6 Best FREE Video Editors

hi there Jamie Keith here today a teachers tech hope you're having a great day today I want to solve a problem of finding the right free video editor for you now this can be a complicated process because there's so many different ones out there some really good ones and some not-so-good ones I want to put together a list for you that you can go through and match the one that's best for you now it's important that you realize the one that I might think the best for me isn't going to be the best for you so you need to kind of go through and check all these options and then say oh that's the best one I'm gonna try that one out do you remember with all of these two it depends on your computer what the specs are your skill level and where you want to progress to and I'll try to give some points on each of those depending on what level you're at now I have links to all these ones a lot of the ones I mentioned down below for the tutorials that you can get started with if you do find one that you like another thing I just wanted to point out if you're interested in learning finding more about some free photo editing software check out this video that I have on some top photoshop alternatives but let's get started with this guide today that hopefully saves you a lot of time and frustration in choosing the right free video editor for you

so just before we get started here today just to let you know that I use Camtasia to fill my videos a lot of people ask if I'm using one of the free video editors but for my purposes Camtasia works great for screen capture with the webcam and my screen and be able to use the green screen behind me this is not a free program I'll put the link to it if you wanted to check it out down below the other thing I just wanted to mention was that all these video editors free video editors I'm talking about today are going to be non watermark but you might have to go through registering them as a free copy but I'll point that two out as I get to those so the first one I want to mention today is DaVinci Resolve now you can see it says DaVinci Resolve 16 behind me there's also a DaVinci Resolve 15 the 16 is currently in beta but it's still a great program to use if you're looking to download it you go to Blackmagic Design comm scroll all the way down to the very bottom and you'll see where the links are where you can download these each for free and they'll just ask you some questions before you and some fill in some information before you're allowed to download it the one thing I want to note that this is available on Mac Windows or Linux but do make sure that your computer is powerful enough to run this so check out just Google what the specs are needed for running if we're running DaVinci Resolve 15 and 16 and check what your computer can handle especially when it comes to the graphic graphics card because if you don't it's not gonna work very well especially if you get it loaded up if your videos are getting a little longer you're gonna have a little bit of problems too so let's take a look at DaVinci Resolve just to point out a few extra things about it so if you're going to be using DaVinci Resolve 16 or 15 be prepared for a learning curve if you're a beginner this might not be the one for you but if you're gung ho and want to dive into it and get some professional editing there's lots of resources out there for DaVinci Resolve including my own video that I'll put the link down a beginner's tutorial this is a very powerful program but it has a different workflow so even if you've done some editing before it's a little bit different how it works but once you learn it you'll be able to create some fantastic things so if we just take a quick look across the bottom here we can see where I'm in the media we could go to our cut page here so the cut page this is new in DaVinci 16 it just allows you to produce are sorry to edit very quickly versus the traditional edit page so if you need to put things you've got your quick workflow and work fast this would be the page for you traditionally more in the previous ones we have our traditional editing timeline that we go and work through we're putting out and are using our channels but we also have in here if you for the powerful motion graphics effects that we can add here infusion color grading another very powerful thing I inside DaVinci Resolve I think it's one of the better ones out there for these type of effects if you're looking at going to the top level and we have our fair light here too where we have our audio and then we deliver it through here so it's a little different look than some of the other editors but like I said it's powerful make sure you have your computer to Africa perspex to really handle this program and make sure that you're ready to learn a little different style than some of the other ones so next on the list is shot cut now

shot cut completely surprised me when I started using it looking for free video editors a couple years ago it just and it surprised me in a good way that it was so much more powerful than I expected again it's cross-platform so you can take a look at it if you need it for Windows for Mac or for Linux it's there for you it's completely free there's no pro version to it at all and it's very good I actually would recommend this to a lot of people I you know if they're just starting out or because it's one that they could progress with quite a bit and stay longer with and maybe some of the simpler programs to it let's take a look at the app here with some of the features with it the one thing I would tell you about was shot cut as much as I like it it's not intuitive at first once you watch a few tutorials and I do have tutorial for this one you'll like it and it'll be easy to use but if you're just getting into it if you use other it might not be what you expect so do give it a chance though you can quickly bring in your footage and drag your playhead around and make some cuts to it just by simply dragging and you can see how you can split a playhead and then you can adjust your cuts to different places to it you can add more tracks quickly to it so it has all the different from video to audio all the different things that you can add very quickly I like all the options that you have for exporting this you can see from YouTube to all the different of all the different types that are needed the other thing I just wanted to mention too on this I like all the different things like the filters they have so if I go ahead and click on one of these clips and then just pick a filter and then just we go to add we'll just do a little color grading here you can see how I can quickly I'll drag the playhead over top so you can see which one I'm adjusting how quickly it is to make the adjustments in this so you can go through and do some great editing inside shot cut I do find once you kind of get over that a little bit of difference maybe from other video editing programs this is a great program completely free to use for you so to round out my first

three it is hitfilm express so this is another great free option and there is a pro version to this the Express is the free one what if you do decide to go with this one make sure that you register it with a free copy you'll see when you make sure you log into it or else it is going to be water marked and there'll be a sound that goes across it too when you export it so do make sure you register it you can see it is for mac and windows this one if you scroll down you can see what computers will run on you get Apple and Windows and just quickly check out if yours will match with this so let's go ahead and take a look at hitfilm express some of the features inside of it when you open

up hitfilm express you'll be greeted with all these great ideas that you can start working on I like how they do that Eliz gives you new ideas to see you to go ahead and give something a try inside hitfilm express if you've worked with other video editors before and used to kind of more that additional way video editors work this hitfilm express could be the best one for you can see how that where the media is imported to and then the tracks then you have your to viewer windows up here kind of setup without a lot of other ones are you can quickly drag in your media in here and then everything's right here with your effects that you can go through and drag right on and then make any adjustments to it by just opening up you can see how you can make the changes to the different clips as I just drag it around back and forth and there's many different effects that you can add one thing to note with this though if you try adding any of the effects that have the add on it will become water marked audits so make sure you stick to just the ones that are part of the free one if not you will get the hit films Express watermark that comes up on it but there's lots of powerful tools inside hitfilm express so if you're looking through masking green-screen that has a lot of different ones that you can play with and with the traditional setup if you've used this one I find the learning curve is pretty good with this and there's lots of tutorials out there to really maximize hitfilm express and then there you could always move up to the pro version if you did want to pay to go to that but as a free version I'm pretty expressed with the exports on this one and just with the handling of what it can do for you if you're a beginner just looking to start with video editing and then continuing with the same editor as you improve the next video editor I want

to tell you about is VSD see now one thing to know this is only for the Windows operating system if your Mac or Linux it's not going to work for you I like this one because it doesn't require a lot of power to work well if you click on just on the system requirements you can see where you're at for the RAM 256 megabytes or even what the AMD or what the processors are and you can see it works from XP all the way to Windows 10 on this one so if you are on Windows this could be a great option if you don't have a lot of power and it's still quite easy to pick up again once you go through a few tutorials and understand how it's set up it could work quite well for you there's lots of great features in this if you look down just the list of them how what it supports it even supports 4k and HD export with this one and then you have things for like your YouTube uploader video stabilization tool met for a free video editor this has a lot of things offered in it and the other thing I like about it for $19. 99 you can upgrade to the pro one but I find the free one does a lot all the things that you need it to do let's take a look at it now a few of the

it now let's take a look at a few of the things VSD C can do for you now right away when I open you can see how we can create a blank project we can create easy slideshows in here importer content video captures screen capture you can even see down here when they're talking about editing in 360 I'm just going to go ahead and create a blank project and I'm just gonna use the defaults on here there's a bit a little bit of different in terminology on a few things so if I'm adding some video here it's adding objects so if I go ahead and just grab a video I'm gonna just grab one of these here and then it just imports it into a track and as I import more things in so if I go and this time I'm gonna import a couple more here so I'm just gonna go back to video again and I'm just gonna pick these two right here and you can see now it would import it those two that went to the second track over here but what I like to what you can do is you can actually combine the combined these and if I right click on this I'm just gonna go convert to a sprite so as sprites a different term you might not be heard in different editors but what it does it kind of Nestle's the two into one so I put these two together and if I double click I go into it you can see over here that the sprite I have one sprite in inside of it are these two videos so what I like about this I could go to it and I could once I edited it this the way I want I could go ahead and move it around in two different places in all those videos and everything's are combined and once other than that there are easy features in here so if I was clicking on a if I wanted to make some adjustments you can how quickly I can adjust things from colors I can add all the different effects up to the top up here all the different things I can do and you can right click on any of these to add to get to anything to quickly adjust plus you can splice crop everything's up here easy access a little bit different at first when you start playing with it but watch the tutorial and this could be a great solution for free video editing for you alright so the open shot video editor this is another cross-platform good on Windows Mac Linux it powerful enough to do some great editing but very simple to use at the same time I think is one of the easier ones so if you're beginner this could be very good for you I have seen some issues when the video gets longer where things can be laggy whether that's the computer not matching so checks the specs that are needed on this one for your computer but let's take a look at it to just show you how simple this one can work simplicity is what open shot is all about you can see inside the program nothing looks overwhelming to this you bring in your Clips very easily just by hitting here to import them and you can go ahead and pick your different images or audio and it brings it in drag them down into your tracks you can see how we quickly drag them and then you have transitions and effects that you can grab and bring over on top of these and edit anytime of these if you click and open you can go to the properties and fine-tune these too now if you wanted to do some clip as some editing you can see where we have our slicing to our slice tool through here so everything is just there it's not an overwhelming video editor software so but what you can do when you export you can see that you still have lots of options to how you want to export it with a lot of different formats so if you're looking for something easy not overwhelming this could be a good place to start and like I said before just make sure it kind of works on your computer well that it meets the specs and if you don't have a lot of experience I would suggest open shot so the last one I want to talk

about tonight is Lightworks this is another cross-platform good on Mac Windows Linux it very simple to use very powerful but with a few things I wish was there for the free version but it's still a good program to use I'll show you what I wish was there when we dive into the user interface now so just to take a quick look at the interface here in Lightworks you can see right now I'm under the Edit and just kind of similar to what DaVinci Resolve was as you click through the different parts where this is where you add your effects to a certain scene and you can see things like color correction that you can add and we do have our own audio tab going back to edit you can quickly edit your different pieces make sure your clicked on you can quickly lock anything by just clicking off of it the right-click adds a lot of different things we're editing so if you right-click on anything you're gonna find it but if you wanted to do some quick edits to cut things out you can even use the window up here so if I put it in marker and then grabbed an out like so and then I have the options that if I click this one it'll delete it leaving the gap if I go back to control Z you can see if I click this one here it deletes it and just moves it back so it's easy to cut out those things in between so that's just a kind of quick look at the interface to give you an understanding what this one looks like the one thing that I was mentioning before they I wish this had was more it was in the export so what I'm gonna do is actually just go down the bottom corner here under all and I'm just gonna right-click and go to export here and when I go under export I'm just gonna go to target here target and then we'll go to you YouTube here so YouTube notice that's the 720p well I can't go above 720p you have to go to the pro so this could be one thing that stops you from using light works is if you wanted that high quality one you do need to upgrade and pay for this as a 720p this is a good editor very powerful easy to use but dude know that before you think about using this program to download it for free I hope this guide helped you

out tonight hopefully it alleviates some issues what you're trying to decide which one is the best for you like I said take a look at them let me know what you when you're you issues that you're having down in the comments down below I like to take that information and add it to my next videos if I can try to find fixes and different things like that if there's other ones that you like let me know also in the comments down below and I can take a look and do tutorials on those so thanks for watching this week a teachers tech I'll see you next time with more tips and tutorials