Edit recordings – Explain Everything Help Center

Explain Everything allows you to record every action or change applied to objects along with voice and video (see Introduction to recording). Moreover, you can always go back to edit, refine and adjust your Explain Everything recordings with the editing menu of the Timeline. You can remove and split clips, delete or clear parts of the recording, smooth out movement of elements and more.

Tip For the best results combine timeline editing with recording modes.

Timeline basics

Once you recorded something, open the Timeline by selecting the Timer.
The red Playhead marks the current time.
You can scroll the Timeline to seek a particular moment in your recording.
You can scale the contents on the Timeline by selecting a zoom level on the right side of the Timeline menu.
You can Undo any of the edits you made only right after you performed them (iOS and Android only).

Timeline editing in a nutshell

Here is a quick overview of all available Timeline editing options with some additional tricks that may come in handy later.

Clear selected part of the recording

You can completely clear a selected part of your recording to remove unwanted movement or audio from that exact timeframe.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to clear.
Select Delete to clear the selected part.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to clear.
Select Delete to clear the selected part.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to clear.
Select Delete to clear the selected part.

Note If you clear a part where an object was addded, the object will no longer appear in the recording.

Tip You can use the lock icons on the audio and video tracks to prevent them from being cleared.

Remove a single clip from the recording

You can remove single clips from the Timeline to get rid of the exact movement or audio parts in your recording.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so you can easily select the desired clip.
Touch and hold a clip that you'd like to remove. Other clips on the Timeline will grey out.
Select Delete from the menu to remove the chosen clip.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so you can easily select the desired clip.
Select and hold a clip that you'd like to remove. Other clips on the Timeline will grey out.
Select Delete from the menu to remove the chosen clip.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so you can easily select the desired clip.
Select and hold a clip that you'd like to remove. Other clips on the Timeline will grey out.
Select Delete from the Timeline menu to remove the chosen clip.

Note If you remove a clip that indicates adding of an object, the object will no longer appear in the recording.

Remove the entire recording keeping the final slide content

Please use the option to duplicate a slide without recording, as described in this article. You can then delete the original slide.

Remove the remaining recording

Sometimes you may want to trim the ending of your recording or start over from a certain point. To do that, you can remove the recording starting from the Playhead to the end.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so the Playhead marks the end of the part you'd like to keep.
From the Timeline options select Delete all to the end.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so the Playhead marks the end of the part you'd like to keep.
From the Timeline options select Delete all to the end.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so the Playhead marks the end of the part you'd like to keep.
From the Timeline options select Delete all to the end.

Remove a part of the recording and join the remaining parts together

If your recording has too many empty or unnecessary moments and you want to make it more snappy, you can completely get rid of them and join the remaining parts together.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to remove.
Select Delete and compact to remove the selection and join the remaining parts together.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to remove.
Select Delete and compact to remove the selection and join the remaining parts together.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to remove.
Select Delete and compact to remove the selection and join the remaining parts together.

Note If you remove a part where an object was addded, the object will no longer appear in the recording.

Split clips

You can divide longer clips into two to edit out inconsistencies or noise. Especially useful for audio edits.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the the point where the clip should be split.
From the Timeline options choose the Split icon.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the the point where the clip should be split.
From the Timeline options choose the Split icon.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the the point where the clip should be split.
From the Timeline options choose the Split icon.

Tip If your clips are overlapping because you have multiple layers of recordings, you can select them once to toggle between the layers.

Smooth out Zooming and Movement

To make animations more fluid you can smooth out object movement and zooming for a selected part of your recording.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to smooth out.
Select Smooth to smooth out zooming and movement on the selected part.

Smoothing is not currently available on the Google Play version of Explain Everything. It's coming in one of the future updates.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to smooth out.
Select Smooth to smooth out zooming and movement on the selected part.

Speed up playback of the selected part

For a timelapse effect you can increase the playback speed on the selected part of a recording.

Note The Speed up changes both the video and the audio tracks playback speed.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so that the red Playhead marks the start or the end of the selection.
From the Timeline options choose the Selection icon.
Scroll the Timeline so the selection covers the part you'd like to speed up.
Select Speed up from the Timeline options.
Choose the new playback speed for the selected part.
If you want to change back to the original speed, select the speeded up part of the Timeline, choose Speed up and select 1x.

Playback Speed up is not currently available on the Google Play version of Explain Everything. It's coming in one of the future updates.

Playback Speed up is not currently available on the Web version of Explain Everything. It's coming in one of the future updates.

Fade in audio for selected audio clip

You can make selected audio parts fade in so that audio doesn't abruptly come in. Fade in audio adds one second of silence that fades into sound at the beginning of selected audio clip.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so you can easily select the desired clip.
Touch and hold an audio that you'd like to add Fade in to. Other clips on the Timeline will grey out.
Select Fade in audio from the menu to remove the chosen clip.

Fade in audio up is not currently available on the Google Play version of Explain Everything. It's coming in one of the future updates.

With the Timeline open, scroll the Timeline so you can easily select the desired clip.
Select and hold an audio clip that you'd like to add Fade in effect to. Other clips on the Timeline will grey out.
Select Fade in audio from the menu to remove the chosen clip.