I've shared a few notable media-editing tricks with you so far. Free version of Photoshop? Try Photopea. Want to remove the background from images? RemoveBG. From videos? Unscreen. I've even told you how to enlarge images without losing quality!

But video editing has always been a tough one. I often have to use Instagram or Snapchat's basic functionality to add text on videos. But that ends today.

P.S. Was today's tech-letter in your spam/promotions folder? Follow this 1 step.

Feel free to use the icons below to share today's email, or simply forward it to a friend!

Meet Glitterly! Though currently in beta version, this is a website that lets you make high-quality videos: without signing up, without watermarks, and most importantly, without costs.

For starters, do not expect to produce Avatar quality films here. This is a basic video editing tool that lets you use basic tools (only limited by how creative you are as a video editor). 

Glitterly lets you upload existing videos (whether it's a screen recording, or something else), choose background images/colours, add transition effects, make intro scenes, and a couple other things.

I'm going to quickly walk you through a few of its features. Say I want to show someone how to visit The Tech-Letter's archive page. I'll first go ahead and screen record the process, and then upload it to Glitterly.

This interface isn't too complicated to understand. I can choose to add a background image behind my video, or just a plain colour. You can even choose to resize the height or width of your video-- unfortunately, you can't manually pick the size. It adjusts automatically (something to keep in mind).

On the left hand column you'll see other features that Glitterly offers; a really fun one being "Zoom". This lets you select up to 10 seconds of a video where you want the video to zoom in. I'm going to try to demonstrate that on the GIF below.

Here's what happened before this GIF. I added the zoom functionality and then dragged that 🔍  to the point on my video that I wanted to zoom-in on. No, the final video won't have that magnifying glass, it's just for you to remember while editing. 

Notice that I can drag how long I want the video to zoom in for (max of 10 seconds), and how much I want to zoom in.

The next option on the left sidebar (Effect) is similar, but instead of zooming in, it lets you select a portion of your screen that you want to highlight for x seconds (which is just another way of saying it will blur everything other than your selected portion). 

I could explain every feature but you get the gist; you can add transitions, text, intros, and so on. And at the end of the day, you can download this video (without a watermark) for free. 

So there you have it! A free-to-use online video editing website that lets you upload videos, use features such as text, transitions, or zooms, and download without having to create an account.

Summer's over, but your fight for privacy isn't. If you're unaware of what a VPN is, check out this tech-letter for a brief summary.

But until then, NordVPN is the only VPN I use after years of experimenting with others. It allows you to protect up to 6 devices at the same time (including browsers, most cellphones, and operating systems).

What can you do with a VPN? Change your IP Address so that hackers and other third party entities (your Internet provider) can't see what you do online. You can also change your location to use streaming services like Netflix, and even access private information online (like online banking) without being worried that someone might spy on your data. 

Free VPNs include a lot of trackers and advertisements, and the other famous ones are just too expensive; but NordVPN currently has a 2-year sale for only $3.71 a month, a low price to protect your data.

Price? Free ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Format? Website/Web App ⭐⭐