13+ Best Video Editing Software of + Free Tools for Mac & Windows

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Whether you're a weekend GoPro shooter or a full-time video professional, you need a powerful, easy-to-use video editing software.

With each new year, new formats, technologies and features give professional software more power. This is a good thing, as there has been an explosion in the amount of high quality video produced by non-professionals. Given the cheapness of storage media, the limits on the amount of video you can shoot and edit will depend largely on how much you tolerate editing software and how much free time you have.

With the release of a new generation of video editing software, advanced features are coming in all the time. For example, multi-camera editing allows you to switch between different angles of the same scene shot by multiple cameras, a feature that was once unique to professional-grade software, but by now you can find it in non-professional programs, and many other advanced effects.

Another impressive addition to consumer-grade video editing software is motion tracking, which lets you attach specific effects to moving objects in your video. You can defocus backgrounds that you don't want to show, simply specify the target and the application takes care of the rest, tracking the face and making the effect follow the movement. This used to be the only advantage of effects software such as Adobe After Effects, and while SoundCloud was the first consumer product to offer motion tracking, it still leads the way in terms of depth and usability of motion tracking tools, although several other companies have followed suit.

Support for 4K video is already a standard feature of video editing software, but the specifics vary from product to product. For example, not all software can import Sony's XAVC and XAVC-S formats -- they are widely used by Sony's popular DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, camcorders and professional video cameras. In addition to this, the same is true for the relatively new H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.

The best video editing software

1. Adobe Premiere Pro CC -- the best video editing software

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With a familiar non-linear editing interface, an unparalleled ecosystem, and a powerful feature set, Adobe Premiere Pro lives up to its reputation as the industry-standard video editing software. In addition to adding support for 360° VR, 4K (and beyond), and HDR (High Dynamic Range Imaging) video, the latest version offers advanced Lumetri Color tools and leading-edge collaboration features, all of which make Premiere the best choice for professional-grade video editing software.

Note that Premiere Pro is now only available through a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, but the good news is that this cross-platform application runs on macOS and Windows systems.

The software interface is beautiful, and the startup view helps you quickly access the projects you've been working on recently, and of course, you can create new projects or search Adobe Stock. the dark program window makes clip clips the center of attention, and you can switch between features such as components, clips, colors, effects, audio, and titles, as well as edit or create your own workspace, and even can pull any panel out of the program window and float it to wherever you want it to appear.

Premiere now supports touch operation, so you can move clips or timelines with a finger or tap, or pinch to zoom in and out of a video window. Apple Final Cut Pro X supports the latest MacBook Pro, but we prefer the touch capabilities of the screen because, unlike the Touch Bar, the touch screen doesn't require you to take your eyes away from the screen, so you can focus more on your video project.

Transitions and effects collaboration 360° VR multi-camera color adjustment audio titles and subtitles assisted application output

You get four waterpark-sounding clip types: Rolling, Ripple, Outer Slip, Inner Slip, and a regular trim mode. Premiere Pro only includes 38 transitions by default (of course, you can install more plug-ins), and that's because most of the hundreds of effects offered by Mighty Director are considered cheesy in the professional community -- If professionals want more fancy effects, they build them themselves in After Effects or buy plug-ins made by third parties.

New collaboration features bring a smooth experience to Premiere Pro: Creative Cloud Libraries lets you store and organize resources online; Team Projects enables editors and motion graphics artists to collaborate in real time through After Effects. Any Premiere user can sync settings to the Creative Cloud, which means you can log in to the cloud to view your editing environment from any computer with Premiere installed.

You can work with 360° VR videos as you would with any other video file and modify the field of view and angle. If set up correctly, Premiere also supports shooting video from any viewpoint and outputting it correctly.

The multi-camera feature in Premiere can accommodate an unlimited number of angles, limited only by the capabilities of your system.

With the advanced Lumetri Color tool, you can adjust the video color more easily, just like using Photoshop to process pictures.

In addition to a wealth of color processing options, you get a wide range of cinematic and HDR (High Dynamic Range Imaging) looks, with the ability to adjust white balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows and black points - all of which can be activated using keyframes. Saturation, softness, fade film and sharpening adjustments are also available, but even more impressive are the curves and color dials. There is also a cool Lumetri Scope view that shows how the red, green and blue are scaled for the current frame.

The audio mixer displays panning, balancing, VU volume, clip indication, and mute/solo for all timeline tracks, which you can adjust while the project is playing.

Premiere Pro offers rich text options for titles and subtitles, and you can import XML or SRT files.

For titles, you can choose from a variety of fonts (including Adobe Typekit). As with Photoshop, you can also apply strokes and shadows to any font, but advanced text animation is only available through After Effects, compared to audiophile software like PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio, which offer better title animation options.

One of Premiere's strengths is the way it collaborates with other Adobe CC applications, especially when you need to create resources in Photoshop or After Effects.

With the Adobe Dynamic Linking menu option, you can move content between applications in its original format without any type conversion, which allows your projects to interact with After Effects, Audition, Encore, Media Encoder, Prelude, SpeedGrade, and Story.

After the video editing is complete, the export options will provide you with most of the formats you want, for more output options you can use Adobe Encoder to do so. Encoder allows you to batch encode in order to target multiple devices in a single job, including cell phones, iPads, HDTVs, and more. In addition, it can output video using H.265 and Rec.2023 color spaces.

There's no doubt that Premiere Pro offers everything you need for video editing, and Adobe's professional video editing software is a leader in collaboration, and it will be even more powerful by being tightly integrated with After Effects, Photoshop, and the Creative Cloud suite.

1. Adobe software list

Advantages

1. Clear and flexible interface
2. Many useful tools
3. Very fast response time
4. Ultimate Video Editing Features
5. Rich video production ecosystem
6. Excellent stability

Disadvantages

1. No keywords used to tag media
2. Some technologies require additional applications, such as After Effects and SpeedGrade

2. Corel VideoStudio Ultimate (will sound will film)

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When it comes to home video technology, whether it's 3D, 4K, 360° VR, or the software used to edit them, it's important to keep up with the trends, which are using endless innovation. The latest version of VideoStudio (Acoustiguide) is amazing; it is one of the few consumer video editing programs that can handle 360° VR video and also comes with a multi-camera editor, multi-point motion tracking, time remapping, video masking, audio suppression and 4K support.

The newest version of the Clubfilm offers a new Welcome tab on the main interface where you can get inspiration and guidance in the form of tutorials, videos and templates; the Get More section offers additional templates, filters, transitions and overlay layers; and the other three modules: Shoot, Edit and Share are where you will work on real videos. This handy interface will guide you through the entire workflow of adding, editing, and exporting digital video.

Clicking the capture button at the top will enter capture mode, where you can shoot with a connected camera, scan a DV source, or import video files from digital media. There is no tagging or search function available in the club, so it can be tricky to find the right one when you are looking for the right one from a large number of clips. However, you can sort the source content by name, type or date.

The multi-camera editor lets you set multiple input and output points, a feature that will be useful when you just want to remove some dead space in the middle of a clip.

Video corrections, transitions and effectsNew video editing featuresAdvanced video editing technologyFastFlick audio editing output

Clubfilm offers more than 150 transitions in 18 groups, including basic fade in and fade out, as well as more advanced 3D, push in and extensions. They can be added to the timeline with a simple drag-and-drop operation.

The text function is very powerful. You can choose from 34 preset caption and subtitle animations, as well as customize indicators such as font, size, duration and rotation. In addition, it allows you to save newly created styles as presets.

With 78 effects, you can make your clips look like diffuse reflections, mosaics or water flow. These effects also include image correction tools such as anti-shake, color balance, noise reduction and light enhancement. The anti-shake effect is very good even in 4K HD footage. As with all other high-end video editors, you can keyframe settings or turn off any effect, and Corel offers a convenient separate window containing side-by-side raw and preview views to make your processing faster.

1. 360° video editing: You can add 360° video content to the source panel or drag and drop it onto the timeline to edit it according to your needs.
2. Video masks: With the newly introduced Mask Creator tool, you can overlay video areas based on the effect of the selected area. If you create a mask from video content, it uses motion tracking to track the masked object, and you can create masks using brushes (edge detection) or shapes (rectangles or ellipses). Motion tracking works for a frame, the end of a clip, or a specified time segment.
3. Time remapping: slow motion, acceleration, inversion, freezing - all of these are grouped under the Time Remapping feature level. A basic freeze-frame tool is included in the Clubfilm, allowing you to preview the results of time remapping.
4. Track Transparency: Corel's high-end video editing program -- Pinnacle Studio -- recently introduced a very similar track transparency tool, now available in the Clubfilm. Enables you to open a new view in the timeline and use the yellow line to adjust the transparency. This is a very nice tool for creating some evocative effects.
5. Multi-camera editing: This is a feature offered by a professional-grade video editor that allows you to switch between camera angles that are shooting simultaneously.
6. Multi-point motion tracking: Concerto is the first consumer-grade video editor to include motion tracking, so you can attach objects, text, or effects to moving objects in your video.
7. Freeze frames: Compared to Adobe Premiere Elements, the freeze frame feature of the club is more basic and you can simply drag it to the position you want to freeze.
8. Audio Adjustment: Audio tools for normalizing and suppressing sound levels have been improved in the Clubfilm, and audio filters and video effects are also available in the audio panel.

This is an included standalone program for creating simple and fast digital movies.

Clicking one of the buttons above the timeline will open the mixer. You can stretch the audio to match the length of the video, and many of the filters (except resonance) are adjustable.

Concerto offers some support for newer compression codecs like H.265, making high-resolution video like 4K take up less disk space, the specifics of which will depend on your hardware -- whether it's a CPU or GPU that has to support the codec. In addition, you still get support for more common standards like AVI, MPEG-1~4, M2T, WebM, 3GP and WMV, and can output compatible files with Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft devices.

Although DVD and Blu-ray discs are not as important as they once were, audiophile video software like Corel will still provide support for them.

Corel VideoStudio continues to be a well-designed and powerful audiophile video editing application. With support for 360° video content, multi-camera editing, powerful motion tracking, and fine-grained audio adjustment options, it almost works as a professional-grade video editing tool.

Advantages

1. A variety of fun video creation tools
2. Clear and simple interface
3. Supports 360° VR, 4K UHD and 3D media
4. Motion Tracking
5. Can create HTML5 video pages
6. Stop Motion Tools

Disadvantages

1. Slightly slower rendering speed than best competitor
2. No effect and media search function
3. Only 20 video overlay (picture-in-picture) tracks

3. CyberLink PowerDirector (PowerDirector)

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The amateur video editing space has come a long way in the last year or two, with CyberLink's consumer video editing software often being the first to lead the way in supporting the latest formats. PowerDirector (PowerDirector) supported 4K content long before most smartphones could shoot it, and CyberLink is once again a pioneer with the new efficient codecs we're seeing now, such as 360° video and H.265. And it comes with some useful tools to help you make compelling videos. With its fast and powerful video editing capabilities, PowerDirector has become an extremely valuable video editing software.

The user interface of this software is very straightforward, though you may still feel a touch of pressure as you delve into some of the fine-tuning features because of the wealth of editing options offered. That said, it's not as daunting as Adobe Premiere Elements.

CyberLink's investment in 64-bit optimization and graphics hardware acceleration has paid off, and other speed boosters include OpenCL support and intelligent SVRT, which determine how clips should be rendered for the best quality output and fastest editing. In our latest round of performance tests, PowerDirector remains faster than the competition.

Basic editing assists in the production of 360° video motion camera motion tracking content perception advanced editing 4K and 3D audio

As with most non-linear video editing software, you can add and edit clip segments on the timeline. The Single Trim tool allows you to use two sliders for precise control; the Multi Trim tool lets you mark several start and end points on your clips - a useful tool for cutting timelines. You can use PowerDirector's unique, intuitive selection cursor to split video and delete clips. Repair/enhancement options include video noise reduction, audio noise reduction, color enhancement and sharpness enhancement features. In addition, it can easily fix lighting and color.

One of the best things to happen in home video editing in recent years was Apple's pioneering of the trailer feature in iMovie, and Adobe has added a similar tool to Premiere Elements -- Video Story -- with both templates, you can use video and photo content to populate them for specific points, such as combo shots, close-ups, or action shots. PowerDirector also has a similar tool -- Express Project (Quick Project Template).

When you add a 360° clip to your project, PowerDirector will pop up a dialog box asking if you want the output to be 360° or 2D.

If the latter is selected, then the software opens the View Designer window in order to select the viewpoint for the generated movie.

For projects intended for output in 360° format, you can still use editing tools such as basic trimming, splitting and joining, but some advanced features are not available, such as Magic Movie, video cropping and content awareness.

In addition to GoPro, you can import and edit footage from other sports cameras such as Sony, Kodak and iON.

PowerDirector offers fisheye distortion, vignetting, camera shake, and color correction effects based on camera profiles, and includes some effects preferred by sports camera users, such as slowdown, acceleration, and replay.

Motion tracking allows objects, text, or effects to follow what is moving in the video. 360° trackers work very well, but 2D trackers can lose track of the front of the subject when turning around, a common limitation of such tools.

To attach text to motion-tracking objects in PowerDirector, you can easily add mosaic, spotlight, or blur effects, as well as choose from many fonts, colors, and sizes.

PowerDirector can analyze crowd, zoom, pan, voice, motion, and jitter clips, which allows you to select areas of interest and reject useless clips. Premiere Elements has a tool that allows you to manually select your favorite moments, but it's not automatic like PowerDirector.

So many people now shoot video through their phones' HD lenses that multi-camera is no longer reserved for professionals. PowerDirector allows up to 100 multi-camera tracks, and what it really means is that you can sync multiple tracks in the main timeline. The actual multi-camera switching interface still only offers four video sources, though.

If you are doing keyframe editing, then PowerDirector is at your service. It offers picture-in-picture, overlay, shift, crop and timecode, all with effects and adjustments that can be tied to keyframes. You get access to over 100 transitions and effects, 10 of which come from NewBlue. in addition, you can install third-party effect plugins from Pixelan and proDAD.

The Chroma Key tool allows you to photograph people with a monochromatic background (usually green) and choose a different background to create exotic effects. The new Mask Designer allows you to add transparency to mask objects and text.

The software supports the XAVC-S standard for 4K and HD video used in Sony cameras and camcorders, and also adds support for Canon 1D C, JVC HMQ-10 and GoPro Hero3 4K content.

The tracks in the timeline are displayed as wavy lines by default, and you can adjust the volume by grabbing and dragging operations.

The standard video editor also includes a beat detection feature that allows markers on the timeline to be placed in the music beat to synchronize the editing action.

PowerDirector (PowerDirector) is one of the fastest and most powerful consumer video editing applications for Windows and the first to support 360° VR video.

Advantages

1. Very fast rendering speed
2. Clear interface
3. Many special effects
4. Best 360° video features compared to other video editors

Disadvantages

1. Cannot clip in the source panel
2. Too many options compared to the clean and clear interface
3. Unable to output 360° video in H.265 format

4. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate

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Over the years, Pinnacle Studio has become more powerful and faster to process, and it was developed by Corel, along with the aforementioned Concerto. While both software offer excellent editing features and video effects such as stop motion, multimedia editing and motion tracking, Pinnacle is a more high-end model, with the main target group being enthusiasts who are close to professional level. In addition, Pinnacle is also one of the very few applications that supports 360° VR content with excellent rendering speeds.

The latest version adds a number of useful features.

1. A simplified, but more customizable interface
2. A keyframe-centric editing panel
3. Motion 3D title creation
4. Wide angle lens distortion correction
5. Video Templates
6. Painting effects and morphing transitions

The latest version of Pinnacle has an extremely simplified interface with flat 2D icons and a pleasant overall color scheme of black and gray. Thanks to the Project Bins concept, a directory stores everything inside the project: clips, photos and sound files, but not effects and transitions. For professional-level applications (such as Final Cut Pro X), this is a common approach and a feature not offered in Corel's other product lines.

Basic editing and transition motion tracking 360° VR video multi-camera editing motion stopping advanced effects audio sharing and output

Pinnacle's timeline is magnetic, and by default any clips you drag and drop will be aligned with existing ones, though you can turn off this behavior.

You can adjust the length of transitions between adjacent clips, or you can enable dynamic length transitions, or just keep the transitions of a set length. You will have more fun with this than with other video editing software, which has a very complete selection of transitions, including 2D-3D, Art, Alpha Magic and more. The most exciting should belong to the Morph transition feature, which allows you to draw guides in the second video to influence the transitions.

First masking the object to be tracked and then using the program to track it may sound simple, but in reality Pinnacle Studio makes this process slightly more complicated than other software. During our testing, the motion tracking feature was not reliable on a 4K display, while it worked fine on a system with an SD display.

Pinnacle becomes more difficult to track objects when subjected to background obfuscation, and it may lose objects more often than its competitors -- even Corel's own Concerto.

Like PowerDirector, Pinnacle Studio now supports 360° video from cameras such as Kodak PIXPRO SP360 4K and Samsung Gear 360. You can do some basic editing in terms of maintaining 360°, or you can convert it to a standard 2D view.

Pinnacle Studio now lets you edit multiple clips shot at different angles, with the Base version allowing two camera angles, Plus for four, and Ultimate, now introduced, for six.

Freeze frames are one of the most attractive types of animations. With Pinnacle, you can control the connected camera to automatically take photos at specified intervals, and even display a trailing image of the last photo so you know how to place the next one. However, you can't create GIF animations.

Pinnacle claims to offer over 2,000 effects, which is more than anyone really needs, and many of them duplicate or, worse, just stupidly overlap with transitions. However, there are many impressive effects, such as Dream Glow and Old Film, plus many third-party effects including NewBlue's Drop Shadow, Shredder and Photon Blast are of professional quality.

Why are digital photos the only content that can be transformed into art and beautified with artistic effects? Now, the Paint tool in the latest version of Pinnacle makes it possible to achieve the same effect with video content, and you get five impressive Paint effects: Programmatic, Pencil Sketch, Oil Paint, Detail Enhancement, and Cartoon. In fact, when you make edits, you're not drawing on the image, the effect just looks like drawing.

In addition, Pinnacle Studio includes powerful 3D editing tools (although this is now obsolete), special transparency tools, chroma keys, 3D titles, and a screen camera feature.

Sound in digital movies is another strong point of Pinnacle Studio. The Scorefitter option extends the soundtrack in a variety of styles to fit your movie, while the Audio Avoidance feature automatically reduces the volume of the soundtrack during playback.

This editing software includes a full disc authoring module with support for Blu-ray discs, as well as DVD and AVCHD formats. As for more modern export methods -- online sharing, the cloud option in Pinnacle's export dialog allows direct uploading to Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube and Box. You can also simply export locally in a variety of file formats, including AVCHD, DivX, MKV, MPEG-1/2/4, QuickTime and WMV. Presets allow you to export to popular viewing devices such as iPhone and Xbox. happily, the latest version adds the ability to export in H.265 HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) format, which is important for 4K and even 8K content, as it can compress files to a smaller size while maintaining image quality.

During our testing, Pinnacle had the fastest rendering speed, beating all editing products in the consumer space.

However, when using certain new features (such as advanced 360° video editing), the program would unexpectedly quit. Fortunately, when this happened, the program would let me continue working on a recent project. Within the requirements of video editing, this isn't unexpected -- Apple's Final Cut Pro occasionally crashed during our most recent round of testing.

Overall, with a variety of powerful editing tools and near-professional-level capabilities, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate is an impressive product. However, the motion tracking features could be enhanced, as could the stability of the program in advanced operations.

Advantages

1. Clean, simple interface
2. Can edit 360° VR content
3. Fastest rendering performance
4. Rich in special effects and has a search function
5. Ability to add tags and stars to media
6. Good audio tools
7. Reliable output options

Disadvantages

1. Occasional motion tracking issues
2. The program occasionally crashes
3. Uneven 360° VR implementation

5. Magix Movie Edit Pro Premium

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When it comes to video editing software, we may first think of Adobe, Apple, Corel, or CyberLink (CyberLink). But in Europe, for more than two decades, Germany's Magix has been a leader in the industry, producing a Movie Edit Pro enthusiast-level product that is on par with software from these well-known manufacturers. In its latest version, Movie Edit Pro promises improved 360° editing, a plug-in store, HEVC support, and better stability, plus some nice additions such as motion tracking, titles, motion cam templates, beat-based editing, and hardware acceleration.

Magix's video editing software comes in three levels: Standard, Plus and Premium. The Standard version supports 4K content and rich effects; the Plus version increases the track limit from 32 to 99 and adds multi-channel editing, faster 4K editing, more effects, and more audio tools; and Premium adds industry-standard video software professional plug-in effects from manufacturer Red Giant. For true professionals, Magix also offers the more powerful Video Pro X software. All versions are available for a free 30-day trial, plus the Movie Edit Touch app for Windows 10 and Android extends the product's reach.

Movie Edit Pro Premium has no clear import process, just an import tab in the source panel that shows a tree structure of disk folders, without any organizational tools like tags or Project Bins. in addition, it dumps all the clips to the storyboard movie, instead of adding them to the source panel as most applications do to the source panel.

Easy Digital Movie Basic Video Editing Advanced Video Editing 360° Video Motion Tracking Fancy Movie Effects Audio Output

Magix's templates are similar to iTunes trailers, though many of them require additional costs for some effects like title animations and background music.

Magix does not allow you to edit content, or even crop or rotate it, throughout the build process. After moving a template item to the full editor for customization, you will not be able to see it in the template. All in all, this is not a flexible process.

Most of the video clips are done in the timeline, and you can fine-tune the transitions between clips, which can be performed at the beginning and end of individual clips. Although you can't get as rich options as in PowerDirector, for 3D projects it can provide 10 stereo fade functions.

The Effects panel offers text, lighting, color, chroma key, distortion, speed and lens correction (barrel and pillow adjustments), as well as motion effects such as size, position and rotation, and some presets offer really cool (or silly, depending on your personal preference) motion effects. The motion tracking feature allows you to track images, text or effects of screen objects.

The stabilization tool shows the effect of trimming in real time and gives you the option to suppress the black edges caused by the stabilization process.

Capture marks are used to remind you of important locations in your movie, but they are different from standard keyframes, which of course are supported by this program.

Movie Edit Pro is the first video editing software to support 360° content. For HEVC format content, you must purchase a separate codec from Magix.

New to the software is the ability to stitch video into 360°, for example, allowing you to shoot two or more GoPro videos at the same time. You can also adjust the perspective and fisheye/barrel distortion of the video and can export to mobile video formats supported by Facebook and Vimeo.

Despite some improvements, Magix lacks several important ways that Mighty Director offers in 360° editing: 360° titles, stabilization, motion tracking, and transitions.

The motion tracking feature allows objects to follow what moves around the screen in a video clip, and you can use overlay layers, such as text or effects. Tracking is often used to blur license plates or body parts.

Once you've followed the software prompts, there's no dialog box for you to improve the effect, and adding tracked blur overlays is much harder than the competition. The whole process isn't as smooth as it is with Clubfilm -- it even lets you do multi-point tracking.

1. Titles: With 39 title animations, you can apply simple horizontal/vertical animations to any text you add, but no 3D titles like in Apple's Final Cut Pro X.
2. Effects: The Effects panel provides an artistic filter with controls for erosion, expansion, embossing, replacement (for color), quantization, shading, and contour lines. The Distortion tool provides effects such as Swirl, Fisheye and Kaleidoscope, all of which can be combined into one unrecognizable visual effect.
3. Multi-Camera: This advanced technology requires some preparation in the Magix software and is not intuitive to use. The biggest highlights of this version are: audio-based synchronization, and up to four camera angles.
4. Time Stretch: You can stretch clips to fit the length of other tracks, or by slowing them down or speeding them up.
5. Picture-in-Picture: You can simply adjust the size and position of each track in your custom picture-in-picture, and you can also use the color correction tools for editing.
6. 3D editing: Although the third dimension has fallen out of favor, Magix still allows you to easily import 3D footage and apply 3D titles and effects.

Movie Edit Pro displays the waveform of each clip in the timeline, and a full mixer pops up when you click the icon in the upper right corner of the timeline -- it's so advanced that it lets you select noise samples, optimize speech, remove noise, and eliminate camera noise, as well as convert older media ( LPs, for example) to digital media.

In addition, it offers a nice selection of background music, as well as beat-based editing.

Movie Edit Pro offers a lot of great output options, including uploading directly to Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo from the Share menu. you can also send it to anyone via Send Anywhere.

If exported locally then it offers full disk production with menus and chapters and can export to most standard video file formats (including 4K and the latest H.265). Output options for devices have been simplified in the latest version and offer simple high and low resolution options for iOS and Android devices. Tablet options have also been brought up to date, including Microsoft Surface.

Movie Edit Pro covers almost the entire spectrum of digital movie creation, from simple template options to 4K, 360° and multimedia editing, but it's not as enjoyable as the best video editors.

Advantages

1. Many video effects
2. Good title tool
3. Movie templates that look like trailers
4. Reliable audio editing tools
5. Powerful disc creation capabilities
6. Over 100 templates

Disadvantages

1. Corresponding to the complex functionality, there is not much help documentation
2. Lack of import and organizational tools
3. For some video formats and encoding downloads, additional fees apply

6. Adobe Premiere Elements

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Automatic is the main idea behind the hobbyist video editing software - Premiere Elements, which automatically finds and saves great stills from video clips and also automatically fixes boring patches. It is an easy-to-use, powerful product that offers a lot of useful tools in order to help you make compelling movies from your video clips. However, it doesn't reach the power of PowerDirector and Concerto, nor does it support the latest video technologies, such as 360° VR content and the H.265 codec used by the new iPhones.

Some discounts will apply if purchased with Photoshop Elements. Please note that, unlike Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements is not part of the Creative Cloud-based subscription service.

For long-time users of Premiere Elements, the following is a brief overview of the new features.

1. Real Moments: This new feature extracts the best still images from your video content, so you don't have to worry about missing a great shot during recording.
2. Smart Crop: Automatically crop video footage and leave great video action. adobe uses artificial intelligence technology and facial recognition technology to improve the process.
3. Freeze frames with motion captions: guides you in creating freeze frames and adding motion captions.
4. Bounce back effect: Make a segment of the video go forward and backward repeatedly in the video.
5. Quickly fix footage shot with a sports camera: For footage shot with a sports camera, you can perform cropping, color correction, and lens distortion correction operations like a pro.
6. Make animated social blog posts: a way to post your brilliance via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
7. Easy organization: Convert hundreds of folders distributed in different locations on your computer into one intuitive view.
8. Export GIF animation: This is a great feature, yet many software don't offer it.

Basic Video Editing Wizard Mode Real Instant Auto Smart Tone Advanced Effects Title and Subtitle Audio Sharing and Output

The button bar at the bottom of the screen offers a wide range of editing tools, including color and light adjustments, transitions, titles, effects, music and graphics, and a well-running Smart Trim tool. Smart Trim identifies parts of the media that are of poor quality and can delete all of them at once.

This feature will tell you what to do and will even stop you from clicking next until a step is complete, now with 18 wizard edits.

Before you can use it, you have to select the video clip. This tool will look for bright faces in focus, and it does work pretty well. You can use the slider to create more or less shots, or you can add another by clicking on one tool at the cursor.

This is a feature shared by Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. After adjusting the image to guess the best way, the light correction displays a control panel in the center of the rectangle and four polar values in thumbnails on the four corners of the preview window that you can refine.

Premiere Element offers all the effects you can expect in the world of consumer-grade video editing. There are plenty of transitions, picture-in-picture, chroma key, zoom, transparency, and keyframe timing effects.

Six preset motion captions include Modern, Formal, Geometric, Decorative, Print, Fun, and a customization option. You get good customizability with fonts and background images, and can even change the animation type to centered and rotated, and more. There's also a cool effect: caption masks allow you to display moving video behind text captions.

Music mixing tool for any MP3 file. elements can enhance the listening effect of digital movies with scores and sound effects.

You can send the created movie to DVD, to a computer file or to the web. Animated GIF is a very good format, but you'd better keep the video as short as possible, preferably no longer than 10 seconds, and choose a low resolution.

If you like the integration of Elements Organizer and Photoshop Elements, then Adobe Premiere Elements would be a very good choice, with many guided features that provide good teaching steps on how to create compelling projects. However, it's not the most powerful audiophile video editor, and the lack of support for 360° VR content and HEVC efficient codecs puts it behind the competition.

Advantages

1. Clear and simple interface
2. Guided editing simplifies basic and advanced projects
3. Many video effects
4. Good plain text tools
5. Powerful audio editing features
6. Nice stable control

Disadvantages

1. No 3D editing
2. No multi-camera function or screen recording function
3. Slow rendering speed

7. Apple Final Cut Pro X -- professional-grade video editing software for Mac

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For consumers who want more features than iMovie, and for professionals who create content for film and television, Apple's professional and consumer-grade video editing software -- Final Cut Pro X -- shows a good relationship between them. While professionals may complain about its unconventional magnetic timeline and amateurs may be impressed by its wealth of complex options, it proves to be a magnificent tool for both.

The timeline change knocked back many professionals, and Apple did so to take advantage of the more powerful hardware in the new Mac computers, as well as the redesigned video editing process, and the result is a surprisingly powerful and (once you get the hang of it) easy-to-use application.

Despite rumors that the professional video editing world is shifting from Final Cut Pro X to Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut still has more than 2 million users and is more popular than ever, with some of the top editors using the new Final Cut.

The software interface takes on a consistent dark gray color, making what is being edited the most visible thing on the screen. final Cut Pro X's timeline is similar to iMovie with a freeform, non-magnetic timeline view, and the professional program has more powerful editing capabilities. Another exclusive concept is that clips are categorized into roles, which define what the clip is used for -- it can be video, subtitles, dialogue, music, and effects.

360° Video Timeline Effect Color MacBoo Pro Touch Bar Subtitle Chroma Key Audio Multi-Camera Export

It's not just a gesture, Apple's support for 360° VR video is so deep that they've crafted all the editing tools needed, including true 360° captions, support for VR headsets, various effects, and 360° patches.

You can use effects like blurring, brightening and sharpening on 360° content, and if you already have Apple Motion, then you can create even more custom 3D, 360° captions and animations that

Final Cut Pro X provides precise, intuitive, and powerful tools to help you create. Editing and slicing can be done in the timeline or in the iMovie style bar on the right.

One of its main features is composite clips, which allows you to combine clips, audio and effects in order to move them as a single unit and all content will remain in sync.

Another innovative feature that saves time is the audition, when you add a new clip to your timeline, you can choose to use it as an audition version. The software will open the viewer/selector with a rich set of audition options added for you.

For video enthusiasts on the Mac platform, Final Cut used to be a daunting upgrade from iMovie, and Final Cut Pro X changes all that, making the learning curve much smoother. For most professional users, the benefits of Final Cut Pro X should outweigh the hurdles it presents, offering a plethora of tools, ease of use and robust performance.

With support for 360° VR and a wider range of color spaces, Final Cut Pro X is ready for the future. Its smooth, highly usable, precise interface makes it the best choice for high-end video editing software on the Mac platform.

Advantages

1. Magnetic, trackless timeline
2. Excellent organizational tools, including libraries, ratings, tags, faces, automatic analysis of scenes
3. Support 360° lens and HDR
4. Very fast performance
5. MacBook Touch Bar Support

Disadvantages

1. Due to the use of a non-traditional timeline, the editor may take longer to close
2. If there is no third-party plug-in, it is not possible to import older versions of the project
3. 360° video without stabilization or motion tracking

8. Apple iMovie -- entry-level video editing software for Mac

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The video editing software included in Mac computers hasn't changed much over the past few years, but it's still ahead of the Windows operating system, as Microsoft has stopped developing Movie Maker for its own desktop operating system. now Apple iMovie has added support for 4K video, as well as more sharing options. Plus, it retains some of the best storyboard movie-making tools -- trailers and movies -- as well as excellent green screen and soundtrack features.

You don't get all the timeline, multicam, freeze frame, picture-in-picture, and motion tracking options that are available with consumer-grade video editing software for the PC, such as Concerto and PowerDirector, but iMovie is a great choice for those who just need a simple way to put a few video clips and still images into a watchable movie. It's especially good for iPhone videographers who want to engage their audience from clips and footage.

It's a free video editing software that you can find in the Mac App Store. iMovie has a very simple interface that shows you just the tools you need without laying out all the available tools to clutter up the screen. You can easily import any GoPro, phone, or even 4K video content, and you can also import iMovie projects that have been started in iOS and finish them on your desktop computer.

Video editing special effects subtitle audio sharing

Dragging inserted clips in the timeline is simple, and they are automatically pasted before and after adjacent clips. This action also automatically creates connecting lines that effectively hold the entire media together when moving one of the clips. In addition, you can crop or rotate videos and photos, the latter automatically getting Ken Burns panning and scaling effects for a more eye-catching, rather than just static, image.

The iOS version of iMovie includes almost everything from the desktop version, albeit in a smaller, more touch-friendly, screen-optimized format.

If you are a video lover in the Apple ecosystem, then using iMovie will be an easy task. With its beautiful interface and powerful tools, iMovie has become the top choice for entry-level video editing software.

Advantages

1. Beautiful and simple interface
2. Color matching for a consistent movie look
3. Elegant theme
4. Powerful chroma key tools
5. Many audio tools
6. Theater feature to share movies to all Apple devices

Disadvantages

1. Not as flexible as some PC video editors
2. Missing some useful controls
3. Tagging is not supported
4. Lack of multi-camera and motion tracking features
5. Limited to two video tracks only

Summary

Video editing is one of the most intensive operations, so if you are seriously considering editing tasks, you probably need one of the best laptops or desktops available. Most applications help speed up the editing process by creating lower resolution proxy files so that normal editing and previewing is not slowed down by huge full resolution files. When you create a standard video file of the finished product, the computer will be carrying a full load and the file can be played on the target device of choice, such as a laptop, smartphone, HDTV, etc. In addition, most software can take advantage of your computer's graphics processor to speed up processing, so a better graphics card will make the editing process much smoother.

While Mac users do not have as rich a selection as Windows, Apple fans interested in editing video are particularly favored by four products.

1. Entry-level iMovie
   Although it only offers two video tracks, it excels at chroma keying and the drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to create beautiful Hollywood-style productions.
2. Midrange Adobe Premiere Elements
   This is a cross-platform software for Mac and PC and offers more features to create richer effects.
3. High-end Final Cut Pro X for Mac
   It has a similar interface and ease of use to iMovie, but offers a great deal of depth of functionality, as well as the ability to integrate with third-party applications for even greater functionality.
4. Cross-platform, high-end Adobe Premiere Pro
   Uses a more traditional timeline and adds a host of companion applications and plug-ins, while also excelling at collaboration features.

Sony's product uses a very confusing interface more akin to early high-end professional video editing software. the VSDC interface is rather outdated and makes common tasks difficult. That's why they don't appear here.

Ultimately it will depend on your budget, the equipment you use, and your level of expertise. Fortunately, you can feel free to choose from the available products we have described above.