The Best Plugins and Tools for Editing YouTube Videos - From Soundstripe Extensions to Other Popular Plugins
Jourdan Aldredge
May 14, 2024
When starting down the path of a YouTube video editor, you’ll need to quickly learn a lot of skills to find immediate success with your new channel. While there’s a lot to be said about production quality and tips and tricks, it’s often the case that editing will make or break your video’s ability to grow an audience.
By editing, we don’t just mean choosing where to make a cut and dropping a clip on a timeline. Editing is so much more than just the cutting choices. It encompasses all elements of visuals, sound, and color, plus all of the cosmetics that go into a video to give it that professional look and quality.
So, for those just starting on their YouTube content creation journeys, or perhaps those looking to add some new tools to their arsenals, let’s look at some of the best plugins and tools for editing YouTube videos.
First and foremost, let’s talk about the plugins and tools that will help you edit music and audio for your YouTube videos.
Of course, there are plenty of music licensing sites and different music licensing app plugins, too. Still, if you want to 100% ensure that your videos are safe from copyright strikes and takedowns, you will need to invest in royalty free music for your videos that are guaranteed safe to use.
When you’re editing your YouTube videos and reach the point where you’re looking for the right music tracks or sound effects to give your videos that extra value, you’ll be glad you have the Soundstripe extension installed so you can easily browse and download tracks.
From there, you’ll be able to drag and drop your audio into your videos and edit without missing a beat, which is a huge advantage for YouTubers looking to move fast.
Here are links for you to download the Soundstripe music extension for different apps:
Now, let’s move on to highlighting some video editing plugins and tools that you should check out for your YouTube videos. We’re going to focus a bit here on Adobe Premiere Pro plugins as that’s still perhaps the most popular—and the best—video editing app for most professional editors and YouTube content creators.
If you are a Final Cut Pro editor, though, we also have some FCPX plugin recommendations for you.
These video editing plugins aim to speed up workflows and generally improve video editing capabilities by adding advanced controls and features for aspects like motion design, color correction, and grading.
The first plugin we’d like to highlight comes from the Kings of the Editing Table team with their Excalibur plugin. This plugin is about speeding up your daily routine in Premiere Pro. It helps editors work faster by not interrupting their workflows by needing to dig through numerous menus and making tons of repetitive actions and errors.
Here are some of the key specs for the Excalibur plugin:
Price: $140
And here’s a link to purchase and download Excalibur.
Another plugin from the Kings of the Editing Table team that we’d like to feature is their Watchtower plugin. This plugin is helpful for those looking to auto-sync their project bins and workflows when working between Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects.
Users will no longer have to wander across folders to search for recently added files or get lost in the weeds trying to manually import them into the right bin every time. Watchtower will monitor these tasks for you, allowing you to get back to editing.
Here are some of the key specs for the Watchtower plugin:
Price: $40
And here’s a link to purchase and download Watchtower.
We recommend Snatch on Github, a more simple and direct plugin that allows you to download and upload old YouTube videos much more easily into your new videos. This plugin is hugely helpful for YouTube creators in general.
Please use this plugin responsibly, as it’s not intended to steal anyone else’s content without permission. However, for YouTube creators, it is often much easier to add elements from or references to your old videos to your new ones, and you don’t always have the raw files handy.
This plugin allows editors to inject YouTube videos directly into Premiere Pro and After Effects, which can be a great tool for the right creators.
You can download the Snatch plugin on Github.
Finally, instead of individually listing each of the plugins in Maxon’s Red Giant Magic Bullet suite, we’re just going to recommend the whole thing as it’s really one of the best packages of plugins for Premiere Pro.
The Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite includes:
When combined, these tools are pretty much everything you need to handle all of the visual elements of your YouTube videos. This is handy as they all combine well with the Soundstripe extension for the audio, which you can also download for Premiere Pro.
Also feel free to read up on best plugins and tools for editing YouTube videos which should make your editing life much easier.
