'll trim your footage in CapCut.

Now we've already covered the split button here at the top, but let's look at some of the other tools that are available to us here in our timeline.

Starting from the left, this is pretty much stuff we've already covered.

We have our undo and redo buttons.

Then we have split along with W and Q.

We also have our delete button here.

And then we have our marker tool.

Pressing this allows you to put markers down on your footage and timeline.

And that allows you to indicate actions or points where you want to edit your footage in the future.

Next to that, we have the freeze frame button.

If I click on this with a clip selected, it will create a still image of our clip.

Next to that, we have the reverse button.

Clicking this will reverse your footage.

Next to that, we have the mirror button.

If I click on this, it will simply flip the clip.

Then we have the rotate tool.

Clicking on this will rotate our footage.

We have our crop tool.

It allows me to crop the footage and make it look how I want.

Now let's talk about adding transitions to our footage.

If I take my playhead here going through clip 1, it just kind of abruptly cuts to this next clip here in clip 2.

To add a transition between these two clips, let's click on Transitions here at the top.

To add a transition between two clips, take your mouse and hover over the different transitions here to preview them and see which one you like.

Then once you find one that you do like, simply drag it between the two clips and then drop it here.

Now if I take my playhead and go back a little bit

and press space bar on my keyboard to play the video, now we have a nice cool transition between the two clips.

To adjust the duration of the transition, have it selected here and then go to the top right and you can make it faster or slower here.

So if I drag the duration down to 0 .5 seconds and then I go back in preview, the transition will be way faster.

Now I want to adjust the framing of my video.

I can do that by clicking on the clip that I want to adjust.

So I'll click on clip two here.

Now I want to zoom in a little bit here on the person in the video.

I can do that by adjusting the scale in the top right.

I'll take the slider and drag it to the right to zoom into the video.

100

And then I can use the position sliders here to adjust the position of the video.

101

But I can also just drag the video around here.

102

If I drag it to the middle, you'll see a blue ruler appear.

103

And that's telling me that the video is centered vertically.

104

If I drag it down a little bit, it will also center horizontally here as well.

105

So I'll drag it down a little bit to bring him to the middle of the frame.

106

It's also worth mentioning that you can rotate your video here.

107

If I take this little wheel and drag it, it will allow me to spin the video freely.

108

I'll press Ctrl Z to undo that, and I'm happy with this new framing.

109

Now we zoomed into the footage by adjusting our scale, but what if we wanted to create a zoom animation?

110

We can do that by using keyframes.

111

If I go up here to transform, you see this little diamond icon next to it.

112

Once I click on it, you'll see in my clip in the timeline that there's a little blue keyframe that gets added to my video.

113

Now if I take my playhead and I go a little bit further into the video, and then I adjust the scale for example, I'll bring it to the right to zoom in.

114

And once I let go here, it's going to add another keyframe to my video.

115

Now when I take my playhead and I go back and forth between these keyframes, you'll see there's a small zoom animation happening.

116

Anything within CapCut that has a diamond icon next to it can be animated with keyframes.

117

Next, let's talk about adjusting the speed of your video.

118

You can do that by clicking on the speed button here at the top.

119

Then you can use this slider to speed up or slow down your footage.

120

If I drag the slider to the right, it's going to speed it up, and if I drag it to the left, it's going to slow it down.

121

Then you can also use the duration feature here to adjust your video speed.

122

Let's say for example this piece of footage had to be seven and a half seconds long.

123

So if I highlight the numbers here, I can change this to 7 .5 and then press enter.

124

And now down here that adjusted my video speed.

125

Next, let's go up to the top here and click on animation.

126

In here we can add different animations to our video.

127

We have in, out, and combo animations.

128

These are kind of like transitions, but they're for individual clips.

129

So if I click out here, and I'll just add the first one, which is TV off, I can click on it, and it's going to add an animation at the end of my clip.

130

Similar to transitions, you can adjust the duration here at the bottom as well.

131

So if I bring this down to, we'll say, like one second, it will shorten that animation.

132

Next, let's talk about adding filters and color correction to your video.

133

I take my playhead here and I go back a little bit in the footage.

134

Then I go up to the adjust button here.

135

I can scroll down and do some basic color correction on my video.

136

I can change the color temperature here.

137

I could boost the saturation.

138

And I can also make the video brighter by increasing the exposure.

139

You also have access to a bunch of other settings here as well.

140

Then to add a filter, go up to filters here in the top left.

141

And then you can drag on any of these filters that you want.

142

I'll take this filter here and I can drag it to its own video track

143

or I can drag it into the footage itself.

144

I'll just let go of it here and now that filter has been added to my video.

145

Now let's add some music into our project here.

146

To access CapCut's stock music library, go up to the top here and click on audio.

147

Then you'll get access to CapCut's entire stock music library.

148

If you want to preview a song, just click on the album cover here.

149

you I like this one, so to add it to my timeline, I'll simply drag and drop it underneath my footage here, and this will create a new audio track.

150

With our audio selected in the timeline, let's check out the top right here, and we have some controls.

151

We can decrease or increase the volume, we can fade in and out, we can normalize the loudness, and if this was a voiceover, we could enhance our voice,

152

do an audio translator, we can reduce the background noise, we could separate the audio, or fill the channel.

153

If I take a look at my music here, you'll see these orange and red dots.

154

This is our waveform, and it's telling us that our audio is too loud.

155

The red and orange dots mean that the audio is peaking.

156

We can fix this by going to the top right and scrolling up and just simply decreasing the volume.

157

You see as I decrease it, the waveforms get smaller.

158

I'll also add a slight fade in and fade out to the audio.

159

Next, let's add some auto -generated captions to our video.

160

To do that, we'll first need to import a voiceover.

161

So let's go to Media here on the top left.

162

Then I'll click on Import here.

163

And I'll upload this audio file here.

164

And I'll drag it below my music here in my timeline to create a new audio track.

165

Next, I'll take my playhead and I'll drag it behind this new audio layer here.

166

And then I'll go up here and click on Captions.

167

Here you can change some options between the spoken language, whether or not you want bilingual captions.

168

You can auto -highlight keywords, add AI emojis, and identify filler words.

169

Configure your settings here, and when you're ready, click on Generate.

170

CapCut will automatically generate your captions for you.

171

And then if I press Play here, here's how you add captions to your video in CapCut.

172

And just like that, captions have been added to the video.

173

Now, if I take my playhead and I go back at my timeline a little bit, I'm able to see how my captions look.

174

This is just the default caption style here within CapCut.

175

To change how your captions look, you can go to the top right and edit everything here.

176

If something is spelled wrong within your captions, you're able to highlight the word you want to fix and just retype it in here.

177

You could also change the font if you want to, the font size.

178

You can bold, underline, and italicize your captions.

179

Choose if they're uppercase or lowercase.

180

Change the color, the alignment, and they also have some preset styles here.

181

The white captions kind of blend into the background, so I'll go for the yellow captions here.

182

You can click on templates here at the top and they have different templates available as well.

183

So if I click on this one right here and then I go back on my timeline and press play, here's how you add captions to your video in CapCut.

184

Now they're actually animated and look way cooler.

185

Now what if you're not looking to add captions into your video but you do want to add your own custom text?

186

To do that go up to text here at the top and then drag on the default text to your timeline.

187

You can't really see it there, so I'll drag it up into the sky here.

188

And then on the right -hand side, you have all of the same customization options that you did with your captions.

189

So for example here, I could change this to say, Skiing Trip.

190

Then I can scroll down to the presets and find one that I like.

191

I'll go for this one here.

192

And you can also animate your text.

193

With your text selected, click on Animation.

194

And here we have In, Out, and Loop animations.

195

So for example, I could use this typewriter animation to make my text come in.

196

Then I can click on out and I can add a little fade out animation here if I want to.

197

Now if I take my playhead and I go back to the beginning and press play, now I have some cool text that appears on screen with my captions.

198

And with that done, I think I'm ready to export my video.

199

To export your video, go up to the top right here and click on export.

200

Here you can change the name of your video, where you you want the video to export to.

201

You can change your resolution, bit rate, codec, format, and frame rate.

202

You also have some audio, GIF, and caption settings here down below.

203

And once you're happy with all of your settings, click on this blue export button here to export your video.

204

And just like that, you've edited your first video in CapCut.

205

And don't forget to use the link at the top of this video's description to sign up for CapCut.

206

And if you want access to all of CapCut's AI features, templates, assets, and more, make sure you upgrade to CapCut Pro.

207

With that said, I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you in the next video.

✨ Recommend Video

650 sentences

In Depth Capcut Mobile Video Editing Masterclass

University StudentsBusiness English+1

43 sentences

Basic Knife Skills | Allrecipes

University StudentsBusiness English+1

52 sentences

The Complete Beginners Guide to Adobe Photoshop | FREE Course | Course overview & breakdown

University StudentsBusiness English+1

244 sentences

10 things you need to do before you graduate college | budgeting, saving, and negotiating jobs!

University StudentsBusiness English+2

28 sentences

How To Get Claude Pro For FREE 12 Months (Unlimited) in 2026 - Claude AI Pro Free Unlimited API Key

University StudentsBusiness English+1

199 sentences

Practice Shadowing the RIGHT Way!

en-USUniversity Students+3

283 sentences

FL Studio 25 • Trap Drum Patterns for Beginners

University StudentsBusiness English+1

156 sentences

Unfortunately, YouTube Really Is This Simple

University StudentsBusiness English+1

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: CapCut Tutorial for Beginners (2026) – Full Video Editing Guide - Learn English Speaking with Video

In Depth Capcut Mobile Video Editing Masterclass

Basic Knife Skills | Allrecipes

The Complete Beginners Guide to Adobe Photoshop | FREE Course | Course overview & breakdown

How to Get Started with Notion (without losing your mind)

How to Edit like a Pro

Animation Basics in 14 Minutes (6 Big ideas for beginners)

Basic Engineering tools

10 things you need to do before you graduate college | budgeting, saving, and negotiating jobs!

How To Get Claude Pro For FREE 12 Months (Unlimited) in 2026 - Claude AI Pro Free Unlimited API Key

Practice Shadowing the RIGHT Way!

FL Studio 25 • Trap Drum Patterns for Beginners

Unfortunately, YouTube Really Is This Simple

Speaking Goals for This Clip

Phrase Bank

Fix Your Weak Spots

What is the Shadowing Technique?