Microsoft’s new Clipchamp ultimatum — Sync to OneDrive or lose your ability to edit

Clipchamp now requires you to use OneDrive if you want to edit new or preexisting projects.

Microsoft's built-in video editor on Windows 11 now requires a OneDrive account. Following a recent change, the app now requires you to use OneDrive to create or edit projects.

Not only does that mean any future projects require a Microsoft account, editing your preexisting projects now requires signing in to OneDrive.

Specifically, Clipchamp requires you to save projects to OneDrive if you'd like to make edits. You can store media locally, but projects need to be saved to Microsoft's cloud.

That's a strange limitation, because it means you could save the project to OneDrive but only have your media files on your PC, making it impossible to work across devices.

It would make more sense to have a "local-only" option that keeps project files and media files offline and a "cloud" option that keeps all files synced through OneDrive.

When you log in to Clipchamp, it will guide you through the process of setting up OneDrive. For a moment, you may believe you can keep everything local to your device, but that's not really the case. If you save your projects locally, those projects will not be editable. Selecting that option shows the following message:

"Store your past projects on your local disk instead of OneDrive?

If you choose to store projects locally, they won’t appear in the Clipchamp app. Projects must be saved to OneDrive to stay editable."

Windows Latest was the first to flag the change to Clipchamp.

I was surprised to see the change to Clipchamp, so I reached out to Microsoft for confirmation. The company confirmed that OneDrive is required to create and edit Clipchamp projects. Users don't need to upload media assets to OneDrive and retain the option to store those locally. If cloud backup is enabled, those files may be saved to OneDrive.

Has Microsoft broken Clipchamp?