Photostory, I would bet would be selected by many teachers as one of the most popular classroom tools in the last twenty years. Since its demise, the quest for a replacement video storytelling app has rivaled the search for the holy grail. Last year, Microsoft did another “Photostory”, by buying a company with an interesting simple video editor to add to the Windows platform. This new addition to the Microsoft stable is Clipchamp. It is available as a download from the Microsoft Store or preinstalled on Windows 11.
Clipchamp includes all essential editing options that a classroom needs including trimming, cutting, speed control, title blocks, filters, transitions, effects, etc.
It also includes access to a stock library of video and audio files, as well as video templates to use as a starting point for school projects. Students can also add their own media files. It also includes a screen record feature as well as utilising Microsoft text-to-speech functionality.
It supports a wide range of input formats such as MOV, AVI, MP4, FLV, DIVX, MKV, WMV, MPEG, MPEG-4, M4V, ISO, 3GP, MP3, WAV, OGG, JPG, PNG, and will export as an MP4 file. You will have three export options: 480p (for drafts), 720p (for social media) and 1080p HD ( for video streaming and presentations).
Having played around with it for a few weeks, it is not as easy to use as Photostory used to be so the grail quest continues. There is an upgrade option to a paid plan where the additional features available allow access to premium content.
To be honest, the existing Microsoft Video Editor in Win 10 is closer to Photostory than Clipchamp, which appears to offer users a competent video editing app. According to some reviews, some features will be added to Clipchamp as Windows 11 rolls out to a wider user base. Going through some of the earlier Clipchamp youtube videos from last year, it is noticeable the number of changes that have occurred in the past 12 months and it is a positive trend for educators.
Over the past number of weeks, I have been using Clipchamp to create screencasts and making some “dummy” videos to test out the features. I found it worked really well for screencasting although screencasting is quite a crowded field with other applications like Screencast-o-matic etc available. The video editor is useful to those who have used a video editor before on a Windows platform but I don’t think it will convert any Mac users to the Windows platform. I do think it could be very useful to the teacher responsible for creating content for the school website and social media. The templates will give a professional look and feel to your content. Templates can be used to generate content very quickly.
