What is the best video editing software?

Although this editor is not up with the top of the professional pack of editors, it certainly packs a powerful punch, and should provide enough features for amateur montages, ranging from alpha manipulation, to multiple audio and video live track editing. See More

Top Pro

Surpisingly complete

Top Con

Does not work well in Windows

They do not support windows well like other distribution. You will face a lot of problems. See More

Top Pro

Works great as an audio editor

Audio is edited in the same way as video, which makes it one of the best audio editors. See More

Top Con

Does not have good distribution channel

On windows, or any OS without Kdenlive in the repo's, you will have to go to their website to get newest version. See More

Top Pro

It's great for learning the basics of video-editing

Top Con

Need FFMPEG to use

You need to install FFMPEG first. See More

Top Con

32-bit version not available

You need to use 64-bit system. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support multi frame-rate video editing

When you choose the mixed frame rate option, your video with 60 fps will be broken (slow down and trimmed). (This con might be just misunderstanding of how to do video editing and production from the user who typed in) See More

Easy to find tutorials, documentation and support. See More

score 22 · Answer 2

Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Top Pro

Widely used

Top Con

Licensing much more expensive than competition

The cost of the adobe system over a 3 year span is significantly higher than other comparable editors. Their licensing for schools is particularly problematic as updates aren't available for site licenses in a timely manner, leaving us with compatibility issues with students using their own licenses at home. See More

Amy L.'s Experience

Been using it for years and still love it... Still glad I bought a licence on time and don't need to pay per month ! See More

Top Pro

Smart Rendering

An option called "Smart Rendering" will not re-render a file that is of a certain format that it also exports to, it will just tack it on, reducing render time and artifacts. See More

Top Con

Slow and choppy performance working with 4K or higher resolution

Working with REDcode 4K or higher brings the performance and stability of Premiere down. See More

Yanis's Experience

Big fan of Adobe here, but prefer the Classic Suite See More

Top Pro

Works with basically any resolution

Technically up to 10240x8192px, but QUHD probably won't be a standard for a while. See More

Top Con

Proprietary software

Not free and open source See More

UpbeatLoki's Experience

Widely Used See More

Top Pro

Works well with other Adobe programs

This program is made to interact very well with the other Adobe production apps like After Effects, SpeedGrade, Soundbooth, Photoshop and others. Adobe programs can dynamically link with each other, so when an update occurs in Premiere it will update in other software accordingly. See More

Top Con

Working with 60fps sucks

ShojiVR's Experience

Not User Friendly, MKV and FLV are not supported, Sequence setting need to be reconfigured or video display will be cropped See More

Top Pro

Multicamera editing

Multi-camera sequences can be created based on in or out points, timecode or even audio, allowing users to to edit multi-camera setup in real-time via keyboard or mouse. Additionally, Premiere can display camera angles as track or clip names. See More

Top Pro

GPU accelerated rendering on Windows

Nvidia and ATI cards are supported. See More

Top Pro

Advanced tracking feature

Moving objects can be tracked using Premiere. Once an object is identified, certain effects (like face blurring) can be applied. See More

Top Pro

GPU accelerated rendering on Mac

sometimes crash or freeze See More

score 15 · Answer 3

MAGIX Vegas Pro (Formerly Sony Vegas)

Top Pro

Easy to understand

Top Con

Unstable

ShojiVR's Experience

it is Commercial tool that rivals adobe premiere and some users claims it is much easier to use than premiere See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Mixed

Top Con

Apple officially doesn't support it

Which is a bit nonsense for opensource project. And there's no free option. Only trial. See More

score 6 · Answer 4

Hitfilm 4 Express

Top Con

They are selling it on Microsoft Store under the name of contribution

Top Pro

Powerful presets & visual effects

Color grading, motion blur, lights, flares, 3D muzzle flashes, procedural fire, etc. They both work out of the box and can be heavily customized. More than 150 visual effects and more are added constantly. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac

Import image formats: MOV

Import audio formats: AVI

Export video formats: MP4 (AVC/H264 & AAC)

Best place is github/ their website. Because they are selling it from Microsoft Store. It is a bit bothersome getting an updated version. See More

Top Con

Does not have good distribution channel

Top Pro

Beginner friendly

Amazing all-in-one starter software thanks to a lot of powerful presets and a simplified workflow. There are tips, guides, explanations and easy access to community support. The interface is intuitive and easy to overview. See More

Has an interface similar to OpenShot and PiTiVi but doesn't crash when previewing videos or after few render. See More

score 10 · Answer 5

Flowblade

Top Con

Requires higher display resolution

Top Pro

Stable

Raghu Ranganathan's Experience

It's the first video editor I used, and it's really fast. Never crashes, and works very well for basic video editing needs. I prefer this over Kdenlive. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux

Top Con

Lack of advanced editing features

Doesn't support stabilization or complex transitions for example. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Flowblade is licensed under GPLv3 with source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Powerful and light-weight

Being GTK based, it does not require extra dependencies on gnome and other desktop environments using the GTK Toolkit. See More

score 1 · Answer 6

Pitivi

Top Pro

GTK based

Top Pro

Uses Gstreamer instead of ffmpeg

Top Pro

Free and open source

Pitivi uses CreativeCommons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license with source code available on Gnome's source code page. See More

Blender is not a very intuitive video editor. It has its own ways of doing things, and it is often hard to guess how to achieve simple tasks. See More

score 4 · Answer 7

Blender

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

ShojiVR's Experience

Portableapps Support, but Not user friendly See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

score 1 · Answer 8

Olive Video Editor

Top Con

Still in alpha / No stable release yet

Not exactly going to be a long term con. The official website clearly states the same, which is why this piece of software should not be used for important projects. Then again it is so damn good that Olive editor is right now my primary editor for most projects. The fact that there is NO stable version of this software does bother a bit as it's ability to handle complex projects is almost unpredictable. But all said and done, it's still not crashed on me even once. Even though an alpha, the best damn alpha release ever. See More

Top Pro

Blazing fast preview

GPU preview means a lot and I honestly cannot understand how other video editors do not have this as the default choice. Incredibly fast previews tested even on low end machines. This is the sole deal breaker for me when it comes to editing clips. See More

Specs

Supported platforms:Windows linux mac

License:GPL-3.0

Computer Specifications:Almost anything

Many of the panel sections can be moved around on the screen, floated or removed. See More

score 3 · Answer 9

Shotcut

Top Pro

Customizable layout

Top Con

Keyframe is tricky

Keyframe settings can be rather tricky to work with. See More

Specs

There are lots of different filters and effects for both video and audio. See More

Top Pro

Several Effects and Filters

Top Con

Unstable

Cause green screen on usage. See More

Top Pro

Chroma Key filter for transparent layer

Using the Chroma Key, you can choose which color you want for a transparent effect instead of Green Screen. See More

Top Con

Cannot add components

Unable to add components such as text, content, etc. See More

Top Pro

Regular updates and improvements

There are regular updates that often come with new filters and features as well as bug fixes. See More

Top Pro

Free Video Editor

This video editor is open source and can be had for free with full version. See More

xvid video clips will not support playback for lightworks. See More

score 2 · Answer 10

Lightworks

Top Con

Playback not working with xvid coded clips

Top Pro

Hollywood approved

Lightworks has been used to edit movies such as Wolf of Wall Street, 28 Days Later, Pulp Fiction, The King's Speech and many, many others. See More

ShojiVR's Experience

Bad video editor See More

Specs

Import image formats: DVCPRO HD

Export video formats: Uncompressed SD 8 bit and 10 bit

Import audio formats: DVCPRO 50

Zooming in lightworks require precise movement and syncro often missed. See More

Top Con

Difficult zooming and syncro video/audio

Top Pro

Highly polished editing workflow

Lightworks is very focused on just the editing workflow. It's full of functionality that eases the workflow. For example, media manager can be used to storyboard, "mark and park" can be used in timelines, cut points can be adjusted in 3 ways (end point of a clip without adjusting the start point of a clip that comes before it, start point of a clip without adjusting the endpoint of a clip that comes after it or start and end points of 2 joined clips at the same time) without shortcuts, just intuitively placed mouse hover points around the cut point. Such attention to detail is what makes it an efficient tool for editing. See More

Top Con

Bad Interface

The interface is not user-friendly and hard to use. See More

Top Con

need user account to use it

you need to register an account before use. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support multi-frame rate videos

Unlike the other video editor, this one doesn't support multi-frame rate video. See More

Top Con

Free version is limited to 720p output

Whereas the full version can export to a wide variety of formats and resolutions, Lightworks can only export H.264 / MPEG-4 up to 720p. See More

Crashes enough to make you feel like searching for another editor. See More

score 3 · Answer 11

OpenShot

Top Con

Unstable

ShojiVR's Experience

Bad video editor See More

Specs

You cannot see a preview of the video with this app. See More

Top Con

Video preview doesn't working

Top Con

High resource usage

It can consume more resources than an average video editor. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive

Top Con

Buggy tutorial mode

Tutorial mode can freeze. See More

Top Con

Text file needs to be saved as an individual file

It cannot save the text file as project content. See More

Top Con

64-bit only available

You need to use 64-bit system to run the app. See More

For example tracking is something Final Cut can't do. Only with a plugin which costs (example) around 100$. As well as for advanced colour correction you have get a third-party plugin. See More

score 1 · Answer 12

Final Cut Pro X

Top Pro

Powerful media organization

Top Con

You need lots of plugins

Top Pro

GPU utilization

Top Con

Works only on OS X

Top Pro

Integration with motion

Top Pro

Full high-quality pro-res support

Top Pro

Multicam editing

Import image formats: BMP, JPEG/JPG, PNG, PSD, GIF, ICO, CUR

score 1 · Answer 13

VSDC Free Video Editor

Export video formats:AVI, DVD, VCD/SVCD, MPEG, MP4, M4V, MOV, 3GP/3G2, WMV, MKV,RM/RMVB, FLV, SWF, AMV, MTV

Import audio formats:MP3/ MP2, WMA, M4A, AAC, FLAC, OGG, RA, RAM, VOC, WAV, AC3, AIFF, MPA, AU, APE, CUE, CDA, FLAC

It cannot view media length. See More

score 1 · Answer 14

Avid Media Composer 8

Add Video or Image

score 1 · Answer 15

Wondershare Filmora

Top Con

Multiple video tracks not supported

Top Con

Doesn't support selected media length

Top Con

Doesn't load resource when project is loaded

Top Con

Preview freeze on splitting clip

You cannot preview after split clip. See More

Top Con

Transition not customizable

You cannot customize transition such as duration. See More

Some simple tasks can be painful (move objects, add effects…). See More

score 1 · Answer 16

Videopad Video Editor

Top Pro

Easy-to-use

Top Con

Not user friendly

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Android, iPad

Top Pro

Intuitive Interface

Top Con

Keyframe has limited workflow

like camtasia, but much cheaper. See More

score 1 · Answer 17

Wondershare DemoCreator

Top Pro

All-in-one solution to record screen and edit videos for beginners.

Top Con

There is a watermark for the free trial exportation.

If you wanna try the free trial, go to https://bit.ly/3iYkjMM to claim a license for free. See More

Red Skylar's Experience

I used to use 2 software to finish my youtube tutorial videos -- one for recording and one for editing. And when I found DemoCreator, it solves everything in an easy way! I can record anything on my screen or camera, then make edits in it. Simple but powerful! See More

Specs

Platform:Win and Mac

Custom Branding:Included

Yealy License:$49.99

Motions & Text Animation:Included

For different scenarios, it offers different templates like seasons, sales, festivals, activities, business, games. See More

Top Pro

Plenty of free and paid effect/template packs are available.

Top Pro

Multiple editing features like green screen, pan&zoom, transitions, stickers, captions, background remover are included in the editor

Top Pro

Specialized game recording mode for HD gamers.

This mode is not available in Mac version. See More

Top Pro

Edit the webcam, audios, screen in different tracks.

Record webcam, system, mic, and desktop/games simultaneiously or separately. See More

Top Pro

It can add annotations and use spotlight during screen recording.

Such as arrows, shapes, text, highlight, spotlights. See More

You can simply cut video by adjusting its start and end time by moving a slider. See More

score 1 · Answer 18

Bandicut

Top Pro

Easy video cutter

Specs

Windows:Windows

Top Pro

Cut video without losing quality

You can cut certain parts of video without re-encoding/converting. See More

Top Pro

Fast video cutter & joiner

You can cut, split and join videos in high speed with the hardware accelerated video encoder. See More