YouTube’s video editor has undergone some major changes. What used to be a limited tool is filled with features every creator needs, such as a tool for blurring faces, adding end cards, and choosing royalty-free music.

Now that the video editor seems to be complete, we can show you how to use each feature. Watch our tutorial below to get the full tour:

Need a quick way to bookmark this information? No problem. Scroll down to read the complete guide to YouTube’s video editor, then save this page for future reference.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to reach YouTube’s video editor:

Find the video you want to edit and hover your mouse over it. On the pop-up menu that appears, click the 

You’ll know you’re in the right place when you’ve reached this screen:

You can also reach the video editor from any watch page. To do that, click on one of your videos and watch it the traditional way. This means you’ll be able to see comments, your video’s description, and other suggested videos.

If you’re logged in as the channel owner, you’ll see two blue buttons below the video. Click the one that says 

 to reach the video details page, then select the video editor once again.

Basic Controls in the YouTube Video Editor

A good video editor has user-friendly controls. YouTube’s has six important ones you’ll likely need at some point:

 An area for scrubbing through the entire video, complete with a marker for clicking and dragging across the timeline.

 A tool for zooming in and out on the timeline so you can make accurate changes to the video.

 Allows you to speed up or slow down the video.

 Allows you to jump forward or backward in 10-second increments.

 A tool for erasing or reapplying certain changes to your video.

To quickly find each control, match the numbers above to the features below.

Here’s a routine task every creator needs to master. Follow the steps below to trim your YouTube videos of unwanted scenes:

Make your way to YouTube’s video editor (YouTube Studio > Content > Hover over the video > Pencil Icon > Editor).

Click the trim button to highlight the entire video, which will turn blue.

Use the gray video marker to scrub the timeline to the exact point you want to trim. Zoom in so you can see the sound waves and make an accurate selection.

Go to the beginning of the video, then click and drag the dark blue bar to the position of the gray marker. This part of the video will be grayed out and won’t play when you test the results.

Don’t worry about saving your changes just yet. In the next section, we’ll show you the most efficient way to do that.

Next up, we're going to do a split in the middle of a video and remove footage. This is a combination of splitting and trimming, and after we make those changes, we’ll show you the best way to save the video.

On the video timeline, drag your gray marker to the split point of your choice.

The gray marker should now be highlighted in blue. Drag the marker from the split point to create a split in the middle of the video. Everything that’s grayed will now be cut from the video. To cancel a split, click the X symbol above any of the gray areas.

When you’re done, follow the steps from the previous section to trim the video as you see fit. Click 

How to Save Editing Changes in the YouTube Editor

Before we go any further, we need to talk about saving your video. Here’s the best way to lock in your changes:

Instead of clicking the blue save button in the top right corner, click the three dots beside it.

This allows you to save the changes as a brand new video. If you simply click the Save button, YouTube will show the original, unedited video as it processes the changes for a few hours.

To get around this altogether, do your editing before you make a video public. If it's already public and you need to urgently change something, set it to private until the changes are applied.

How to Add Royalty-Free Music in the YouTube Editor

Unfortunately, you can’t add external audio or footage to the YouTube editor. That means last minute voice-overs or other sound effects will have to be added using a separate video editor, such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro.

 add royalty-free music. YouTube has an audio library that any creator can access from the video editor. The music is pretty nice, too!

Here’s how to add audio tracks to your video:

To the left of the video timeline, click the 

A panel of free music tracks will appear by default. You can scroll the list, listen to tracks, and perform searches. Click 

 to insert a song into the video timeline. For extra details about all the songs, click Audio Library.

When the music track is on your timeline, it shows up as a blue bar with three dots at the end. This is a menu you can click to remove the track or view its license, which explains whether you need to credit the artist in your video description.

Next to the three dots are mixing controls. Click the 

 and drag the slider to the appropriate position. By default, the music will completely replace the video’s original audio, so you need to adjust this setting to get a good mixture of the two.

To position the music track itself, simply click and drag it to the appropriate place on the timeline.

How to Blur Faces and Objects in YouTube Videos

Have you ever needed to blur something out of your video? Fortunately, YouTube has a tool for that in its video editor. You can do two types of blurs - one for faces and another for custom objects.

When you do a face blur, YouTube will scan the video for all of the faces it can detect. Then you’ll choose which faces to blur on an individual basis.

A custom blur allows you to place circular or rectangular blurs over different objects.

To access this part of the video editor, go to the timeline and click 

. The lettering is big, blue, and hard to miss. You’ll find it right below the timeline section for royalty-free audio tracks.

YouTube’s face blur will do most of the work for you. After it detects faces, and you select which ones to blur, you’re nearly done. For the custom blur, you’ll need to make more selections, such as whether to employ a circular or rectangular blur, plus motion tracking for certain objects.

We have a helpful blog post on this topic, so be sure to read it 

. If you need a visual tutorial, watch the video below to learn more about blurring in the YouTube video editor:

How to Add End Screens in the YouTube Video Editor

The video editor probably isn’t the best place to add end screens. If you go back to the video details page, there’s a dedicated end screen feature that’s less cluttered.

But if you want to add end screens in the YouTube video editor, the tools there work just fine. To add one, go to the video timeline and click the card icon. It’s right below the 

 feature we discussed in the previous section.

A pop-up will appear, allowing you to choose between promoting a:

The number of subscribers you have will determine how many of these options you can access. But in any case, you can only add four end screens to a video.

For each option, YouTube will guide you through the process for choosing the playlist, video, channel, etc., you want to promote. It’s pretty straightforward and doesn’t take much time.

Here are a few extra things to remember, though:

End screens run for a maximum of 20 seconds at the end of the video.

YouTube has templates to help you create an end screen layout for your videos. In the video editor, the template option is listed with the other promotion types above (video, playlist, etc.)

You can import end screens from previous videos.

End screens are great for suggesting content to your audience so you can get more views. And if you really want to wow your viewers, you can design something like what we have below – a nice layout where you can direct viewers to certain videos on your channel.

Complete guide to YouTube video editing with scissors and audio wave visuals.

Need to quickly trim a video? Add royalty-free music to set the scene for your content? If so, you're going to need this guide to YouTube's new-and-improved video editor.

How to Use YouTube's Video Editor [2021 Update]

What if we told you the ideal duration for a Fortnite video is 9 minutes, 50 seconds? And that no matter how good your content is, trying to exceed that limit will cause hundreds of viewers to click off the video?

Immediately, you’d wonder two things about that mysterious claim:

Let’s start with number two. The length of your videos matters because viewers have a wide range of intentions on YouTube. Some are searching for quick answers to everyday questions, such as how to tie a necktie. Others want to know things that take several minutes to explain. They’ll watch a 30-minute video about building a gaming PC and still have the stamina to view more content.

Knowing which type of viewer you’re dealing with makes all the difference. You can plan better content and film videos that are long enough to appease your audience.

Want to learn how it's done? Keep reading to find the best YouTube video length for your content.

Method 1: Calculate the Average Length of Top-Performing Videos

Producing videos at the right length is easier than you think. All you have to do is:

Perform a search for the topic/title you’re interested in filming.

Copy the video length of the top four or five videos.

Paste the values into a time calculator, such as 

 - you’ll get the average length of top-ranking videos for that search term.

For visual instructions, watch our recent video, “How Long Should Your YouTube Videos Be?”

This isn’t the most scientific method, but it’s a good way to capitalize on what works. With this strategy, you at least know that thousands of viewers - maybe even millions - have watched specific content at a length they could stand.

You only have to do a few searches on YouTube to see how eye-opening this data is. For example, run a search for “how to tie a tie.” The average length for the highest-performing videos is 3 minutes, 10 seconds. Why? Because it’s a 30-second task and people searching this query want a fast solution.

What about “how to build a gaming PC?” As a creator, that’s going to cost you about 26 minutes, 39 seconds. Why? Viewers know the task is complicated and will watch a longer video to get the information.

Method 2: Analyze the Average View Duration on Your Channel

There are other ways to glean your ideal video length on YouTube. Instead of calculating average video lengths, you can follow the steps below to see how long viewers watch your content.

Below the graph showing channel views, Watch Time, subscribers, and revenue, click 

On the next page, you’ll see a row of tabs near the top of the page. Click 

. If you don’t see this option, you may need to expand the menu by clicking 

This will show you a graph of views, segmented by subscribers and non-subscribers. Be sure to 

 at the top right corner of the page to get at least a month of data.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see your channel's average view duration.

Here’s what this page looks like for the vidIQ channel:

Here you can see the impact of your subscribers, and generally speaking, how long they watch your content. 

On the vidIQ channel, subscribers watch our content for an average of 3 minutes, 21 seconds. So at the very least, we know our audience is willing to stick around for 3 minutes. That doesn’t mean we’ll make videos at that length, but it gives us a benchmark to follow and a time frame for presenting the most valuable information in a video.

Also, where people discover your content on YouTube influences how long they’re willing to watch - and that’s powerful information to have. So you can check the 

 tab on this same page (below) for a deeper understanding of your average view duration.

For example, look at the two highlighted areas below.

Our average view duration from suggested videos is 3 minutes, 59 seconds. That’s significantly higher than the 2 minutes, 7 seconds we receive from YouTube search.

So for people who watch content like ours, they see a suggested video from vidIQ, click on it, and watch for nearly four minutes on average. 

Looking at this chart, we may decide to not make videos shorter than four minutes.

Turning casual viewers into fans is a great indicator of success. That’s why you should analyze your subscriber growth to see if making longer or shorter content is a good idea.

To get started, return to this page (below) in the YouTube Studio.

On this chart, pay close attention to the percentage breakdown of views earned from subscribers versus non-subscribers. As you can see, 85% of our views come from non-subscribers. Our goal is to convert these casual viewers into loyal fans.

That’s why you have to keep returning to this page. Keep watching the percentage split, and make note of increases or decreases trending in either direction.

If views from subscribers are growing, increase the length of your videos and see where that takes you.

 If the opposite is true, and you’re losing subscribers, don’t worry about making longer content. You should figure out 

Viewer Intent Should Determine the Length of Your YouTube Videos

At this point, we’ve shared three options for choosing an ideal video length. You can:

Calculate the average length of similar, top-performing videos.

Analyze your average view duration for certain traffic sources.

Determine whether your subscriber count is rising or falling, then make adjustments to your video time limit.

These are great strategies, but don’t forget about viewer intent. 

You should determine how much information will best serve your audience, then make a video long enough to achieve that goal.

 After satisfying this requirement, you can make adjustments to your video length strategy.

And when you finally do, don't become attached to one video length. Some topics require a bit of creative license, especially when you’re telling an emotional story. If you have a magnetic personality and excellent storytelling skills, you can be flexible with the length of your videos.

Our only recommendation is to never make videos less than two minutes long. So far, we haven’t seen a video that short reach meaningful success on YouTube.

If your video is less than two minutes, you might 

. This new content type has the potential to go viral and introduce your videos to millions of people on YouTube.

Smartwatch displaying a 4:30 YouTube timer with a blurred man in the background.

There's no perfect length for a YouTube video. You have to find what works for you, so here are three tips to jumpstart the process.

3 Ways to Find the Best YouTube Video Length

When you first set up your YouTube channel, its web address won’t be a snazzy URL of your choosing. The default address will actually include your channel ID - a 24-character “name tag” that helps certain apps identify your channel.

In 2021, a 24-character URL is way too long. Fortunately, YouTube lets creators choose a custom address for their channel. It comes in handy nowadays, especially if you want to build a recognizable brand on the platform.

Creating a custom URL is quick and easy. But before we show you how, you should know whether you meet the requirements to do so. If you’ve completed these three steps, you should have no problem setting up a custom YouTube URL:

Have a channel that’s at least 30 days old.

If you’ve already done these things, congratulations! You’re ready to brand your YouTube channel with a custom URL that’s catchy easy to read.

First, find YouTube’s customization page in the YouTube Studio. This is where you’ll be able to adjust the layout, basic info, and branding on your channel.

Follow these steps to reach the selection page:

On your channel’s homepage, click your profile icon and select 

 tab. Scroll down until you see the Channel URL header.

Need a visual tutorial? Watch our video below for more guidance:

At this point, you’ll see two custom URL options. The first will be a default URL that closely matches your channel name. Of course, it's not always possible to claim this URL. Your channel name may be the same as someone else, which means they've already claimed the URL you want.

If that’s the case, use the second URL option. This will let you type in a custom URL that best represents your channel, as shown below:

 to save your changes and confirm ownership of the URL.

If you make a mistake when choosing your custom URL, don’t worry. You can always remove it in four easy steps:

Return to YouTube’s customization page and make sure the 

Scroll down until you see the Custom URL header. Click 

 right below the text box showing your current URL.

The next thing you’ll see is the About Me page on your Google account. In the about section, click the icon beside your current URL.

 and follow the steps in the previous section to create a new URL.

To clarify, creating or removing a custom URL doesn’t replace the random URL you’ve always had. This collection of characters is your channel ID, and it will always be attached to your account. Setting up a custom URL just keeps it from appearing in your channel’s web address.

Also, you may see /c/ in your URL from time to time, but don’t worry about it. You don’t need to include it in your address when sharing it online. Simply typing YouTube.com/yourchannel works just fine!

In 2021, a custom YouTube URL can set you apart from the competition. Other creators may choose to keep their alphanumeric address, but they won’t have the advantage of full branding. After all, no viewer wants to hear, “Subscribe to my YouTube channel at YouTube.com/xTCyaRn56LrjSsY12145TyBq.”

YouTube logo with green arrow and bold text "Custom URL" on colorful background

Are you ready to give your YouTube channel a custom URL? Here are the requirements to do so, plus a quick tutorial to help you get it done.

How To Get a Custom URL For Your YouTube Channel [2021 Update]

What does undeniable, record-smashing YouTube domination look like for you? Is it producing a video that’s optimized so well, it reaches 500,000 views in 30 days? Or is it a matter of studying your competition so closely that you never run out of evergreen video ideas?

No matter what your YouTube goal is, vidIQ has you covered. 

With our comprehensive suite of tools, we can address every single need you may have as a creator leading up to recording your videos.

It’s hard to grow a YouTube channel without advanced data, analytics, and insights, but we have many resources to help you! Join over 1 million users who use vidIQ to help them on their YouTube journey. 

 to kickstart your success and then take a deep dive into the following features:

Sometimes you just need an overview of your channel’s performance without digging too deep for data. Our real-time analytics dashboard does exactly that, plus it's at the top of your homepage for easy access.

In the screenshot above, the dashboard shows:

How many views the vidIQ YouTube channel earned in the last 60 minutes

How many people are subscribed to our channel

To make more details appear, hover your mouse over the dashboard to see additional metrics, such as your channel’s 

 over the last week. And if you want to see even more stats on the dashboard, you have the option to add several. The real-time stats bar is customizable!

2. YouTube Likes to Dislikes Ratio Counter

Want an easy way to gauge viewer sentiment? A good way to start measuring this stat is to look at the ratio of likes to dislikes on your videos.

Unfortunately, YouTube itself only counts the number of likes and dislikes. If you wanted to find the overall percentage of likes to dislikes, you’d have to do some math, and well… who has time for that?

With our tool, this percentage appears right beside videos that publicly display likes and dislikes. That way, you can quickly gauge the sentiment viewers have toward a video and gain some valuable insight about your content.

When you watch a video and have vidIQ installed, you'll see the comprehensive scorecard shown above. It has several sections, and you can minimize each one or hide the whole scorecard using the master controls at the top.

Also, the tabs at the top of the scorecard show the historical performance of any video. With this feature, you can review in-depth metrics, such as video views per hour and social reach on Twitter.

SEO is an important part of being discovered on YouTube. To help you do this, we’ve developed an SEO tool that grades your videos and shares basic steps to make your content more searchable.

Based on the title, description, and tags associated with your video, the SEO tool scores the quality of your metadata. A score closer to 100 means your video is properly optimized and will perform well on YouTube.

Many of the panels in this tool contain extra information about your video’s SEO. To see actionable improvements any creator can make, spend some time exploring these finer details.

Want to track the performance of your videos? Take our video comparison tool for a spin. This wonderful dashboard lets you analyze the performance of the video you’re watching against other valuable metrics.

For example, you might want to know the average video views for an entire channel. In the screenshot above, the comparison tool shows that one video (the blue line) performed below a channel’s average (the pink line). As the blue line slopes upward, you can see that the video steadily gained more views within a period of 28 days.

That suggests the video in question is evergreen content. If you want to take things a step further, you can use the dropdown menu to compare the video you're watching against another channel, your channel, or any other video on YouTube.

If a creator has done their keyword research, it’s likely they've added some valuable terms to their video tags, as shown above. Wouldn’t it be great if you could copy this information and add it to your own research?

Well, you’re in luck! That’s exactly what our video tags tool does. Thanks to the paperclip icon in this panel, you can copy and save these valuable keywords onto your computer.

Oh, and if you're wondering what the numbers beside the keywords represent, the innermost number shows how high or low the video you’re watching ranks on YouTube for that search term. Finally, the outermost number is vidIQ’s keyword score.

On a YouTube search results page, this panel appears on the right side and shows you loads of interesting data. Of course, if it’s too overwhelming, you can hide and expand the panel as you see fit.

However, we think you’re going to love having this tool around. The data in this panel shows how often videos for a search term get recycled, as well as which creator appears most often in the search rankings. Chances are, that creator is doing the right things on YouTube. It would be wise to follow them, watch their content, and pick up some useful strategies of your own.

We mentioned this keyword score tool earlier, but let’s go into more detail. In a nutshell, it analyzes the volume of a search term against the volume of content on YouTube. Think of it as basic supply and demand. Ideally, you, as a creator, want to make content for a search term that’s in demand with little competition from other YouTubers. The closer this keyword score is to 100, the more opportunity there is for you to rank highly.

9. YouTube Subscriber Counts For Other Channels

Another cool thing vidIQ shows you are channel subscriber counts. Why is this useful? Well, for example, let’s say you stumble upon a Fortnite video with a quarter of a million views. You’re immediately interested in this accomplishment because you have a Fortnite channel too - the only difference is your videos aren’t attracting massive views. So, you investigate. And in the end, you discover that this channel has a mere 6,000 subscribers.

Obviously, that creator found a way to rank for one of the most competitive search terms on YouTube, Fortnite. As a competitor, it would be wise to research what they did so you can repeat their success.

If you want to do some deep keyword research, this is the tool for you. It helps you build a better keyword strategy by showing every single tag associated with a video. While it is true that video tags aren't as important as they used to be, keyword research is still vital.

Like the video tag tool, this feature allows you to copy the tags you need for your research. Beyond that, you can also click on an individual video tag to learn more about it. This unravels the keyword universe surrounding a topic and even shows trending videos for the term.

Again, you'll see a vidIQ keyword score beside these terms. Also, you can highlight any keywords of interest to copy and use for your own content.

Once you’ve done all the research, put yourself in the mind of your target audience. What do they search for on YouTube? Before you even press record, you can use these tools to get the answer.

With the channel research tool, you can view stats about a channel when you visit its homepage. This gives you a performance snapshot that includes video views per hour, subscriber rank, and how many videos they’re published within any date range. You can see this and more by clicking the stats button on the uppermost menu.

The trending button shows a different set of data. With this feature, you can see which content on the channel is performing well right now, as it sorts videos by views per hour. All of this reveals key insights into content that was created months or even years ago. If you happen to discover any videos that are still popular today, that’s another sign of evergreen content.

Want to see the top YouTube keywords a channel is using? You can get a list of these terms using another tool we’ve developed to advance your research. To see what the feature looks like, check out the screenshot above.

Of course, this is a somewhat chaotic reflection of the keywords used for a tech-heavy channel. To make things easier on yourself, press the download button to get a CSV data file showing how often this creator uses such keywords (plus the keyword score).

Here’s another power tool for you to try and enjoy: the CSV export. For serious creators who need as much data as possible, this tool will download all the public data associated with a channel. Be prepared to go through the numbers with a very, very fine-tooth comb.

The competitors tool allows you to keep tabs on creators within your niche. If they’re reaching success using a topic you make content about, you need to know about it to create some popular content of your own!

When using this tool, you can adjust the timeframe of the videos and how they’re sorted, whether that’s by views per hour, total views, or date uploaded. As with a channel page, you can view the keywords that these creators are using. If several creators are using the same keywords, it's more evidence that you really need to dig into the keyword research that surrounds it.

Think of the competitor tool as an alternative subscription list for when you're in creator mode. You can use the ‘Add Competitor’ button on any channel page to add creators to your list. Alternatively, if you're watching a video and you want to add a channel to your competitor list, click the vidIQ tool button to do it directly from there.

Our trend alert tool tracks the most important keywords you want to monitor on YouTube. By setting up filters, you’ll be notified by email when videos containing a certain keyword trigger a predetermined number of views per hour.

In this example above, we created a very simple trend alert for videos about the iPhone. When new videos on the iPhone get over 100 views per hour over a certain time period, an email will arrive in our inbox. From the data shared there, we could start investigating, researching, and even creating if we decided we could add value to the conversation.

We all know what YouTube's trending page does and doesn't do, right? So, what if you had a tool that simply showed you the most viewed videos on YouTube right now, period?

Let’s say your niche is Fortnite, yet again. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool that filters the most viewed Fortnite videos on YouTube? And wouldn’t it be double nice if it could show you the most viewed Fortnite videos on YouTube from channels with less than 1,000 subscribers?

Our most-viewed video tool does all those things. It’s capable of much more, but these are just a few examples of its detailed precision.

Let’s move on to the YouTube Studio now. Whenever you access the video manager screen, a vidIQ tool button presents a range of bulk options for you. We've already seen what the CSV export can do, but there are additional tools for editing content.

For example, this tool will load a list of videos and allow you to edit titles and descriptions on the fly. If you have hundreds of videos on your channel, which many creators do, this will save you hours of repetitive work.

But that's not the only feature this tool has. Mouse over any video, and you’ll discover a second button that lets you do even more.

For example, you can copy info cards or end screens from one video, then transfer them to your other videos in seconds. Imagine how long it would take to do this manually! Even more tools lie beneath this button too, including a quick thumbnail editor.

In short, you'll find this button all over YouTube once you have vidIQ installed. It does different things depending on where you are on the platform, so explore it freely!

It’s nice to be able to preview your content, isn’t it? If you’ve wondered what a video’s thumbnail will look like before it’s published, this tool is for you.

The thumbnail preview tool is available to use when you upload or edit a YouTube video. In addition to revealing the quality of your titles and thumbnails, this tool compares your video to others that are already ranked for a search term. You can also compare how a video would look on a YouTube home screen as opposed to desktop or mobile.

If you're serious about growing your channel on YouTube, here are 25 ways vidIQ can help right now!

YouTube Tips & Tricks

How to Use YouTube's Video Editor [2021 Update]

3 Ways to Find the Best YouTube Video Length

How To Get a Custom URL For Your YouTube Channel [2021 Update]

25 vidIQ Tools You Need to Grow Your YouTube Channel NOW!

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How to Grow Your YouTube Channel By Giving Back to Subscribers

Top 5 YouTube Metrics Every Creator Should Study

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Why You Should be Using YouTube Video Chapters

5 Quick & Easy Tips for Growing Your YouTube Channel

How to Get More Views from YouTube’s Audience Data Tool

How to Blur Anything You Need to in Your YouTube Video