TechPenny is reader-supported. We may earn commissions if you buy through our links.



Can You Edit Videos With OBS After Recording? (Explained)

The Open Broadcaster Software, or OBS for short, is a powerful tool for free, open-source streaming and video making.

While OBS is primarily used for streaming, it also has the ability to help you create some great videos you can watch again and again, show your friends, or upload somewhere like YouTube.

As such, you might be wondering, does OBS let you edit videos? If so, how well does it work? If not, what other options are there?

If you’re wondering what the answers are to these questions and more, keep reading as I will explain further in this article.

Here’s how Editing OBS Videos Works

OBS does not support video editing within its own software. Once you’ve recorded a video, OBS does not allow you to edit it in any way. Despite this limitation, editing OBS videos is still entirely possible with the aid of third-party OBS Video Editors.

OBS - Open Broadcasting Software

In fact, you have quite a few options when it comes to editing options for OBS videos, and we’ll be taking a look at some of the top picks and what they have to offer.

What Editing Options Do You Have with OBS?

Since OBS itself does not support any video editing, let’s take a look at some of the best third-party OBS video editors that you can start using today, for free!

FlexClip Video Editor

FlexClip lets you edit videos right in your browser, no download required! You can upload your OBS video and begin trimming, adjusting, and tweaking it to your heart’s content within minutes.

It’s worth noting that FlexClip prefers the standard .mp4 format for videos, but if your video is saved to another format, never fear, they offer an equally free video converter to change formats.

FlexClip is a fully-featured, browser-based video editing software package.

You can trim, split, and splice together video and audio tracks, add transitions and effects, and generally do just about anything you’d expect to be able to do with a dedicated video editor. All for free and with no watermark!

MiniTool Movie Maker

Another option for editing OBS-recorded videos is MiniTool. This one will require a download, but it offers a feature-rich free version that should satisfy all of your general video-editing needs.

MiniTool supports a wide variety of video formats, including 3GP, MOV, AVI, FLV, MKV, MP4, MPG, VOB, WMV, and RMVB. It will even let you convert between these file types within its software!

Video trimming, splitting, merging, and so on are all on offer here with countless more editing tools besides, all accessed through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface at no charge.

Windows Movie Maker

Another free option from software giant Microsoft is Windows Movie Maker.

Compared to some of the other options on this list, Windows Movie Maker is probably pretty basic in terms of the features on offer.

That said, if all you’re looking for is basic editing staples like splitting, merging, and splicing video and audio tracks, Movie Maker’s got you covered.

One downside to this option is that Movie Maker only supports a couple of different video formats, including the rapidly-becoming-the-standard .mp4. So be sure to use a file converter before you start editing if your file type isn’t supported.

Format Factory

Yet another free video editing option is Format Factory.

Like MiniTool, Format Factory accepts a wide variety of file types and will also let you convert your video’s file type within the software.

Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to say about Format Factory that hasn’t been said about the other options on this list. It appears to cover all the editing basics, it’s totally free, and just a download away!

iMovie

Lastly, to round out this list of free video OBS-recorded-video-editors, we have an offering from Apple: iMovie.

This one’s for any Mac users reading, as it doesn’t seem to have a Windows download. But if you’re an Apple product user, iMovie is available on both your MacOS and your iPhone!

As far as we can tell, the editing features in iMovie are pretty basic, but they’ll get the job done.

The most convenient aspect of iMovie over the other options on this list is that—provided all your devices are Apple products—you can save your work to the cloud and continue anytime, anywhere, from desktop, tablet, laptop, and phone.

Read our blog about can OBS record audio & video separately? 

Do People Actually Use the Editing Features Inside OBS?

Well, no, nobody is using the video-editing features in OBS, because there aren’t any.

However, lots of users seem to be using a third-party video editor like the five options we’ve listed for you to edit their OBS videos.

While OBS is primarily intended for streaming, many users have realized that it can make some pretty nice-looking videos as well, or they simply want to cut up their stream footage to post the highlights or similar.

Either way, the host of third-party free offerings has you covered. While it is unfortunate that OBS itself won’t let you edit the videos it helped you make, you have a long list of alternatives that will do just that.

It’s also worth noting that OBS is open-source software. So if there’s a demand for video-editing features, and people out there with the time and inclination to develop the code for said features, it could be possible to create some kind of OBS video-editing add-on in the future.

What Video and Sound Format Can you Export From OBS?

When it comes to video, OBS records to the MKV format by default.

You can change this in your settings, but it might be worth keeping it that way, since this format is better able to handle the interruptions that come from recording a stream, unlike .mp4.

If you want to save your video to a different format, you can always let OBS record to MKV and use a file converter like the ones we’ve mentioned above to change it later.

As for audio, from what we can tell, this gets saved in MKV format too, since the format includes both audio and video.

However, the MKV format supports multiple audio tracks which can be separated for editing purposes within a video editor like the five we’ve listed for you in this article.

How Easy Are the Editing Tools to Use?

Ease-of-use depends upon which video-editing option you’re using.

As near as we can tell, all five of the options we’ve listed for you today should be relatively user-friendly, with bonus points to FlexClip in particular for allowing you to do it all in a browser with no download.

Are the Editing Tools in OBS Free to Use?

OBS does not (yet!) have any video-editing features, but all the third-party options we’ve covered today are either totally free or have a free version with all the basic features you should need.

As near as we can tell, Format Factory is probably your best bet for a totally-free option, while it is possible the other options on the list might try to sell you something at some point.

That being said, every option we’ve covered today will allow you to use its basic editing features at no charge.

How Do I Do Basic Trimming and Editing in OBS?

As we’ve covered, OBS does not have any video-editing features. All five options on our list of third-party video editors—plus many more that are out there—should allow you to trim and edit with ease.

Since OBS itself doesn’t allow you to edit videos and we’ve listed five different options—each of whose features will be accessed in a different way with a different interface—it’s difficult to go into too much detail on the how-tos within the scope of this article.

That being said, all the options listed here—plus countless more floating around on the world wide web—will let you do basic editing on your OBS videos, and we encourage you to try them out and determine which is the best fit for you and your project!

Check out our article about can OBS stream to multiple platforms?

Sources

Was this article helpful? Like Dislike
Great!

Click to share...

Did you find wrong information or was something missing?
We would love to hear your thoughts! (PS: We read ALL feedback)