How to use Lipi

1. On the projects page, click New project. Projects are vertical (9:16, 1080×1920) by default, the Reels and Shorts size.
2. Drag your clips into the Assets panel on the left (or click Import). In a new project they go straight onto the timeline. Later clips wait in Assets: drag them onto the timeline or click the + on a clip.
3. Pick the shape under the preview: 9:16 (Reels, Shorts), 4:5 (Instagram post), 1:1 or 16:9 (YouTube). Fill makes a clip cover the whole frame; Fit shows all of it.
4. Trim and cut (see Editing below). Press Space to play.
5. Open Captions (the CC icon), pick your language and click Generate captions.
6. Pick a caption style, then fix any wrong words in the transcript.
7. Click Export (top right). Your MP4 downloads, ready for Instagram or YouTube.

• Your work saves automatically in this browser, on this computer.
• Clearing your browser's site data deletes your projects. To keep a copy or move to another computer, open the Lipi menu (logo, top left) in the editor and choose Save backup (.lipi). The backup includes all your media. Bring it back with Restore backup on the projects page.
• Landscape footage fits inside the vertical frame with a blurred background. Click Fill under the preview to make it cover the frame instead (the sides are cropped), or change the video's shape with the ratio menu next to it (9:16, 4:5, 1:1, 16:9).
• The dashed guides on the preview show where Instagram's and YouTube's buttons and captions cover your video. Keep faces and text inside. The guides don't appear in the exported video.

• Cut: move the playhead and press S (or the scissors button) to split the selected clip. Q / W split and remove the left / right part.
• Trim: drag either edge of a clip on the timeline.
• Delete / duplicate: select a clip and press Delete, or use the buttons above the timeline.
• Snapping (magnet button) lines clips up with each other and the playhead. Ripple editing closes the gap when you delete or trim.
• Position and size: select a clip or text and drag it on the preview, or use the Properties panel on the right. Audio clips have a volume setting there too.
• Speed: select a clip and open Speed in the Properties panel for slow motion or fast forward (keep or change the voice pitch).
• Freeze frame: put the playhead on a moment and press F (or the snowflake button). Lipi holds that frame for 2 seconds and moves everything after it, captions included.
• Voiceover: click the microphone above the timeline. The video plays silently from the playhead while you talk; click again to stop, and your voice lands on an audio track.
• Animate anything: the diamond next to a setting (position, size, opacity…) adds a keyframe. Add two at different times and Lipi moves smoothly between them. The curve button above the timeline changes how it eases.
• Undo anything with ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z.

• Languages: Hinglish writes Hindi and English speech in Roman letters ("aaj main tumhe…"), the way most creators caption. Hindi uses Devanagari, and English is English.
• The first time you generate captions, your browser downloads a speech model once (a few hundred MB, about a minute on good Wi-Fi). After that it's fast, and your audio never leaves your computer.
• Clean up: Remove pauses cuts silences longer than half a second (and dead air at the start and end); Remove um / uh cuts hesitation sounds the captions picked up; Remove repeats cuts stutters and restarted phrases ("show you, show you") but keeps repeats you mean, like "jaldi jaldi". All use the caption timings, and ⌘Z undoes them.
• Styles: Pop, Karaoke, Headline, Boxed, Clean, Dusk, Bold, Bubble, Neon, Story and Typewriter. The word being spoken is highlighted as the video plays. Change the font, size and height from the bottom in the same panel. Captions start above the Reels caption area by default.
• Fix words: edit any line in the Transcript list. Timings stay in place.
• Download .srt gives you a subtitle file for YouTube or other editors.
• Clicking a caption on the timeline points you to the Captions panel. Style all captions there, so they stay consistent.

• Text (T icon): add a title or call to action, then drag it into place.
• Transitions: choose how clips enter or leave (Fade, Zoom in, Zoom out, Slide, Slide up, Pop, Spin, Flash, Whip, Bounce). Switch between In and Out at the top of the panel. Apply to the clips you selected, or (for In) to every cut at once. Select a text box or sticker to animate it the same way. Re-apply an Out animation after trimming the clip.
• Templates (second tab on the left): one click sets up a Reel's look: caption style, colour filter, a transition at every cut, a hook title at the top for the first 3 seconds and the 9:16 frame. Select the hook on the timeline to write your own; applying another template keeps your hook text. No captions yet? Generate them, then apply the template again. One undo reverts the whole template.
• Background music: import a song, put it on the timeline, select it, and switch on Background music in its properties. Lipi lowers it, fades it in and out, and dips it automatically while someone is talking (it uses your captions to know when).

• Filters (magic-wand icon): 19 looks such as Warm, Cinematic, Filmy, Golden hour, Vintage and Black & white. Click one to add it to the selected clip (or the clip under the playhead), or drag it onto a clip. Change its Intensity in the clip's Effects tab, or switch it off with the eye.
• Stickers (smiley icon): emoji and shapes. Click + or drag one onto the video, then move and resize it on the preview.
• Masks and blending: in a clip's Properties, Masks crops it to a shape and Blending sets its opacity and blend mode, for picture-in-picture and overlays.
• Effects (same panel as Filters): Adjust (brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, warmth, tint, highlights, shadows, sharpen), Chroma key (removes a green screen: put the green-screen clip on a track above your background, then tune the key colour, Similarity, Smoothness and Spill), Glitch and Film grain. Click one to add it to the selected clip, then change its settings in the clip's Effects tab.
• Motion (Effects panel): Shake (0.5 s at the playhead, or the whole clip) and Zoom punch (a quick zoom at the playhead). Remove motion takes them off.
• Split screen: stack 2 to 4 clips on separate tracks so they play at the same time, select them all, and press Layout under the preview: Side by side, Top & bottom, Picture-in-picture or 2×2 grid. The bottom track's clip goes first (left, top, or full frame).
• Reverse: select a video clip, open Speed and press Reverse. The part you're using (up to 60 seconds) plays backwards, sound included. Undo puts the original back.

Each tool downloads its model the first time you use it, then works offline. Your video, audio and text are never uploaded.

• Remove background (Effects → AI): keeps the person and makes the rest see-through, so whatever is below shows (another clip, a colour, the blurred background). Edge softness is in the clip's Effects tab. Best with one or two people facing the camera. About 12 MB.
• Auto-reframe (next to Fit and Fill under the preview): fills the frame with a landscape clip and moves it so the main face stays in the middle as the person moves. About 1 MB.
• Translate captions (Captions panel → Translate): English ↔ Hindi, Hinglish → English and English → Hinglish. "Add as second track" shows the translation above your captions; "Replace captions" rewrites them. Translations are a starting point, so check them before posting. About 120 MB per language pair.
• Clean up voice (a clip's Audio tab): removes steady background noise (fans, traffic, hiss) and swaps the cleaned sound in for every clip from that recording.
• Cut to beat (a music clip's Audio tab): cuts your main video every 1, 2 or 4 beats. Mark beats adds markers that clips snap to instead.
• Text to speech (the voice button next to the microphone above the timeline): type what to say, pick a Hindi or English voice and speed, and the voice lands at the playhead. Hindi voices read Devanagari and Hinglish. About 94 MB.

• Export makes an MP4 (H.264 video, AAC audio), the format Instagram and YouTube expect. Pick 1080p (default), 1440p or 4K under Resolution, and 30 or 60 fps under Frame rate. Bigger and smoother exports take longer; if your browser can't make 4K at that frame rate, Lipi exports 1440p and tells you.
• A 60-second Reel usually exports in 10–20 seconds on a recent laptop. Keep the tab open until it finishes.
• Captions, text, stickers, filters and music are burned into the video. The safe-zone guides are not.

On Windows use Ctrl where Mac shows ⌘. You can change shortcuts from Shortcuts in the editor's Lipi menu.

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• Best on a laptop or desktop in Chrome or Edge.
• Firefox works, but it can't open iPhone "High Efficiency" (HEVC) videos. Use Chrome or Edge for those, or set iPhone Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible.
• Safari on a Mac works (tested on Safari 27), including iPhone HEVC videos. Colour filters there take a little more work per frame, so long 4K clips with filters preview more slowly than in Chrome.
• Phones and tablets aren't supported yet.

Connect your own AI: ask Claude or ChatGPT for edits in plain words ("cut the first 3 seconds and make the captions yellow") and watch them happen in Lipi.

Missing something? Use Something missing? in the editor, or contact us.