How to Edit Video, Apply Effects & Filters and Save Them Permanently in VLC

How to Edit Video, Apply Effects & Filters and Save Them Permanently in VLC

Tutorials

If you take a look at VLC Media Player’s video effects and filters, you will find a couple of basic ones that allows you to fine tune your media file. To access those features, you go to Tools > Effects and Filters or hit the hotkey CTRL + E. Under the Video Effects tab in the Adjustment and Effects window, you will get to access many options which are sorted and presented in tabs. The most basic or essential video editing settings is none other than changing the visuals like Brightness, Hue, Contract, Saturation etc. They come under the first tab and are grouped as Essential.

There are several more video filters and editing options that this player offers and they are put together in other tabs. You must have notice those in the Video Effects options. You will find the Crop setting, Colors adjustment tab, Geometry tab which is for rotating and transforming, Overlay tab to add and remove logos, texts and watermarks and others such as Atmolight and Advanced which are neat if you know how to use them.

But the thing with these effects is that they are applied directly to the video that you are playing but once you close the player, you will find that the media file remains unchanged. Until some time back, I thought that these effects were for playing the videos in VLC only. But recently, I discovered that it is possible to keep these video effects, filters, and edits permanently. You just have to use the Convert / Save feature that also comes with the player and is accessible from Media > Convert / Save or using the shortcut key combination CTRL + R. Along with the conversion, you will also have to activate the corresponding filters. It is accessible from the settings of a profile under the Video Codec > Filters tab. When the player is done with the conversion, you can find the changes being permanently kept in the output file. So, VLC works great as a video editor if you are looking to do some basic edits.

It is agreeable that these video effects aren’t of topmost quality when compared to the video editing software out there but for the basic user like you and me, they are adequate. So, like all of the other posts, here are the detailed steps on how you can not only edit and apply video filters and effects but also you can make the changes permanent to your file:

First: Adding the Effects and Filters

Open the video of your choice.

Go to Tools > Effects and Filters. [CTRL + E]

In the Adjustment and Effects pop up, switch to the Video Effects

Apply one or more of the effects sorted under the sub-tabs.

Click on Close and you will see your video with the filter applied.

Now: Making the Effects and Filters Permanent

Click on Media > Convert / Save. [CTRL + R]

In the Open Media popup, click on Add.

Browse and locate your file, select it and click Open.

Click on Convert/Save.

Edit the conversion profile first.

Navigate to Video codec > Filters tab and then, check an appropriate codec for the effect

Choose a destination file as you Browse, give a File name and hit Save.

Press the Start button to begin the process.

Click Play in the player controls to apply the effect.

Sometimes the player minimizes. You can bring it back up and you will see that the player’s media position indicator is moving. That means that the conversion process is going on. If it is not moving, press on play. You can pause by the same logic. Now, instead of the media file’s position, the timeline will display how much of your file is converted. If it is a lengthy video, it will take some time.

Once the conversion completes, locate your file. It’s the destination file that you named in the conversion steps above. Open it and you will see that the changes like cropping, color and brightness adjustments, aspect ratio settings, rotations etc are all kept permanently. It means that you can play the file using any other player or give it to anyone else and the new edits are always there. You can reverse some of the edits if you know what you are doing. But for now, enjoy a free video editor that has always been installed on your computer.

Choosing the Filter during Conversion

A crucial step to complete the conversion process with success is to choose the right filter in the Profile edition screen. There are a lot of filters available both for video and audio.

List of Video Filters

Alpha mask video filter

antiflicker video filter

Audio Bar Graph Video sub source

Ball video filter

Blending benchmark filter

Canvas video filter

Color threshold filter

Convert 3D picture to anaglyph image video filter

Deinterlacing video filter

Direct3D11 adjust filter

Direct3D11 deinterlace filter

Direct3D9 adjust filter

Direct3D9 deinterlace filter

Edge detection video filter

Erase video filter

Extract RGB component video filter

FPS conversion video filter

Freezing, interactive video filter

Gaussian blue video filter

Gradfun video filter

Gradient video filter

Grain video filter

High Quality 3D Denoiser filter

Image properties filter

Invert video filter

Logo video filter

Magnify/Zoom interactive video filter

Mirror video filter

Motion blur filter

Motion detect video filter

Old movie effect video filter

Posterize video filter

Psychedelic video filter

Puzzle interactive game video filter

Ripple video filter

Rotate video filter- For rotating videos at an angle like 57 degrees and not at even angles like 90, 180, 270 degrees. (Tools > Effects > Video Effects > Geometry > Rotate)

Scene video filter

Sepia video filter

Sharpen video filter

VHC movie effect video filter

Video cropping filter

Video filtering using a chain of video filter modules

Video post processing filter

Video transformation filter- For transforming videos (Tools > Effects > Video Effects > Geometry > Transform).

Wave video filter

List of Audio filters

Ambisonics renderer and binauralizer

Audio channel remapper

Audio part of the BarGraph function

Audio Spatializer

Audio tempo scale synched with rate

Dynamic range compressor

Equalizer with 10 bands

Gain control filter

Headphone virtual spatialization effect

Parametric Equalizer

Pitch Shifter

Simple Karaoke filter

Simple stereo widening effect

Sound Delay

Stereo to mono downmixer

Volume normalizer

The list is huge and they all have a specific function. It is not possible to know what they do by name only. But their name closely resembles the function that they have. If you hover your mouse over them, an explanation of the filter will be shown on the screen. However, all the filters don’t have an explanation.