YouTube wants to make Shorts the new CapCut

The latest updates on YouTube include a handful of new features for Shorts. Most notably, the vertical video format is getting an enhanced editing suite that will help it serve as a viable alternative to ByteDance‘s CapCut app.

To reveal five new Shorts features, YouTube assembled a typical duo for product announcements: Creator Liasion Rene Ritchie and Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich. On a new episode of Release Notes on the Creator Insider channel, the two execs discussed the increasing flexibility and customizability of the Shorts product. (The video also addressed some other matters, such as the new view counting methods applied on Shorts.)

Voolich noted that YouTube will integrate “our very wide music library” into the Shorts editing suite, inviting creators to time story beats so that they sync up with particular musical cues. In general, Voolich said, Shorts editing is becoming ” a much more powerful experience” thanks to fine-tuned clip controls, precise zoom adjustments, and pre-upload previews.

YouTube’s data shows that creators use Shorts in many different ways, so the fully-featured editing suite is designed to facilitate a variety of editing needs. Voolich noted that Shorts over one minute long are becoming more common, but thet number of super-short videos is going up as well. “The range in Shorts is really expanding, and if you’re a creator and you want to make short Shorts or you want to make long Shorts, there’s just more opportunities for you,” Voolich said.

Improvements to the Shorts editor will also give YouTube an opening to siphon users away from CapCut, the software that powers edits for many TikTokers. CapCut surpassed 200 million users in 2023, but ByteDance’s regulatory issues in the United States have blunted its progress. Instagram, for example, looked to capitalize on a potential TikTok ban by releasing its version of CapCut, simply titled Edits.

Even if TikTok remains operational in the U.S. — and CapCut hangs on as a preferred short-form cutting tool — there are reasons for YouTube to soup up Shorts’ editing bay. Major vertical video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram can benefit by being the first place creators go to upload short-form work. The high number of TikTok reposts on Shorts and Reels have helped some of the app’s editing tools — such as its voiceover feature — become ubiquitous.

After putting watermarks on downloaded Shorts, YouTube is now giving creators more reasons to post there first. More details about Shorts’ new creation tools are available via a blog post.