Vidding is a fan labor practice in media fandom of creating music videos from the footage of one or more visual media sources, thereby exploring the source itself in a new way. The creator may choose video clips in order to focus on a single character, support a particular romantic pairing between characters, criticize or celebrate the original text, or point out an aspect of the TV show or film that they find under-appreciated. The resulting video may then be shared via one or more social media outlets and online video platforms such as YouTube. The creators refer to themselves as "vidders", their product as "vids", "fanvids", "fanvideos", "songvids" or the more recently adopted name "edits" and the act itself as vidding.
Vidding can occur within a fandom; however, it is also often considered its own fandom, as vidding fans will often watch vids simply because they are vids. (This is distinct from fan fiction readers and other fans, for instance, who tend to choose what to engage based on source text more than form.) Accordingly, vidding has its own dedicated fan conventions, including Vividcon and VidUKon.
Fan videos within the world of anime fandom are distinct from the videos created by vidders. A fan-made music video using anime footage fans is called an anime music video or AMV, not a fanvid. Most vidders in media fandom are women, though there are many men, too.
Vidding began in 1975, when Kandy Fong synced Star Trek stills on a slide projector with music from a cassette player. Fong's slideshow was first presented publicly at Bjo Trimble's Equicon/Filmcon convention in 1975, where it was celebrated as the first source of "new" Star Trek stills since the conclusion of the original show. She performed her vids with live cutting at fan conventions, which continue to be one of the main venues for vid-watching. When home videocassette tape recorders became available in the mid-1970s, vidders began producing live-action vids that were recorded onto media that could be shown at fan conventions and further distributed to fans.