Vidding is an artform: the 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 explore 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 which is commonly uploaded to a variety of social media outlets, the more popular being YouTube. The creators refer to themselves as "vidders", their product as "vids", "fanvids", "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. While a large number of anime video makers are male, the bulk of vidders in media fandom are women.
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. Substantial technical and artistic skill were required to cut vids together, often requiring footage from multiple VCRs to be placed on the same tape, with the added challenge of exact timing. Typical vids could take 6–8 hours to produce, and more elaborate ones could take substantially longer. Vidders, predominately women, passed this knowledge on to each other. Vidders during the 1980s and 1990s formed collectives, such as California Crew, GloRo Productions, Bunnies from Hell, the Chicago Loop, and the Media Cannibals. The collectives shared equipment allowing for more technically complicated vid production. Sterling Eidolan and the California Crew subgroup, Odd Woman Out, made a notable metavid, "Pressure", in 1990. "Pressure" recorded the actual process of making a vid, depicting the female vidders, and the skill necessary in order to produce the work during the VCR age.