What's the best FREE video editing s/w for 2024?

Sybertiger

Sybertiger

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Jun 30, 2018
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I don't make a lot of videos but occasionally I do from footage captured on my mobile phone or IP cams. I've used Cyberlink PowerDirector v10 and v18 in the past. I'm tired of buying s/w then using it a dozen times then finding out it's has a new error code due to Windows updates. Anyone have suggestions for free video editing software? I quickly Googled it and a bunch of links to write-ups on recommendations came up. I can go through them and download them and try them out but I figured I'd ask here and get some real commentary from real people and not some publisher trying to get clicks and kick-backs based on flimsy write-ups.

Here's one such list I saw in an article.

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I have VSDC, like all of them there's a learning curve, but it works
 
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I tinkered with this a few months ago and didn't do much editing, so all I have is general impressions and two more programs to add to your list. One observation is the right answer depends a lot on what you want to do, because what's easy on one can be difficult or impossible on another. In general I think you get what you pay for with the free programs. I remember concluding that Windows Video Editor was a waste of time, and a lot of the packages make you create an account and/or be connected to the mothership when you're using it. Two programs I ended up using were Avidemux, which is feature-poor compared to some others, but for my job of trimming at the beginning and end of a clip it was very easy to use. I also used Kdenlive. More features available but I hardly remember a thing from what I did with it. Many years ago I did a lot of editing with Sony Vegas (not free) and it was one heck of a nice package.
 
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I'm not looking for fancy as I don't have a YouTube following where I plan to attempt to make income. The following video is simple but I think it shows the minimum I want....a few split screens, adding text and transitions. It was made using PowerDirector18.

 
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Sybertiger said:
PowerDirector18
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I have been using PowerDirector 16 for years. Occasionally I get the bug to upgrade to the latest version. But now they have gone to a yearly subscription model and from what I can see you do not get to continue using it if you do not renew.
 
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samplenhold said:
I have been using PowerDirector 16 for years. Occasionally I get the bug to upgrade to the latest version. But now they have gone to a yearly subscription model and from what I can see you do not get to continue using it if you do not renew.
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Yeah, I saw that. I'm not into subscriptions and that's probably why I'm on this forum regarding IP cam selection, hw and sw...LOL! Everyone seems to be moving toward the MicroShaft 365 direction.
 
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I ended up going with HitFilm. Seems to have enough of the basic features I require to make a free video. Used basic text and video/audio transitions and spliced in several clips. Here's a basic video I did with it.

Florida Black Bear

These bears seems to come and go without any discernable schedule. Here's the latest capture. The video was made using HitFilm which I'm trying out for the first time since the PowerDirector version I have seems to always have some issue every other time there's a Windows update. HitFilm seems...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
For bigger projects I use Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere.

Adobe premiere is the most infuriating piece of software I've ever paid for. It's very powerful, capable, and intuitive, but it crashes constantly and updates are always adding new bugs. As such, I only pay for a month or two here or there when I need it.

The free version of Lightworks can only output 720p.

For casual edits and little clips, I typically get by with open source options like Shot Cut, Open Shot, or Avidemux. There are some more capable opensource options as well like Kdenlive, Natron, Pitivi,
 
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For free video editing software, you might want to check out DaVinci Resolve. It's solid, reliable, and has a bunch of features to spruce up your videos. Plus, it's not one of those "use it a few times, and it breaks" kind of deals.
 
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PsksiOm said:
For free video editing software, you might want to check out DaVinci Resolve. It's solid, reliable, and has a bunch of features to spruce up your videos. Plus, it's not one of those "use it a few times, and it breaks" kind of deals.
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I'm going to try it now because I just went back to do a simple video with HitFilm and now it's adding a watermark and popping sounds to the exported video even though I'm not using any of their paid plugins. And, when you go to the HitFilm site it seems effed up as you can't login or download their s/w again. Maybe they are in the middle of upgrading their website?
 
Welp, I'm not in love with DaVinci Resolve LOL! Three issues thus far. Have the latest 18.6 installed but the first problem is the audio playback while reviewing the clip didn't work. The equalizer bars were not lighting up to show that it even recognized the audio clip. Screwed around with that for awhile. Then noticed that if I toggled from my external speaker to the built in computer speaker the equalizer bar lit up and the sound came out. Then toggled back to my external speaker then it works just fine. Second issue is that while rendering DaVinci kept crashing. Not sure why and I assumed it might be a resource issue or driver issue (latest Intel graphics driver is installed and plenty of memory). Besides, HItFilm and PowerDirector didn't have any resource issues. Third issue is that DaVinci is taking forever to render the video. Not sure why. I'm just splicing two 20 second clips from my cams together. Nothing special, no effects, nada/zilch and probably about the simplest video I've ever done. The timer keeps bouncing back between 2 hours to a gagillion hours estimate to render 40 seconds of video using YouTube format. Oh well, gave it the ol' college try and I do see it is highly recommended s/w.

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Looks like my problem with HitFilm was a HitFilm authentication issue with their server and it was going into fail safe mode and putting that watermark on there. It's been resolved now. Guess I'll continue to use it until the next issue pops up...LOL!
 
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About 8 years ago, I used a free version of ActivePresenter (Vietnam) to create a few howto videos for my software, even though I had a (Sony) VEGAS Pro package (intro for 69.99 back then). I also played with Wondershare Filmora (China), Openshot, Shotcut and DaVinci. Back then, there was a Mac/OSX video editing software package (can't remember name) that was number one, but we had Windows systems at that time.

I tried adding a computer generated voice from text (with some very good "free" voices), but our legal dept. nixed it due to copyright, etc. issues.

I think some editing software can take advantage of your video card(s) to speed up the processing.
 
I just found this out.

Handbrake does Video Cropping. Well that is you can cutout/save a portion of your video. I had some MP4 footage from our DashCAM I want to shorten so I could send it e-mail. I normally use Handbrake for this to lower the filesize to 25MB or less...anyway, I found this online:

superuser.com

How do I trim a video using Handbrake?

I can't seem to figure out the solution to a very simple problem. I want to trim a video in Handbrake and keep the video as is (resolution, encoding, etc), just chop off the first few seconds, but ...
superuser.com superuser.com

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All I needed to do on my 1 minute video is put start at 10 seconds and end at 20 seconds and got the footage I wanted.

Here is the video/footage

The official "WTF" thread

https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-killed-interrupting-suspected-catalytic-183916612.html Ended up the person killed was an actor. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.tmz.com/2024/05/26/general-hospital-actor-johnny-wactor-dead-shot-killed-robbery-attempt-car-catalytic-converter/
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com


HTH
 
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Sybertiger said:
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I use the free version of DaVinci Resolve to assemble my 2-up and 4-up videos, and I like it a lot. It's not missing any features that I need, but YMMV.

I ran it on my old Intel-based MacBook Pro, with a discrete GPU, and it too awhile to render out, but editing was fine.

I now run it on my Apple Silicon-based MBP, and it renders out many times faster than real-time, at least for my relatively simple workflows.
 
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