How to Edit Video in Lightroom Classic with THIS Hack!

Didn’t know you could edit video in Lightroom classic? You can with this hack!

In this tutorial, Anthony Morganti gives a step by step for how to edit videos in Lightroom Classic. 

Didn’t think that was possible? Read on to find out!

Learn how to use Lightroom Classic to do basic editing to video 

The new Creative cloud version of Lightroom now allows you to edit videos and has many options, but did you know there is a way to edit videos in the Classic version? 

This hack for using the Classic version to edit video will allow you do add some visual effect changes, although not the full suite of editing options.

This tutorial won’t go into the details of all of the Lightroom features, but you can check out these Lightroom editing tutorials:

• Edit portraits without presets
• Full Lightroom Classic Editing Tutorial
• Editing Tricks and Shortcuts in Lightroom

This will be best used on short clips that just need a basic touch up!

Step 1: Import your video into Lightroom

Import the video file into Lightroom the same way you import a photo. In the Library, when you try to open the file in Developer mode it will say not the file is not supported in develop.

To do edits via this easy hack, you need to select any frame from the video.

Click on the little rectangle in the video play bar, and click Capture Frame. You will see a single jpeg frame next to the video file, which you can now edit in Develop. 

Step 2: Edit the JPEG frame

Here’s the Lightroom Classic video hack – you can copy the basic edits from the single frame to the video file. 

Most of the Basic panel edits will be able to be copied to the video, but changes under many other editing panels won’t be able to be copied over.

(These include Highlight, shadow, texture, deglaze, clarity, lens corrections, detail panel tools, transform tool, effects, spot removal, crop tool, and the process version tool.)

You can make changes to the following sliders and settings to copy over to your video:

In the Basic Panel:

Adjust White Balance sliders, exposure and contrast

Adjust White and black sliders

Adjust saturation and vibrance (you can overdo these about 30% as it will copy over a little less than you set it)

Tone Curve Panel:

Adjust the tone curves for shadows, darks, lights and highlights

HSL/Color Panel:

Adjust the color sliders for Hue, saturation, luminance

Color grading panel:

Adjust any of the colour grades

Step 3: Copy the edit over to the video!

Unfortunately after editing the frame, just clicking on the video doesn’t allow you to choose previous edits to change the video. But using this workaround you can get the edits onto your video!

Click on the image, then hold down the ‘command’ or ‘control’ key and click on the video to select both. You should see ‘sync’ is added as an option! 

Click Sync, and in the new window you can see the edits that can be copied. Click Synchronize, give the system a moment to load, and viola!

Go back to Library, select the video file, and press play. Your edits should have copied over and the video should look a bit nicer now that you have made some adjustments!

Now you know how to edit videos in Lightroom Classic!

While it will be better to have actual video editing software if you’re working on big video projects, knowing how to edit short clips with some basic changes will be a great skill to have!

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Which one of these video editing tips will you use in Lightroom Classic?

Comment below!