You don’t require any technical expertise to make an impressive video, thanks to the digital technology. There are tons of video editing tools on the Internet that will make your job easy. But you should be extra careful while choosing your weapon. It totally depends on what you are going to build, the type of computer or operating system you are using, and, of course, your budget.
Jan 14, 2019 - We tested nine video editing programs on Mac and Windows laptops for. Among the paid software, only one — Adobe Premiere Elements. 2 days ago - Video-editing software doesn't have to be costly. Notable features include professional-level color correction, GPU-accelerated. Apple's iMovie has long been one of the most consumer-orientated video editors out there.
Building a good editing software is a complex process. Even big companies struggle while delivering quality tools, and if your requirement list is long, it’s unlikely that a free software will give you everything you want. However, we’ve tried to gather all those full-featured video editing software that will provide you a complete control over how your final work sounds and looks. Whatever kind of movie you are making, these editors will have your back.
18. Nero
Platform: Windows
Price: $44 | Free trail available
Price: $44 | Free trail available
Nero Video is a capture tool for editing videos and burning discs. It consists of a library that allows you to manage all of your multimedia files, burning options, media player and a powerful video editor.
It comes with 2 modes – quick edit mode and advanced mode. In both cases, editing clips is effortless and you get a variety of templates, transitions and text effects for quality results. You can even create slideshows for playback on your PC or through connected TV.
17. PowerDirector
Platform: Windows
Price: $75 | 30 days trial available
Price: $75 | 30 days trial available
If you want to create an impressive video story, complete with titles, effects and transitions, PowerDirector might be the best premium option for you. Not only does it handle conventional joining, trimming and overlaying video clips with great effects, but it also supports some new standards like 360 degree footage and H.265 standards. They have also published an Android application, so your can keep editing when you are away from you Computer.
As far as performance is concerned, its graphic hardware acceleration and 64-bit optimization work great. Other speed optimizers include intelligent SVRT and OpenCL support that determine how video clips should be rendered to achieve best quality output.
16. Pitivi
Platform: Linux
Price: Free
Price: Free
Pitivi is open source video editing tool with a beautiful, intuitive interface, and a clean codebase. It supports almost all simple media editing capabilities like snapping, trimming, splitting and cutting of clips. Audio mixing is visualized as line segments displayed over an audio waveform.
The tool inherits its capabilities of media import and export, from the Gstreamer framework. Although it lacks some important features, for a mid level videographer, it can satisfy almost any request they throw at it.
15. Wondershare Filmora
Platform: Mac and Windows
Price: Starts at $45 per year | Free trial available
Price: Starts at $45 per year | Free trial available
This is simply an elegant tool designed for all users. Anyone can learn to use this, regardless their skill level, and the final outcome sounds and looks fantastic. The full featured mode gives you complete control over your project. You can edit video on a timeline or on a storyboard. There are total 8 editing tracks
One of the interesting features of Wondershare Filmora is its action cam module. It focuses on high resolution clips captured by cameras like GoPro. Moreover, it gives you 300 stunning special effects and 50 unique transitions to make your movie more appealing.
14. Corel VideoStudio Pro
Platform: Windows
Price: $55 | Free trial available
Price: $55 | Free trial available
Corel VideoStudio Pro provides a simple editing interface for all types of users. You can create 4K Ultra HD, HTML5 video page and 3D media, and motion tracking allows you to add text, effects and objects that follow a moving element.
The tool offers more than 150 transitions in 18 groups, from basic fades and peels to 3D, pushes and stretches. There are over 70 special effects that can jazz up your footage with things like mosaic, diffuse glow, water flow and more. This also includes image correction tools like color balance, anti-shake, light enhancement and noise reduction.
13. Magix Movie Edit Pro
Platform: Windows
Price: $70 one time fees | 30 days free trial available
Price: $70 one time fees | 30 days free trial available
With Magix Movie Edit Pro, you can create movies exactly the way you thought. It consists of freely adjustable user interface, one way color correction, tons of effects and templates, and everything you need for the perfect film. It displays all the items in your projects, no matter how long they run on the timeline.
The tool also includes “proxy editing” feature. What it does is, it generates a lower resolution copy of your clip for you to work with. When you are done, the software exports from the original files. This reduces the time you spend waiting for video to render in the editing space.
12. Sony Vegas Movie Studio
Platform: Windows
Price: $59 one time fees | 30 days free trial available
Price: $59 one time fees | 30 days free trial available
Sony Vegas Movie Studio is easy-to-use editing tool that can perform DV batch capture, which is only found in high-end tools. The software is developed for learners, who would get the simple interface, number of features along with support for high definition video stabilization, realtime effects and transitions.
You can use predesigned audio and video effects to improve your content, or make something wild and crazy. However, if you want more features, you can buy platinum edition ($89) – it has more powerful color correction tools (such as three-wheel color corrector) and AVCHD-editing capabilities.
11. Kdenlive
Platform: FreeBSD, Windows and Linux
Price:Free
Price:Free
Kdenlive is an open source video editing software, built on MLT Framework. It provides all essential feature that you need in any video production workflow – custom title editing, waveform displays on clips with audio, blue screen, blurring, distortion and rotoscoping tools.
The tool uses separate non-blocking process for rendering, so it can be paused, stopped and restarted. Moreover, analysis panel contains audio meters, vectorscopes and histograms, and all of this can be rearranged as per as your convenience.
10. Cinelerra
Platform: Linux
Price:Free
Price:Free
Along with being a video editing software, Cinelerra allows users to perform advanced compositing operations like mattes and keying. Don’t judge the software by its interface – the feature list is quite impressive as it includes still picture panning, unlimited tracks support, floating point composting, 16-bit YUV compositing, background rendering on clusters, batch capturing and rendering, realtime effects and SMP utilization.
In addition to the above features, it also supports bidirectional and variable speed scrubbing, nested sequences, and different overlay modes, 64 bit internal audio, track routing and headroom monitoring.
9. AVS Video Editor
Platform: Windows
Price: Free | $59 one time fees
Price: Free | $59 one time fees
This is a simple yet powerful video editor that includes plenty of audio and video effects, text and transitions. The layout has preview panel, storyboard view and media library collections. Once you put movie one the timeline, it can be muted, frozen, cropped, stabilized, copied, its speed can be increased or slowed down, and video color can be tweaked.
The software features enhanced deinterlacing method, cache for processing HD files, chroma key option, highlighting and object using geometrical shapes, and supports multithread mode and Blu-ray videos.
8. Pinnacle Studio
Platform: Windows
Price: Starts at $50 (one time fee)
Price: Starts at $50 (one time fee)
Pinnacle Studio combines the storyboard workflows and timeline to provide maximum usability for both advanced users and novice. It consists of all utilities that you require to convert your raw footage into a nice polished movie. Perform multitrack editing and enhanced multi-camera editing along with new stop motion animation allows you to add exciting, unique content.
What else you get? Split screen video, motion tracking, 360 degree video editing (in ultimate version) and a large set of effect packs (containing more than 900 effects). The best thing is it automatically splits media into chapters and supports drag-drop of all items, so editing a video couldn’t be easier.
7. Shotcut
Platform: Mac, Windows and Linux
Price: Free
Price: Free
Shotcut is completely free video editor that includes support for a wide range of format and 4K resolution. It comes with dockable as well as undockable panels, including recent files with search, playlist with thumbnail view, media properties, history view, jobs queue, and playlist. And, of course, it supports drag and drop of elements from file manager.
Overall, if you are looking for an alternative of Windows Movie Maker, Shotcut is a good choice. It consists of all the tools and functionalities you know from Microsoft’s classic video editing program, plus some extra features that bring it up bang up to date.
6. Blender
Platform: Mac, Windows and Linux
Price: Free
Price: Free
Blender is a professional open source graphics editing tool, mostly used for making animated movies, 3d print models, video games and visual effects. IT includes dozens of advanced features that even some of the premium software are lacking – Texturing, UV unwrapping, fluid and smoke simulation, soft body simulation, rigging and skinning, raster graphics editing, and particle and collision simulation.
Since the feature list is long, it requires a certain time investment to really learn how to use all of these functionalities and get the most out of this tool. Once you get handy, you will get plenty back in return.
5. HitFilm Express
Platform: Mac and Windows
Price: Free
Price: Free
HitFilm Express is the free video editor that promises premium level features, and it delivers. Even in basic editor, you get advanced cutting tools, an amazing set of video and audio filters, 3d composition options, layers and masking, and chroma keying for making green screen effects.
The interface is similar to other movie editing tools. Still if you will get confused anywhere, there are plenty of tutorials to help you. The best way to master HitFlim Express is to experiment with different effects, drop clips onto the timeline, and try out the composition tool.
4. LightWork
Platform: Mac, Windows and Linux
Price: Free | Pro version starts at $25 per month
Price: Free | Pro version starts at $25 per month
Lightworks is a professional video editing tool that is free for home use, putting incredible features within the reach of beginners, hobbyist and occasional videographers. Initially, you might find it intimidating, but once you spend some time experimenting, you’ll love this tool. It is packed with advanced realtime effects such as color correction, masks and blurs, and dozens of present effects. You can even create your own effect manually.
It has been used in many of the Hollywood movies, including The Wolf of Wall Street, Pulp Fiction, Hugo, Heat and many more. Whether you need to create a video for social media or for a 4K movie project, it’s all there.
3. DaVinci Resolve
Platform: Mac, Windows and Linux
Price:Free | Premium version costs $299
Price:Free | Premium version costs $299
DaVinci Resolve is a combination of video editing program and advanced color corrector tool. It lets you add new effects, adjust colors, and deliver program beginning to end, all in a single software. Even the free version includes 32-bit float YRGB picture processing, context sensitive timeline trimming, multi camera editing, speed changes and time remapping and asymmetric and dynamic JKL trimming.
If you talk about performance, it has a new video playback engine with GPU and CPU optimization, lower latency and faster UI refresh. Whether you are editing HD or 4K video, the tool is fully responsive and fast enough to keep up with your moves.
2. Final Cut Pro
Platform: Mac
Price: $300
Price: $300
Developed by Apple Inc., Final Cut Pro has plenty of noticeable features like enhanced timeline index, intuitive color grading, customizable 2d and 3d titles and much more. The interface is quite impressing – a more consistent dark gray that makes the things you are editing the most prominent element on the screen.
The software supports unlimited audio tracks, multiple camera editing, standard roll, ripple, scrub, slip, and time remapping functions. Also, there is manual 3-way color correction filters, keying tools, vocal de-pooper and de-essers. It has been used in filming some of your favorite movies including The Girl with the Dragon and The Social Network. So, if your budget is not tight, you should really consider this option.
1. Adobe Premiere Pro
Platform: Mac and Windows
Price: Start at 20 per month | Free trial available
Price: Start at 20 per month | Free trial available
Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline based video editor that features top-notch video masking, awesome transitions and integration with Photoshop and After Effects. There is an uninterrupted player mode that allows you to apply filters and adjust video parameters while playing.
Read: 14 Tools to Instantly Convert 2d Images to 3d Ones
The tool is immensely popular among users because of its advanced functionalities like bit-depth rendering, time remapping, color correction ability, multicamera editing, Bezier keyframing, multiple sequence support and detailed audio mixer interface. Moreover, the tool is powerful enough to handle 360 degree virtual reality video to 8K resolution all in native format.
The Mac is hugely popular among creative professionals, so it’s no great surprise that there are lots of video editing tools available for it. Whether you just want to add titles, transitions and a soundtrack, or you want to add Hollywood-style effects and access to professional color correction there’s a Mac application that will do the job.
The really great news is that many of these programs are free. You might expect that free video editing software would have fewer features or produce less professional results than expensive software, but many of the free tools featured here are more than good enough to produce professional-looking movies. The only downside is that they tend to have a steep learning curve and they don’t walk you through the process of editing. However, there are plenty of video on YouTube to help you get started.
Here are the best free and paid-for video editing applications for the Mac.
Best free video editing software for Mac
1. iMovie
Apple’s consumer focused video editing tool used to only be free if you bought a new Mac. But now everyone can download it free from the Mac App Store. It’s a brilliantly easy to use application. One of its best features are the movie trailer themes that allow you to create amazing cinema-style trailers in a few minutes.
If you want to create your own movies, there are tons of effects, transitions, sound effects and title styles to help you. And it’s easy to import your own audio tracks and photos and add them to your production. If you’re looking for a free video editor for Mac, iMovie could be the only tool you’ll ever need.
If you want to create your own movies, there are tons of effects, transitions, sound effects and title styles to help you. And it’s easy to import your own audio tracks and photos and add them to your production. If you’re looking for a free video editor for Mac, iMovie could be the only tool you’ll ever need.
2. DaVinci Resolve
If iMovie isn’t for you, give DaVinci Resolve a try. It’s the free version of DaVinci Resolve Studio, but being free doesn’t mean there aren’t many features. It’s loaded with professional tools like some of the best color correction and image stabilization there is. In the free version, you can work at frame rates up to 60fps and export your movie in SD, HD and Ultra HD.
It has a full digital audio workstation for sound editing, meaning you won’t have to leave the app to get the audio just the way you want it. It’s available on the Mac App Store, but if you want the full features of the free version, download it from the Blackmagic website.
It has a full digital audio workstation for sound editing, meaning you won’t have to leave the app to get the audio just the way you want it. It’s available on the Mac App Store, but if you want the full features of the free version, download it from the Blackmagic website.
3. Lightworks
While DaVinci Resolve gives away lots of its high end features in the free version, the same can’t be said of Lightworks. There’s still plenty here though, including: effects, multicam editing, titling, and a timeline with multiple layers.
There’s also access to royalty-free video and audio content for you to include in your projects. However, output in the free version is restricted to 1080p on Vimeo and 720p on YouTube. And there are no detailed export options for H.264 or MP4. Also, if you want to use the free version for more than seven days, you’ll have to register.
There’s also access to royalty-free video and audio content for you to include in your projects. However, output in the free version is restricted to 1080p on Vimeo and 720p on YouTube. And there are no detailed export options for H.264 or MP4. Also, if you want to use the free version for more than seven days, you’ll have to register.
4. OpenShot
OpenShot is an open source video editor with a user interface that’s much simpler than most. That doesn’t mean it’s short of features, though. It has templates for creating titles, effects, the ability to remove the background from your video, and slow motion and time effects.
You can also create 3D animated titles and effects, there’s support for unlimited tracks, and for more than 70 languages. The interface isn’t the slickest you’ll ever use, and there have been question marks over its reliability in the past, but it’s definitely worth trying if you want a free video editor for the Mac.
You can also create 3D animated titles and effects, there’s support for unlimited tracks, and for more than 70 languages. The interface isn’t the slickest you’ll ever use, and there have been question marks over its reliability in the past, but it’s definitely worth trying if you want a free video editor for the Mac.
5. Video Editor MovieMator
Video Editor MovieMator allows you to trim, split, move, and merge clips from a variety of different sources. It handles every consumer file format you’re likely to need and can import directly from your iPhone or GoPro. There are lots of built-in effects and transitions, and, of course, you can add titles too.
The interface is simple enough for most people to get to grips with quickly and the real-time preview makes it easy to see exactly how your video is coming along. There is a significant limitation on the free version of the app — exports are listed to videos that are up to five minutes long. Also, there is only one transition and a handful of effects in the free version.
The interface is simple enough for most people to get to grips with quickly and the real-time preview makes it easy to see exactly how your video is coming along. There is a significant limitation on the free version of the app — exports are listed to videos that are up to five minutes long. Also, there is only one transition and a handful of effects in the free version.
Best Paid for video editing software for Mac
1. Final Cut Pro X
Final Cut Pro has come a long way since it was overhauled a few years ago and lost several features that caused lots of criticism to be directed at Apple. The fact that it’s designed by Apple means that it takes full advantage of hardware on the Mac, particularly the Mac Pro and iMac Pro. It pushes their multi-core CPU and GPUs to the maximum.
Features like the Magnetic Timeline 2 and Enhanced Timeline Index may be beyond the needs of most of us, but if you edit videos for a living, you’ll appreciate them. Support for up to 64 camera angles with automatic audio syncing is another feature that makes video professionals lives much easier. And of course, it supports the formats you would expect of a serious video editor including ProRes, RED, and XAVC, as well as H.264 from digital SLR cameras. When it comes to Mac video editing, Final Cut Pro X has all the bases covered.
Features like the Magnetic Timeline 2 and Enhanced Timeline Index may be beyond the needs of most of us, but if you edit videos for a living, you’ll appreciate them. Support for up to 64 camera angles with automatic audio syncing is another feature that makes video professionals lives much easier. And of course, it supports the formats you would expect of a serious video editor including ProRes, RED, and XAVC, as well as H.264 from digital SLR cameras. When it comes to Mac video editing, Final Cut Pro X has all the bases covered.
2. Adobe Premiere Elements 2018
The simplest way to describe Premiere Elements is that it is to Premiere Pro what iMovie is to Final Cut Pro. But Elements and iMovie are two very different apps. For a start, while iMovie is free, Elements costs $100. The other main difference is that Elements is set up to automate much of the process of creating your movie masterpieces.
So, for example, Quick mode takes the clips and other media you’ve imported and throws them together on the timeline, you can then re-order them, trim them and add transitions and other effects. Even here, however, the emphasis is on letting Elements do the hard work for you. So, press the Fix button and it will apply image stabilization and other ‘fixes.’ If you want to be more involved, a guided mode prompts you with onscreen tips. Of course, if you’d rather work completely manually, you can. Elements doesn’t make it as easy to import media as iMovie does, and you’ll have to download much of its additional content, like music scores, individually.
So, for example, Quick mode takes the clips and other media you’ve imported and throws them together on the timeline, you can then re-order them, trim them and add transitions and other effects. Even here, however, the emphasis is on letting Elements do the hard work for you. So, press the Fix button and it will apply image stabilization and other ‘fixes.’ If you want to be more involved, a guided mode prompts you with onscreen tips. Of course, if you’d rather work completely manually, you can. Elements doesn’t make it as easy to import media as iMovie does, and you’ll have to download much of its additional content, like music scores, individually.
3. Filmora
FIlmora allows you to import clips from your Mac’s hard drive, a camera, and even from social media accounts. It has a somewhat quirky interface, that may take some getting used to if you’ve used other video editors. But it has plenty to commend it including lots of effects, titling options, and audio controls.
It’s neatest feature could be the lighting preset options that allows you to emulate the look of Game of Thrones, Star Wars, or House of Cards at the click of a button.
It’s neatest feature could be the lighting preset options that allows you to emulate the look of Game of Thrones, Star Wars, or House of Cards at the click of a button.
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