How to Combine Multiple Videos Into One

Joining clips together — holiday footage, several takes of a talk, or short phone videos — is one of the first things people want to do with a video editor. Here is a reliable way to do it in any timeline-based editor, on desktop or mobile.

Before you start: check your clips

• Orientation: are the clips landscape (16:9), vertical (9:16) or a mix?
• Resolution: for example 1080p vs 4K.
• Frame rate: for example 30 fps vs 60 fps.

Clips do not have to match, but knowing this helps you pick the right project settings. A good rule is to set the project to the format where the video will be published — vertical for short-form social video, landscape for YouTube or a TV.

Step-by-step

1. Create a new project and choose the aspect ratio and frame rate you want for the final video.
2. Import all the clips you want to combine.
3. Drag them onto the timeline in the order they should play.
4. Trim the start and end of each clip so there are no awkward pauses between them.
5. Optionally add a short transition (such as a cross-fade) between clips. Simple cuts often look the most professional.
6. Play the whole video and listen for sudden jumps in volume. Adjust clip volume so the levels feel even.
7. Export the finished video.

Mixing vertical and horizontal clips

When a clip does not match the project shape, editors usually offer two choices: fit (shows the whole clip with bars around it) or fill (zooms in to cover the frame and crops the edges). Fit keeps everything visible; fill looks more polished but you may lose the edges of the picture.

For advanced users: join identical clips with FFmpeg

If every clip was recorded with the same camera settings (same codec, resolution and frame rate), FFmpeg can join them without re-encoding. List the files in a text file, one per line, like file 'clip1.mp4', then run:

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -c copy combined.mp4