IT Professionals

What Is The Best Free Video Editor?

Posted by on Dec 28, 2010 | 5 Comments

Depending on the platform, each operating system has some great options available. Because most people are merely trying to make basic, casual videos to share, I am forgoing the high-end, advanced software suits that cost users money. So which platform are you using? Windows? OS X? What, Linux? Whatever it happens to be, I will provide you with great solutions that cost nothing and will provide you with fantastic results even if you don’t have the extra money to spend on the software right now.

Windows Live Movie Maker - Most people laugh when I suggest this as they have memories of the movie editor provided to XP users. Well guess what? The software has grown up since then to become Windows Live Movie Maker. It’s no longer something to scorn or laugh at unless you are willing to shell out the cash for something else. For Windows users, this is the best way to make the movies you want, easily and with enough transitions to keep things interesting. Besides, everyone knows that it’s not the software that makes a great short video. It’s the recorded content, presentation, and yes, the music.

Which Is The Best Free Video Editor
Photo by iurikothe

iMovie – Again, considered to be overly obvious to many folks out there, the fact is that for casual work like that described above, using iMovie makes a lot of sense. Best of all, it’s freely available with your Mac, most likely already installed! If not, chances are you received a free iLife disc that is with your other Mac software. Check it out. If it’s reasonably new, you will find it to be extremely easy to use and very stable to edit with. If I used the Mac more, this would be my software of choice.

OpenShot/Kdenlive – I’m not a huge fan of Kdenlive personally for the KDE desktop in Linux, but it is stable to use IF you’re using KDE (Kubuntu, PCLinuxOS KDE version, etc.). If, instead, you find that the GNOME desktop is where it’s at, such as with Ubuntu, you might like OpenShot. Drag and drop content right into the software; all of the basic editing features one would find on the other two options above — from effects and transitions — are there. I also love the Blender software option to make animated titles with Blender effects, using preset templates. It’s really the best thing out there for GNOME fans, in my opinion.

  • mikethedj4

    ok well WMM sucks, and “best” is only an opinion based word.

    Wax 2.0 is no doubt one of the best video editors I’ve ever used, cause of all the options built into it, it’s no doubt a great free alternative to after effects, but once I started using Blender for Video Production I became hooked, and not only is Blender great for 3d modeling, and game creation it’s great as a video editor as well. I actually have a tutorial site called BlenderPimp at blenderpimp.tk which is the only tutorial site on the web to date using blender for video production.

    You didn’t even mention Cinelerra which is another great video editor as well I personally like it more than Wax 2.0, cause you can do motion tracking, and in wax 2.0 you can’t, but you can in Blender using Voo Doo.

    I suggest you research more before posting an article like this, and not go with marketing hype.

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    mikethedj4: Wow, where to begin…lol

    1) Your view of “sucks”, is opinion based for WMM LIVE. So no dice there.

    2) Blender, Cinelerra and other ADVANCED video editing tools are best left to people who can actually use them. This article is VERY clear in that this is not targeting the advanced user. From the article:

    “Because most people are merely trying to make basic, casual videos to share, I am forgoing the high-end, advanced software suits that cost users money. ”

    So while I do use Blender and Cinelerra, I am also not a casual user. This article is targeting casual users, as per the text in the piece itself. For casual editing myself, I use OpenShot. Editing with Cinelerra is NOT easy, takes a lot of practice and work to learn about its abilities.

    3) As for “doing the research” before creating an article, I might counter this with you READING about the intended audience before posting silly blanket statements. Just a suggestion. ;)

  • http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux apexwm

    OpenShot is an excellent editor and shows lots and lots of potential. Back in the day I used Adobe Premier, however Adobe software has slowly become way overbloated. I have also dumped Windows altogether and use Linux now. With Linux, the tools are there, you just need to learn how to use them. Kino is an excellent capturing program, which I’ve used in conjunction with OpenShot. DVDStyler is an excellent DVD authoring program. These all go hand in hand.

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    apexwm: Agreed with Adobe sentiments. Yeah, I was tempted to give Kino a bit in this article as they were once “it” for GNOME users, but the editing scheme is sooooo backwards to what we’re used to, that I struggled with it. Many aspects of it are newbie friendly though.

    Definitely agree that Kino does a great job providing a friendly face to dvgrab though. Beats relying on a bunch of CLI arguments and a cheat sheet! lol :)

  • http://www.gtaxl.tk GTAXL

    VideoPad video editor from NCH. It’s Free, supports lots of formats, 1080p, capture, sound editing, etc. Alot better quality than WMM. It’s very good for free.