Design a short video clip with Canva

Canva has added the option to create designs with a video clip, using either stock video or uploading your own. This is an easy way to create clips for social media, a promo video or title to incorporate into your YouTube video.

I have long used the Canva graphic design site to make my YouTube thumbnails and blog graphics. While you can pay for advanced Pro features, I am using the free service, which is sufficient for my needs, and it works great on my Chromebook.

The free tier includes up to 1GB storage for photos and other assets, including video clips. As Canva owns stock image sites Pixabay and Pexels, those free images and videos are available within Canva to create your design, with no upload required.

And once your design is complete, you can download it to your computer for use anywhere you like.

Note that Canva isn't a full-fledged video editing tool. You can't assemble multiple clips or add an audio track. What it does let you do is create a design that incorporates a video clip along with text and other graphics.

How to create a video design in Canva

1. Sign in to Canva

2. Choose your design dimensions.

You can select pre-set dimensions, custom dimensions, or select a template to modify.

If you use the "YouTube Thumbnail" size, it is 1280x720 pixels (720p).  You can create a 1080p video by  creating a design that is 1920 pixels wide and ×1080 pixels high.

3. Select a video for your design

On the left menu of the design editor click Video to find free video clips to use.

Or click Upload to upload your own video.

4.  Adjust your video. 

To set the length of the video, click the video in the design and select Trim at the top of the page.
Use the sliders to adjust the start and end of the video clip.

To change the video dimensions, click the video in the design and select Crop at the top of the page. You can then crop the landscape video into square or portrait dimensions.

The video can be resized within the design - it can entirely fill the frame, or just take up a corner.

5. Finish your design

Add graphics, photos and text to your design. Canva Pro users can add animated designs.
You can resize, crop, change the graphics colors, fonts, and more.

The Canva Help Center has instructions for using the editor features.

6. Download your design

Once you are happy with your design, you can download it by clicking the Download button at tip right and selecting Video.

The video download is a MP4 file with the same dimensions as your design.

 This is a quick design I created in Canva, then uploaded to YouTube:
 Components I used:

• YouTube Thumbnail design size (720p)
• Free stock video clip of a cat by Gustavo Belemmi on Pixabay. 
• Speech balloon graphic
• Text
• Circular frame, with stock image inside

All the components were rearranged, resized, and (in the case of graphics) recolored.

It was easy to do and doesn't look bad, despite my minimal design skills.