Text-based Video Editing vs Editing Text in a Video - A Quick Look

June 2023

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2 min read

Text-based Video Editing vs Editing Text in a Video - A Quick Look

I was scrolling through Reels on Instagram and suddenly saw a captivating video. The video had a title on the top that immediately got me hooked. I then saw each word spoken by the person unfolding on my screen. I could not help but watch the video and read the text until the end.

An example reel with visually large caption

Using text in video has been prevalent since the start of video production and has a long history. Video editors and content creators have been using the art of typography to enhance storytelling. And we now see it all over the internet.

There has now been a big step up in using text in the video editing process. The launch of the text-based video editing feature in Adobe Premiere Pro has created a buzz in the video production space. The term text-based video editing is now widely used all around.

I see people confused with the terms: Text-based video editing & Editing text in a video.

In this blog post, we will explore the differences between the two concepts and share a list of software to help you get started with video editing.

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What exactly is editing text in a video?

As the name suggests, editing text in a video is a process of adding words & phrases to your video.

Text can be a great tool to add information, captions, or titles to your videos to enhance the narrative through carefully placed words. This art form allows the content creators to guide the attention, emphasizing key moments, delivering crucial information, and evoking emotions.

There are a variety of ways and different tools that can help users add text to a video.

Adding text in a video on Capcut

In general, you add a text overlay over an existing video by typing down the text or importing it. You can then adjust its font, size, color, and position on the screen. Some tools even allow users to animate the text, making it move or change color over time.

The exported video will have embedded text that becomes a part of the video itself.

Here’s a list of beginner-friendly tools that allow editing text in a video.

  1. Veed.io
  2. Canva
  3. Capcut

Text-Based Video Editing: The New Buzzword in Video Production:

Animation show drag and drop and cut feature

We are in a thrilling realm of text-based video editing world, where it’s easy to trim, cut and edit videos just by editing text.

In contrast to editing text in a video, text-based video editing is an interface to edit videos themselves. It allows users to edit videos by searching for phrases in the video transcripts, rather than scrubbing through the video timeline, saving a significant amount of time & effort.

Animated gif showing search within a video

Text-based video editing tools move away from a visual timeline-based approach and use transcripts as the interface to manipulate videos. They allow users to cut, trim, and merge clips just by editing the accompanied transcript of the spoken words in the video.

Here’s a list of the best text-based video editing tools for you to try out:

  1. Reduct
  2. Descript
  3. Zubtitle

Read more: How and Why We"re Making Video Editing as Easy as Editing Text

Reduct removes the pain of working with video.

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