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FREE Video Editing Software – Are They Genuine?
Looking for free video editing software can be a bit tricky. Some might offer you tons of features and let you download their software and claim it is free to use.
But once you’re all done and you play your video, you notice that there’s a watermark or some sort of method forcing you to pay to see what you compiled.
Not cool. My goal with this article is to help my fellow video editing professionals to avoid wasting their time with these never-ending lead gen methods used by video editing software companies.
So that you know what you are getting into before downloading a “free video editing software”.
So, after browsing and testing most of the free video editing software in the market, I came up with the top 5.
To help you make a decision more accurately, I tried to keep the content focused on the features used by most video editors use on a daily basis.
100% FREE, 100% NO WATERMARK. 100% UNLIMITED USAGE.
And did I mention these are all Non-Linear Video Editing Software? Yeah. If you don’t know what Non-linear editors are, these are editing software that lets you:
- Combine video files and images in your sequence,
- Create and place layers of images, videos, audio onto a scene,
- Blend, and overlap them on your timeline.
Hence allowing you to do more stuff on your videos. Giving you more creative control.
1. DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve, one of the best free editing software, it’s a non-linear video editing application known for its great color correction capabilities.
It’s a very powerful tool that works on both Mac, Windows, and Linux; this software is used by movie production houses.
DaVinci Resolve comes with tons of features for video editing, such as
- Audio editing,
- Color grading,
- Motion tracking,
- Effects compositor,
- Facial recognition,
- Keyframing,
- Noise reduction and many more packed into one software.
With all of its features, amazingly, it’s still free. It has a studio version that offers extra features for the more engaged editor.
2. HitFilm Express
Just like DaVinci Resolve, this editor is also considered an excellent video editor available to download by Mac and Windows users.
It’s not a basic free editor. It comes equipped with a library of hundreds of effects and some are paid, but the free features are enough to get a lot done.
It has color enhancers that can be applied to everything. As easy as drag and drop.
It can create visual effects made in Adobe and have powerful effects capabilities. HitFilm Express seems to have an AI tool that recognizes what’s going on in the video and calculates how your chosen simulation or effect should go with your video.
These features of HitFilm Express make it a lot easier to use and navigate around it. They have a tutorial YouTube channel that’s called FXHome, where you can go to and learn more about their software.
HitFilm Express offers more than other video editing software on its free version.
3. VSDC
Another great editor. VSDC is a lightweight video editor that won’t require so much space from your computer.
It supports a wide range of file formats. It has features like a multi-color chroma key, text masking, and import and export videos up to 4K.
VSDC can be used for basic stuff like cutting, cropping, merging, adding titles, subtitles, and rotating videos.
It has excellent built-in filters.
VSDC also has a paid version if you want to unlock the advanced settings, one of which is, it lets you do audio waveform editing.
4. Shotcut
Shotcut – completely free, open-source video editor. All features are readily available for you to use, and there’s no need to upgrade to any pro version.
It can be used on most major operating systems, such as Windows, Mac and Linux. It has all the functionality you’ll need for basic video editing.
You can adjust brightness, contract, you can normalize audio, can add or remove bass, treble, reverb, delay, compress, can change time speed, and noise removal.
This is a simple and effective video enhancer for short and quick edits.
The user interface is a bit different compared to other editors, but it’s not that complicated to learn and understand.
5. Olive
Olive is a fairly new editor that was released recently. It’s a pretty good, basic editor that you can use to start learning video editing.
Simple to learn, easy to navigate. It’s similar to Shotcut in some ways. This free video editing software lets you create slideshows, apply effects, transitions, basic color adjusting and text tools.
Available for download on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
These are great software to use if you want to learn video editing.
For beginners, Olive and Shotcut could be good choices for free video editing software.
VSDC, Hitfilm Express, and DaVinci Resolve have intermediate to advanced features but can still be used by someone who’s starting.
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