Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Instagram's free Edits app now has enough real editing power to replace CapCut for most creators, but the deciding factor isn't feature quality, it's that CapCut's updated terms of service claim perpetual rights to any footage you upload, a risk bigger brands should weigh more than solo creators.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You post Reels or TikToks and are still deciding between Instagram's built-in Edits app and CapCut.
You want a concrete workflow for turning raw phone footage into a trend-paced edit, not just a feature list.
You've seen the CapCut terms-of-service backlash and want a plain-English read on what it actually changes for creators.
You're looking for a repeatable system for capturing and organizing video ideas before you film.

SKIP IF…

You already edit exclusively in a desktop NLE like Premiere or DaVinci and have no interest in phone-based editing.
You run paid ads or branded content at a scale where a lawyer, not a YouTube video, should be answering the terms-of-service question.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Instagram's Edits app organizes ideas (Stickies, saved Reels, an Inspiration feed of trending audio), lets you film and edit in-app, and shows account insights, all free. The creator edits a real coffee reel on camera: trimming raw footage down to sub-second clips, syncing a trending audio's beat drop to the front of the timeline, adding animated text, and exporting with settings matched to how the clip was originally filmed. On CapCut: its updated terms of service grant the company perpetual, irrevocable rights to use anything uploaded, which is a bigger risk for brands whose footage has real ad value than for everyday creators. Her conclusion: CapCut is still the more mature editor, but the rights risk tips her toward moving off it, and Edits is close enough on features to be a real replacement.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:28

01 · Video overview & intro

States the plan for the video: a full app breakdown of Edits, a live editing tutorial, and a closing verdict on Edits versus CapCut given CapCut's terms-of-service update.

00:29 – 10:59

02 · Generating video ideas in Edits

Tours the Ideas tab (Stickies with color-coded content pillars, saved Reels, saved audio, saved collections), the Inspiration tab for finding trending audio, the Projects grid, the in-app camera and its filming settings, and the Insights tab for account and reel-level stats.

11:00 – 27:48

03 · In-depth video editing tutorial

Edits a real coffee-latte reel from raw footage on screen: finding and trimming key moments, choosing a hook (a plug for her own hook-ideas ebook and BSP course lands here), adding and syncing a trending audio track, speeding up clips to hit a roughly 0.5-0.6 second pacing rhythm, adding animated text, closed captions, and cut-silences, reviewing other clip tools (adjust, restyle, filters, green screen), then matching export settings to the original recording settings before posting.

27:49 – 28:34

04 · Sharing drafts with collaborators

Flags a newer, still-rolling-out feature that lets an editor share an in-progress draft with a collaborator on Instagram to get feedback before it's exported and posted.

28:35 – 32:29

05 · CapCut vs. Edits: which is better?

Breaks down what CapCut's updated terms of service actually change (perpetual, irrevocable rights to uploaded footage, not ownership transfer), argues the real risk is bigger for brands than solo creators, and lands on a personal verdict: she's staying on CapCut for now because she loves the editor, but the terms are why others might reasonably switch to Edits.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Instagram's Edits app syncs saved Reels, saved audio, and saved collections automatically between the Instagram app and the Edits app in both directions.
The Stickies feature lets creators color-code video ideas by content pillar or by posting day, so five sticky colors can map to five recurring content themes.
For transformation or process videos, opening with the final result, not the start of the journey, is a deliberate hook strategy taught in the creator's own BSP course.
A fast-paced trend edit was built from clips roughly 0.5 to 0.6 seconds long, cut and matched to the tempo of the trending audio.
Posting directly through Edits keeps a trending audio linked to the video on Instagram's trending-audio page, a sync that third-party scheduling tools can't replicate.
Edits has a cut-silences feature that automatically trims dead air out of talking-head footage, similar to tools built into desktop editors like Descript or Premiere.
Export settings should match the original recording settings (resolution, frame rate, HDR on or off) or the exported video can look visibly different from what was filmed.
CapCut's updated terms of service don't transfer content ownership to CapCut, but they do grant CapCut perpetual, irrevocable rights to use any uploaded footage, including drafts.
The realistic risk from CapCut's terms is asymmetric: a solo creator's clip getting pulled into a CapCut ad is unlikely, but a recognizable brand's polished footage is a more attractive target.
TikTok's own terms already grant the platform rights to use creator content in ads, so the CapCut backlash is arguably about a rule most short-form platforms already have.
Instagram Edits added a feature, still rolling out, that lets editors share an in-progress draft with a collaborator on Instagram to get feedback before exporting.
The creator's stated decision is to keep using CapCut's superior editing tools for now, because she judges the rights risk to her as a solo creator to be low, while flagging that bigger brands should weigh it more heavily.

Takeaway

The tool matters less than what it costs you to use it.

WHAT TO LEARN

A free in-app editor can now cover most of what a dedicated editing app does, so the deciding factor between tools is increasingly the fine print, not the feature list.

Sort raw ideas the moment they occur to you, whether that's a color-coded sticky note by content theme or a saved reel with your own annotation on why it's relevant.
Pull inspiration from a trending-audio feed rather than a general following feed, since what's trending is a stronger predictor of what will perform than what people you follow are posting.
For any video that builds toward a transformation or a payoff shot, consider opening on that payoff instead of the beginning, since the resolution is usually more visually arresting than the setup.
When cutting to a trend's audio, treat clip length as a tunable variable, roughly half a second per clip, and adjust up or down until the cuts feel locked to the beat.
Match your export settings to your original recording settings (resolution, frame rate, HDR), since a mismatch is a common, avoidable cause of a finished video looking worse than the raw footage.
Before accepting a platform's or app's terms of service, understand the specific right being granted, ownership and usage rights are different things, and the update may matter more for some users than others.
Weigh platform risk by your own exposure, not just the headline: a policy that's a real threat to a recognizable brand's footage may be a low-probability concern for an average account.
A tool doesn't need to be objectively better to be worth switching to, sometimes the switch is justified by risk tolerance rather than by which app has more features.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Edits: Instagram's free standalone video creation and editing app for creators, launched in April 2025, with idea-tracking, in-app filming, editing, and posting to Instagram.
Stickies: A note-taking feature inside the Edits app's Ideas tab where creators jot down and save video concepts, optionally with a full script attached.
Inspiration tab: A feed inside the Edits app of Reels using trending audio, meant for pulling content ideas and identifying which sounds are currently popular.
Content pillars: A small set of recurring topic categories (often three to five) a creator rotates through to structure what they post about.
Cut silences: An automatic editing feature that detects and removes quiet pauses in talking-head footage without the editor manually trimming each gap.
BSP Model: The creator's own paid course and content framework, referenced here for its hook-writing principle of starting a video at the end of its transformation.
Terms of service (ToS): The legal agreement a user accepts to use an app or platform, which can include rights the company gains over content the user uploads.
Restyle: An Edits editing option that applies AI-generated visual effects or style changes to a clip.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

15:19product100+ Hook Ideas ebook ↗

14:29productThe BSP Model course ↗

29:30videoVideo explaining CapCut's updated terms of service in plain language

32:10videoHer prior video breaking down CapCut editing alternatives

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

13:29

“If you really wanna hook your audience in and your video kinda takes people along a transformation or journey, start your video with the end of that journey.”

standalone, actionable editing advice with no setup needed→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

29:10

“It's almost like you own it, but they also gain rights to use it.”

clean one-line summary of a confusing legal update→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

31:40

“The risk outweighs the rewards for me as of right now.”

decisive, quotable verdict line→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogystory

In April, Instagram launched their new video creation app for creators, edits. So in this video, we're going to do a full in-depth app breakdown. We'll do a complete editing tutorial.

I'll edit a video with you, and at the end, we'll even talk about if edits should replace CapCut because a lot of you have been asking me my thoughts on CapCut's updated terms of service. So we'll talk about that at the end. As always, timestamps are below.

Use them if you need them. Let's just jump into it. Opening up our edits app.

Let's start with the ideas section. The ideas tab is where you can keep track of all of your video ideas in one place. So you could add new video ideas or add sticky notes to currently saved reels from Instagram.

We're on stickies right now, so this is where you could just like add a new video idea. So video idea three, you could write your entire script right here, blah blah, and add that.

It'll be added as a new video idea. The cool thing with stickies is they actually just updated this like a week or two ago. The script that you put here on each card can be turned into like a teleprompter sort of situation.

You'll go to the three dots, and if you have the updated version, it will say teleprompter there. I don't have the latest update yet, but this is what it looks like. And let's save our video idea.

If you're somebody who operates with content pillars and you like to create your content calendar by rotating through content pillars and talking about different topics, the stickies are also something you could color coordinate. So let's say my video idea number one is also like content pillar number one. I could change that to orange.

This card, could change to pink, and there's five different color options. So if you have three to five different content pillars, you could color coordinate them like this.

Or if you don't operate in content pillars and you just create, like, different style videos, so maybe every Monday, you do a talking head video. Every Tuesday, you do a trend video. Every Thursday, you do a vlog.

You could kind of theme your sticky note colors to match the style of videos that you're creating. Let's switch to the saved reels.

This is going to show you all of the reels that you have saved. Whether you save them on the Instagram app, so if you're on Instagram and you save a reel, it's going to sync automatically with the edits app. Any video that you save over on Instagram will show up here in edits as well.

The cool thing with this section is you can add sticky notes to your saved reels too. So if you saw a reel on Instagram and you're like, oh, I really like this. I have a really cool idea of how I could apply this to my niche.

This video I saw, I was like, wait, this would be really funny if I put a camera under the Bundt pan because she removes the Bundt pan, and it's Chipotle. And it's funny, and I'm like, wait, what if I do that and then I could put a camera under it?

So I'm just like elaborating on my idea or the idea that came to mind when I saw this. I'm just adding a little sticky note so I remember for next time. This will show all of your saved audios and, of course, all of your saved collections also on Instagram.

Let's move on to the play icon on the bottom. This is your inspiration tab. I'll say vice versa.

Anything that you save on the inspiration tab here in the edits app will also save on your Instagram app as well. The inspiration tab is really cool because it allows you to scroll through reels that have trending audios to pull inspiration from or get ideas from. So as you're scrolling through this inspiration tab, let me turn down my volume, you'll notice that all of these are trending audios and showing you popular videos that are using that trending audio well.

So that's the best way to get inspiration and kind of adapt the whole trending audio strategy. Now there is another feed that is in this section.

If you go to the top left under inspiration, there's also a following tab. This is gonna show you reels that are performing well of the people that you're following.

Now I don't spend a lot of time here because it's very individual to the creator. It's not necessarily, hey, this idea is gonna perform really well because it's a trend or this is a trending audio.

It's just showing you what's performing well based off of the people you're following. So I don't spend much time here. I really like utilizing the inspiration tab instead because like I said, this is the place to pull inspiration from.

Just going over few basic functionalities in the inspiration section. If you come across an audio that you enjoy, you can use it right away.

So where it says use audio, you just select use audio, and you could jump straight into creation. There's a camera in app. I'll show you that in a second.

So you could jump straight into creating that video in app. You could even upload if it's like more of a vlog like this one is a lot of b roll clips. You could use audio and then upload content from your phone camera roll.

If you like the audio and you don't wanna get into creating it yet or creating the reel yet, just click on the vinyl, and then you could save the audio again directly in the edits app. It'll save also in Instagram for you.

You can even add a sticky note here to expand on your idea like, oh, I wanna use this trending audio for blah blah blah blah blah. So I'm gonna save the audio, come back to it later.

If you just wanna save the reel as a whole, you would just press the save button on the bottom right. It'll save the video as a whole. You could create collections here, save to a collection, etcetera.

If you're scrolling, you come across a video you like, you're like, oh, I wanna apply this. This is my idea. Let me add a sticky note.

My idea is la la la la la, and then maybe trending audio number three.

Let's say you're batch filming trending audios. Boom. Sticky note is created.

Reel is saved. You can go back to your inspiration tab here and be reminded about the content ideas that you want to create or batch for that day. Finally, if you want to view the reel over on Instagram, there are three dots on the top right.

Press view on Instagram, and it'll take you over to that specific reel over on Instagram. Moving on to the grid in the center, bottom center, this is your projects section.

This is going to be all of the projects that you're editing or working on in one place where you can manage and organize them. Like, if I wanted to sort my projects a little bit more, I just press on the top right. There's that little arrow that's pointing down.

This is gonna help me sort my projects by either last edited, date created alphabetically, or I could select multiple projects at once. Here, if you click and hold on a project, you could give that project a name, you could duplicate the project, or you can delete it.

Then to open the project itself and start editing, you just simply tap on it. It'll open the project, and this is where you'll do all of your editing. Gonna press the x on the top left.

If you want to start a new project, just press the plus sign on the bottom right, and you could either start filming an app or upload content from your camera roll. We're gonna edit a video together in just a second. I just wanna finish the app overview, so let's move on to the creation.

Wow. That is my face. That's cute.

Moving on to the camera. Let's flip that around. Here's my beautiful setup we love.

Here's where you can quickly film in the Instagram edits app. So you have quick access to some of Instagram's most commonly used creation features. Let's start on the far left.

On the top, we have music, so you can add trending audios, sounds, anything that you've saved, or you could see directly what's trending even if you haven't saved it. You have the green screen effect. You have the countdown timer.

You have the video speed. So if you wanted to make your clip look like you're moving really fast or really slow, it's right there. And then you have your teleprompter option right here, so you could paste your script.

If you didn't transfer it from a sticky note, add your script here, and then you have that teleprompter option. On the bottom left, you could turn flash on or off. I don't use that one that much.

You also have the like beautify filter where it can like blur your skin. Different zoom options.

You could flip your camera around there. And then the resolution that you will be filming your video on. This is personal preference.

I'm not saying don't film in HD. You could totally film in HD. For me, I like to film in two k 30 frames per second or two k 30 and then standard.

That's pretty much what my phone camera settings are set to. I don't usually film in HD because I feel like it makes the colors look weird. Like, have you ever taken a photo on your iPhone and it looks so good, but then you go back to look at it, and then you notice like your iPhone automatically changed the lighting or the contrast, and all of sudden skin looks absolutely horrible and it's the worst photo you've ever taken and you're like ew that's gross.

That's because they added the HDR on top of it or the HD effect and I just don't like it personally.

I don't like it for me. Not saying you have to agree with me. So this is kind of what I usually do, but you could totally keep HD 30.

That's their, like, standard. It's already set to that. Keep it easy.

That is their standard settings. We're gonna get back to these settings in a second. So whatever you record your video on, just keep that in mind and try to remember it.

Keep it the same for every single video because this is going to be important later on. Moving on to wrap up the app overview. Let's go on the far right, the little graph.

This is your insights. Insights right now, it's kind of just like a general overview of how your account and your reels are performing. I like the analytics within Instagram a little bit more.

I feel like they're a little bit more thorough, but this app is so new. I feel like they're going to expand on this soon, someday.

Who knows? Right now, you can look at your account insights, your reels, views, reach, new followers, likes, comments, shares, saves.

You could filter this right here by the last seven days, fourteen days, or sixty days. So thirty days is pretty standard to see like your average engagement recently. And then down below that, you have your reels performance.

And right now, it's toggled and sorted by all time. So if I say my most viewed video of all time ever on my profile right now, no matter how old it is, this video here is my most viewed video from 2024. It has 1,800,000 views, but I don't wanna look at like all time.

I'm more curious about what's recently performing well for me. So usually, again, I only look at last thirty days, most views, and then I'm gonna look at top performing reels, bottom performer reels to see, okay, what's working and what's not working for me right now.

That's pretty much at a glance how I would use this insight section. I think you could tap on each reel as well and get a little bit more information. But like I said, I think there's a little bit more in the Instagram app.

They just updated it where you can see exactly when people are liking your reel while they watch it. So if I go to my profile and I click view insights, I can see not only my views over time, but down here, it says when people liked your reel.

It's showing me exactly like one second, two seconds. Oh, it looks like 20% of people like it at the very end. So you just have a lot more stats in app.

So this is just a nice general overview, but good in-depth analytics over on Instagram. Okay. Let's edit a video together.

I had a lot of questions, people asking me how I edited this video, and I do have a team of editors. But that video, I did edit myself, and I made this one myself. So I'm gonna show you how I edited that one.

We're gonna start our project here, and we're going to upload our video. Okay. Let's start with this first clip.

So we have about twenty four minutes of footage to go through. Right now, it just says thirteen minutes because I just did the first chunk of footage. We'll edit that, and then I'll add the second clip after so I could show you how to add a second clip if you want to.

Let's start editing. First thing that I wanna do is I just kinda wanna find those key moments that I think are the most engaging with my videos.

So editing overview. We have to play your video, the little play button. Pretty self explanatory.

Right? To zoom in and out on your timeline, I'm gonna take two fingers, and I'm going to zoom in and zoom out.

This is going to help with more like fine tune editing. You'll see that later on. It will be very, very handy.

To add an audio, you could either press bottom left or right in the middle of the timeline. It says add audio. You do that.

I think right now I need to mute my entire clip. So two options here. The little speaker on our bottom timeline, far left, we just press that, and the whole timeline will mute.

That's the easiest way to do it. If you just wanted to mute individual clips, just tap on the clip itself, press volume, and drag that all the way down. I'm just gonna mute the whole timeline because we're gonna add more clips to this later on in our videos.

To add text, there's a text button voice over, closed captions, adding overlays. If you want to add a photo to pop up or a video on top of your video, you could do that. Add sound effects.

Cut out. This is like removing the background. That's what cut out, and then stickers.

So that's kind of the basic overview. Let's edit together. I'm kinda just gonna zoom in here.

I'm just gonna drag my finger on the timeline to find the best moments. There's two different throws. I think I like the second throw the best, and I want like the motion.

I'm not gonna start it here where my hand is on the bottom. Boring.

There's no motion. I'm gonna slide. There's like good that little blur.

I feel like that is more gonna capture attention because those first few seconds of the hook is important. So we're in split. That's going to cut our video right where our, like, line is, the timeline line.

We're gonna tap the video on the left, and then we're gonna delete that. So we're gonna do that a few times. So if you missed what just happened, this is gonna be something we repeat over and over.

So we have let me play. Boom. Catch.

So now as you could see, maybe two seconds went by or one second went by, and I wanna make like more precise cuts and precise edits. And I can't really like dragging my finger, it's hard to stop it at a specific point. So I'm gonna take my two fingers.

I'm gonna zoom in, and it's gonna give me a lot more wiggle room to play with. So now I could really be precise about when the clip is going to stop. So I think there right before I catch it could be a good time.

This is where I'm going to split the clip again because I like where this is. This starts here, ends maybe before I catch it. So where there's a blur, split, now we're gonna keep editing.

Here is right here. This is our first clip. We like it.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the throw is a good hook, but I think what's gonna be more eye catchy for this video is starting with the final product. That's something that I teach my BSP students who are in, like, my BSP Slack community in my BSP course is if you really wanna hook your audience in and your video kinda takes people along a transformation or journey, Start your video with the end of that journey.

So the very, very end of the video is me holding the final products of the two lattes that I made. That's in our second clip. So I actually wanna use that final shot because I think iced lattes are like, that's super eye catchy.

So I'm gonna bring the final iced latte to the front of my video when I get to there. So, yeah, that's what I'm thinking for my hook. If you're somebody who's like, what are you talking about hooks?

I don't know how to do hooks. I suck at hooking people in. I can't get good retention on my videos.

People always swipe away or my views are low. Engagement is hard. Don't worry.

I have a 100 plus hooks to help increase engagement. It's an ebook of literally over 100 different hook ideas that you could use in your videos. These are hooks that I've used, that students have used, that have helped their videos either go viral, blow up, increase engagement, or help them get more followers.

So I'll leave that linked down below. It's again, it's over 100 different hooks that you could use. Have fun.

Go wild. Let's keep editing. Okay.

That clip's really small. Need to zoom back in. Let's find all of our fun moments.

Boring. Boring. Boring.

That's a good one. Let's cute. See what else we have.

I think there was one where, like, I spilled, and I think that's a little bit more funny because I actually didn't mean to do that.

So you see how I start to pour, and now we have some motion happening? I'm not gonna start it here because there's nothing happening. There's no beans moving.

Boring. Boring. Boring.

Boring. Boring. Alright.

Now we're getting some beans coming out. So I'm gonna split the clip here. Everything in front, we don't need.

I'm gonna delete it. We're gonna play. I want the little reaction shot.

That's a good reaction. Split. Let's keep finding more clips.

So I'm gonna start with motion. There's some motion there. Split.

Everything in front, delete. Split. I did do it a few times and, like, actually got it, but I think the accident of not getting it was actually more entertaining in the video.

And then let's keep maybe that. Split, delete.

Cool. I'm going to tidy this up, keep doing this, and then we'll continue editing together by adding sound, adding text, etcetera.

Okay. We have gotten through the first clip. We trimmed thirteen minutes to eighteen seconds.

Now let's add our second clip. I'm gonna press the plus sign, go to my gallery, and I'm gonna scroll through to find video number two. There it is.

Add. And now, let's continue.

Cool. Delete, and there it is.

Alright. I finished trimming everything down. We have about thirty five seconds of footage.

I'm gonna zoom out so I could see it at a hole. Now for me, for this trend and just like in general, I like to keep, if you're wanting a fast paced video, my clips about point six seconds long. For this video, because it's gonna be a little bit quicker, I might lean towards point five.

So let's add our audio and see how fast paced we can make it. I'm going to press add audio. I'm gonna go to save because I actually saved this on Instagram a while ago, and so here's the trending sound right now.

Peter Piper, I'm gonna click on it. That's the audio we want. Let's press next.

Now let's choose the portion.

Add. Okay. So I'm gonna zoom in.

As you could see here, look on the pink audio clip. The audio levels don't really start until here. So this whole part is silence.

I don't really want the silence. That's not really immediately catching. So I'm gonna actually tap here.

You could either split the audio and then delete the front half, or you could drag your finger, select the end of the clip and drag your finger in to trim it, line it up with there. Now I'm gonna click and hold the audio to drag it to the front. Now it starts right away.

Now these clips, they're kinda moving a little slow.

Boring, slow. We want it to be very like quick quick quick. So let's zoom out.

I want that hook shot. I think the good hook shot is this right here. So I'm gonna click and hold my clip, drag it all the way to the very beginning.

Beautiful. And now what I'm going to do, we're gonna get real fine with when our clips are starting and when they're ending. So delete that.

Trim here. Clip is about one point three seconds, still too long, but I like this motion. So what we're gonna do make it even more engaging for this specific trend, I'm gonna speed up my clip actually to like two x.

Yeah. That's cool. And then I have a clip of me like waving at the camera.

It wasn't, like, part of the storyline of, making the latte, and I think that's super eye catchy too. So I'm thinking the most eye catchy clips were final latte shot, waving at the camera, and throwing the bag.

Those are, my three most enticing ones. I could even do like the kick. The kick could be a good one to hook with, but I think these three are my favorite.

So let's zoom in. Tap. It's telling me this clip is point nine seconds long.

Let's see what it looks like.

I don't like this. Let's move that to five. And then this could be there's like a hiccup in the beginning.

Speed, let's speed this one up a little. Point four seconds. Nice.

Nice. Okay. Now we're like getting that speed, that rhythm.

Boom. Boom. This one could also be sped up just a smidge.

Yeah. I like that. K.

Now I'm just gonna check to see if each clip is point six, point five seconds for each clip that I'm like, I don't wanna trim anything else off of. I would probably see how it sounds with the music or just speed it up to match that point 5.6 speed.

Speed a little bit.

Any clip that I come across that I feel kind of slows the video down or it's boring, I'm actually just deleting it because I feel like we just wanna get to the good stuff with this trend. Let's watch it back.

Yeah. That's pretty good. Okay.

Now let's zoom out. I don't need the audio to keep going, so I'm just gonna tap on the audio, go to the end of my clips here, just split it here, delete, and I'll drag it to match that.

See that yellow dotted line? It's gonna line up perfectly with the end of my clip. We trimmed everything down to twelve seconds now, sped some clips up to keep it more fast paced, and this is what it looks like.

Final look.

Cool. Now let's add some text. I'm gonna press text here.

Let's add two alerts. Ding ding.

Done. Go to the center. Trend alert.

To change your font, you're gonna press the two a's. They have a lot of font options here. I think they said, like, over 300 font options, so that's really cool.

Let's do classic. And then if you wanna change the color of the text, you simply just press the color wheel. Is that a color wheel?

You choose the rainbow circle. There we go. Click there.

You could change the color. If you wanna animate the text, go to the next option, like the moving a, the a with the three lines. This is where you could, like, have it type out and then add like a sound effects like typewriter sound effect, and then it would sound really cool.

And you could also add an effect or like visual effect, make it look a little bit cooler. So some offset, some neon, some glow, and then you can even add that background outline for your text or change the outline, add a background, boom shakalaka.

I'm gonna actually do no effects. Just wanted to show you what that looked like. And right now, it only has my trend alert for the first portion of the video, but I actually want it to go all the way, oops, to the end, match it up there.

Need to drag it to the top, make it a little bit bigger. I'm gonna stay within those white lines that they're suggesting I stay in, so I'm gonna center it. I think I'm gonna stay there.

Now let's add one more. Use this sound in your next video. Let's choose the font, classic light.

I think classic and classic light pair really well together just like modern and modern bold would pair really well together. So I'm going to do that, make it a little bit smaller, and then make it match up with everything else.

Cool. Okay. Final things.

If you were talking to the camera, you could add closed captions, the CC captions. And I'm pretty sure the closed captions are available in multiple languages, so it doesn't have to just be English. And something else if you're talking to the camera, let me just select a clip.

If you're talking to the camera and you're just doing talking head video like this, they have this new thing called cut silences. So it'll like cut the pauses in your video if you said something and then you were like, hey, I gotta think. If you're just silent and you're not like, oh, let me think to myself, just quiet, it'll automatically cut your video for you.

So that is a cool feature to keep in mind. Okay. A few final edit tips before I talk about exporting and syncing it with Instagram because that is an important step, all part of the tutorial.

When you tap on a clip, there are a lot of different edit options. We didn't go over all of them because our video didn't need all of them. We know split fairly well.

We know volume. We know speed. There's a few other options.

We have adjust. Here, you can adjust basic things like brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation.

For me, I usually color grade as, like, my last step and just do, one filter across the whole thing. Right now, they don't have, like, one filter to apply to the whole video. You'd have to edit the video before you trim it or, like, edit the coloring before you trim it or do each clip individually.

So we don't do that, but just so you know that that's there, you can delete. Restyle is like adding AI effects or effects to your video. Cut silences, we talked about filters, green screen, other effects like zooming in, blurs, transitions, adding a voice effect, voice enhanced to reduce background noise, extracting audio, which is something that I use a lot in like vlogs, cropping, mirror, replace, slip, and duplicate.

Those are all other options. Replace simply is just like this clip. If I wanted to replace it with something else in my camera roll, I would just choose replace, and then I could automatically upload something from my camera roll.

With slip, I could kind of drag the clip around right there, choose a different portion of the clip, and then duplicate just duplicates that clip that you have selected. I'm just gonna delete that.

Now let's export it over to Instagram. Before we export, you want to remember, here we are looping back to earlier, remember how you recorded your video, the settings that you recorded your video on. So if you recorded in the edits app, make sure the export resolution or the export settings matched what you had set when you filmed.

This video I filmed on my iPhone, and my iPhone settings are like the ten eighty p 30 frames per second, and I don't have HDR on. Let me show you real quick. Settings, camera, video.

So ten eighty, 30 frames per second, and HDR is off.

So I choose two k because that's like ten eighty. It's the closest thing to ten eighty. 30 frames per second HDR is off, so I'm gonna export this as the standard one, and then we'll press export.

Now this is going to export, and it's gonna let you choose where you want to export it to. Now that the video is done loading, it could be posted directly to Instagram.

You could download it. I would download a copy to your camera roll, but we're gonna go straight to Instagram. And the cool thing is trending audios sync automatically.

This is something that, like, a lot of scheduling apps miss. If you want to, like, schedule your content on another third party tool, you can't schedule and sync up a trending audio on Instagram to the video that you want to schedule.

But this, if you post this, the trending audio will link together, and your video will show up on the trending audio page on Instagram. So that is very, very cool.

We love that. To schedule your reel, you'll choose more options, and then you'll turn schedule on, and then choose the date and time to schedule. I prefer to just, like, post right then and there.

I feel like I get better engagement when I'm posting live. But if you want to post live, but you don't wanna post right now, you could save your draft. So I'm gonna save my draft.

It's going to save in Instagram. So now I could come back and post it when I'm ready or even edit my caption, my preview image, all the things. One cool feature that I don't have access to yet is sharing your edits drafts with other collaborators.

The draft that you have edited, you could share it with somebody on Instagram and be like, hey. What do you think of this draft so far? So my video editors, if they're editing in Instagram edits and they want my opinion on a video before they export it, they could just share it over to It's Modern Millie on Instagram.

Be like, hey. This is what I have edited so far. Let me know what you think.

I could give them my revisions right there, and then they just finish it in the edits app. I think that's pretty cool. Instagram has talked about a lot of new features that are coming to the app soon.

It is a new baby app in my opinion. Like, it was just launched a few months ago, and they have really cool features being added almost every week at this point. So I think this is just the start of something that's very potentially could be a staple editing platform for some creators.

Okay. Now quickly, let's talk about edits versus CapCut because a lot of people were asking me my thoughts on the latest CapCut updates with their change in the terms of service.

My thoughts on things, should edits replace CapCut? Should you find a new editing app altogether? Here are my thoughts.

A lot of people, I think, had an immediate, like, freak out, for lack of a better word, reaction where they're like, oh my gosh. CapCut now owns all my content. And technically, no, they don't have ownership of it.

You still own your content. But any video, any content that you upload to their app, whether it's a draft or something that you export and upload, they gain perpetual, irrevocable rights to use that footage however they want, just like you would.

So it's almost like you own it, but they also gain rights to use it. If they were to own it, you wouldn't be able to use it. You know what I mean?

So it's kind of like shared. If you want a full legal explanation of everything, I'll leave a video linked down below. It's a great breakdown of the legalese, the terms to help you understand in like very basic verbiage what this update actually means for you as a creator and just in general what it means breaking down the legal terms.

I thought it was a very helpful resourceful video. I'll leave it linked. Now in my opinion, for most people, if you're just like an everyday user of the app, it might not be that big of a deal because the odds of CapCut seeing your footage and being like, oh my gosh, this is so high quality.

This is so great. Let's use that in ad. Relatively low.

If anything, I think it's more of a risk for big brands. Like, imagine big brand social media companies like Duolingo or Ben and Jerry's.

You have these big name brands where their social media teams are just amazing with their social media content. Well, maybe not Duolingo. Think they switched to AI people running everything.

So let's use another example. Let's say you're Dutch bros.

I don't know. I don't know their social media, but let's say you're Dutch bros and you have your social media team.

They're editing videos, and you're creating your, like, big business Dutch bros edits with CapCut for, like, your own ads and your own social media. CapCut would gain the rights to that footage, and they could be like, hey.

We could use Dutch Bros as an example for our ad and da da da da da. So I think that's way more of a risk for big brands. I'm not saying it's not a big deal for us as creators.

Like, they can still use your face, voice, audio, whatever without paying you. So I'm not saying it's not a big deal. If it's something that truly bothers you, then absolutely find an alternate editing app.

But it the same thing is for TikTok. If you're a TikTok content creator, any video that you publish to your account, TikTok gains the rights to use your content in ads or in whatever way they want.

So as of right now, for me, I feel like the risk outweighs the rewards. I genuinely love the CapCut editing app.

It is so just in tune with me as a creator, with user behavior, with all the features that I need. Almost everything is for free. You wouldn't even have to upgrade as a creator.

Yes. You could for, like, extra features, but most of time, I'm using free features anyway. So the risk just outweighs the rewards for me as of right now.

I did a whole video where I broke down other CapCut alternatives. So if that's something that you're interested in and you're like, okay. This update does bother me.

I wanna see what other alternatives there are that I don't have to pay for where I can export without a watermark, then definitely watch this video next. I'm curious what your thoughts are about this whole drama.

Are you leaving the CapCut app? Are you exploring edits? Let me know down in the comments, and I will see you in the next one.

Follow your joy. Bye.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Instagram's Edits app has been out since April, and the pitch here is simple: a full tour of every tab, a real reel cut live from raw footage, and then the question everyone's been asking since CapCut rewrote its terms of service, is it time to switch.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

14:55concept

Start With The End

For a video that takes viewers through a transformation or process, open with the finished result (the final shot) instead of the beginning of the journey, because the payoff is more eye-catching than the setup.

Steal forany before/after, recipe, DIY, or process video that ends on a visually satisfying final shot

17:51concept

The 0.5-0.6 Second Cut Rule

For fast-paced trend edits, trim clips down to roughly half a second each (0.6s for standard pacing, 0.5s for a quicker trend) so the cuts match the tempo of the trending audio.

Steal fortrend-audio Reels/TikToks where the edit needs to feel rapid-fire

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

32:10next-video

“I did a whole video where I broke down other CapCut alternatives... then definitely watch this video next.”

Soft, single-mention CTA pointing to a related past video, delivered as a natural next step rather than a hard pitch; paired with a plain subscribe/bell prompt at the very end.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA

15:19product100+ Hook Ideas ebook ↗

14:29productThe BSP Model course ↗

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.

AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.