Full Guide: How to Add Special Effects to Video Easily & Free

How to make your video stand out from the pile? Besides talented creativities, the special effect plays an important role to create a stunning video. Cool effects such as overlays, filters, and splitting can make your videos more personalized and eye-catching. The special effect can also attract more views and enhance engagement on social media platforms from your viewers.

In case, you wonder how to add special effects to video for free? In short, the most effective way yet is to use a professional video editing tool. Here, we will introduce an ultimate solution to add various effects to a video on PC. Read on to see how to add special effects to a video for free.

Most Common Special Effects for Videos

There are countless special effects that you can see in videos, and each of them adds an extra layer of fun to the clips. Before getting into how to add special effects to video, below list some commonly used special effects for videos. Check out to see if have you known or used them before.

Transitions

As the name suggests, a transition effect is used when playing back one scene to another and tends to be visually attractive and obvious. When you switch between two clips, a transition video effect is what the audience may pay attention to. To name a few transitions, basic fade, bar, slideshow, and merge. Transition effects designed for special occasions are also offered.

Filters

You must be familiar with filters since not only do they appear in videos but also in images. Video editing tools often have a great number of filters to meet requests from users. Be it black & white, vintage, Lomography, or other interesting filters, you can use the filter effect to show a different texture of your video.

Visual Effects

How to add visual effects to a video? This can be a little advanced for normal users but in case you are a pro, go for visual effects for your work. No matter whether you use CGI, compositing, or motion capture, the special visual effect definitely levels up your video.

Let's assume you have a basic understanding of special effects in videos, one more question is how to choose the most appropriate effects in videos. While there are mostly two kinds of video effects, visible effects and invisible effects, using the special effects invisibly seems to be a wiser option. In that case, your audience can concentrate on and feel the core of the story itself instead of spending too much time on the cool effects only. Now let’s dive in to see how to add special effects to video in detail.

How to Add Special Effects to Video - with an Easy Video Editor

Video editor is a powerful tool that has a bunch of special effects and offers all possible ways to add special effects to your videos. While you can see a bunch of video editing services in the market, iTop Screen Recorder is one of the easiest video editors for both beginners and pros. As all-in-one screen recording and video editing software, it offers an effortless way to edit your recordings and local videos.

iTop Screen Recorder allows you to launch the standalone video editor to enhance video clips. It offers an array of special effects, including transitions, filters, visual effects that are commonly used for videos, as well as some other elements, such stickers, text and so on. With multiple special effects to choose from, you can add transition scene when you combine two clips together, filter your video with different vibes, and add a notice or sticker when necessary. All aim to make your video unique and fun.

It also enables you to cut video to remove unwanted parts off, split a video into several segments or merge multiple clips into one track. It can change video aspect ratio and format to meet requirements for uploading to different platforms or playback on various devices.

How to Add Special Effects to Video - Step-by-Step Guide

Now, let's dive in and see how to add special effects to a video with it on real-time occasions, including how to add transitions, filters, and visual effects.

How to Add Transitions to a Video

Step 1. Download and install iTop Screen Recorder on PC. It is fully compatible with Windows 11, 10, 8 and 7.

Step 2. Click Video Editor in Tools panel to launch iTop Video Editor. Click Start a new creation.  

Step 3. Add your video by click the folder icon.

Step 4. Once select which video to edit, drag it to the timeline to start editing. 

Step 5. Go back to the left panel with various functions. Click on the Transitions icon and you can see dozens of transition options to choose from. Go for the one you like and click on the add button on the transition to apply it to your video. You can check the final touch of your video effect in the main window. Don't forget to save it when you finish editing the clips. 

How to Add Filters to a Video

The process of adding filters to a video with iTop Screen Recorder is quite similar to adding a transition effect. Let’s see how you can do it.

Step 1. Open iTop Screen Recorder and drag your video-to-edit to the timeline as the steps explained above.

Step 2. Click on the left sidebar and choose the Filters icon this time. Various filters should appear. Find the one that suits your video and apply it by clicking on the add button.  Feel free to give different filters a try.

How to Add Visual Effects to a Video

For those who want to have something interesting, adding special visual effects is a good idea.

Step 1. Open iTop Screen Recorder, go for the editing tool and drag your video-to-edit to the timeline as the steps explained above.

Step 2. Check the left column where all special effects are listed. Choose the fourth icon, Effects. You can see magical visual effects such as a beating heart, a blue sea, flames, and more interesting ones. Click on the add button of the effect you like. 

Conclusion

People would like to add special effects in videos to make their works more attractive and attract more views. When it comes to how to add special effects to video, multiple video editing tools can be taken into consideration. Among all the candidates, iTop Screen Recorder, the versatile screen recorder and video editor, can give a big hand in terms of how to add special effects to videos. It enables you to add transitions, filters, visual effects, and other special effects to a video in a few clicks. Also, it can output your videos in high quality at a fast speed.