The video edition It is a sector that sounds like something very professional and that requires a lot of knowledge. Although to earn a living with it, it is necessary to have knowledge and master some professional tool for this purpose, the reality is that people with intermediate knowledge of computers can enter and start learning. However, self-learning is likely to be difficult, especially if you start with a solution that doesn’t match your user skills.
On the other hand, the most essential parts of video editing tend to be similar among all editors, so, once certain fundamentals have been acquired, the user can experiment until they find the one that best suits their workflow and the results you intend to obtain. Here it is important to keep in mind that the most professional solution does not have to be the one that best suits the content that is intended to be created, since it is possible that the professional solution ends up providing a large number of options and possibilities that do not go away. never to use
Are you interested in video editing or becoming youtuber? In addition to some additional tools and tips we posted a few months ago, we’re going to mention five free video editors and one additional youtube video intro maker tool that can help you get into this exciting industry.
kdenlive
One of the best-known video editors among those people who are dedicated to non-professional video editing (although there are people who use it professionally). kdenlive It is part of KDE, the project behind the well-known Linux desktop, although it also has versions for macOS and Windows. As it could not be otherwise, seeing its origin, it is free software, so its source code can be freely audited and anyone with the necessary knowledge can contribute to its development.
kdenlive is a video editor quite powerful and with many possibilities. Because it inherits the philosophy of KDE, it is highly customizable, which works in its favor in this sense because the user, with patience, can learn to use it just by carrying out the typical process of trial and error. In its day we dedicated an extensive introductory guide to it, because teaching to master an application of these characteristics for real use would require creating a complete encyclopedia.
DaVinci Resolve
And now we jump to the professional sector with one of the best-known editors in this segment: DaVinci Resolve. For many it is the great rival of Adobe Premiere and it has the advantage that it can be used for free, although with certain limitations. It is the most powerful application of all that we are going to mention in this list.
DaVinci Resolve has an intuitive interface and stands out for having features such as a powerful color corrector, customization at the audio level, multi-camera editing, and the ability to add 2D and 3D titles. It has more than proven its worth in professional production environmentswhere he has quite a few followers.
However, it has one major drawback apart from the limitations of the free version, which may not be an issue for non-professional users, and that is the fact that not all tutorials to learn how to use it are free. It has versions for Windows, macOS and Linuxalthough for the latter system the user may be limited in terms of the drivers and distributions that can be used.
Shotcut
And we return to the path of video editors published as free software with Shotcut. This app has professional aspirations and stands out for its powerful cross-platform support, fairly consistent between Windows, macOS, and with official builds in all three major Linux universal package formats: Flatpak, AppImage, and Snap.
Among the characteristics that it promotes, the 4K support, a resolution supported by many great creators today, but at the moment of truth it is not such an important aspect, seeing that most of YouTube is consumed from mobile phones. there are also their possibilities when dealing with timelines and does not require importing the videos to the editorwhich can help save time depending on the project.
Because its interface was designed with Linux in mind, it can look a bit strange on Windows and macOS, but that’s not to say it won’t work perfectly on the two big proprietary desktop systems. Its development is quite active and as the versions go by, the number of multimedia file formats it supports increases.
Avidemux
And now we lower the bar in terms of the knowledge required, although without leaving the nature of free and multiplatform software with versions for Windows, Linux and macOS. Avidemux It stands out from the other options mentioned in this post due to its ease of use, since it is a fairly simple application. This can play in your favor for people who are looking for something very basic and against those who prefer to have more possibilities.
Avidemux supports simple clip trimming, encoding and filtering. Its simple interface makes it very attractive for newbies and those who just want to do little more than convert formats or apply some simple modification. Of course, its development may be somewhat stagnant, because not all free software projects have the necessary resources to keep up constantly.
openshot
openshot is a video editor that competes with others like Kdenlive and Shotcut because it tries to offer a relatively high amount of possibilities, it is published as free software and it has builds for Windows, Linux and macOS. However, for some it has lost its way against its rivals, especially in terms of stability and speed in its development.
Among its possibilities are unlimited tracks, audio mixer, real-time previews when creating transitions between clips, and support for dragging and dropping elements. The intention of the developers with OpenShot is to offer a balance between a user-friendly interface and making advanced options availableso it can be a good starting point to get started in video editing.
The user can do things like scale clips, resize clips, rotate, cut video transitions with real-time previews, compositing, image overlays, and watermarks.
HandBrake?
Sometimes what you want to do is not an edition, but a simple format conversion. there it comes in handbrakea powerful media converter released as free software and with builds for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
HandBrake is a development with two decades of history and is one of the most widely used tools in its segment, although its development may be somewhat slow by current standards. As we have already said, it is not an editor, but a converter dedicated to converting multimedia files from one format to another, mainly video. In addition, it supports NVENC for hardware rendering using an NVIDIA graphics card.
This tool can be very useful to reduce a video and make it more “digestible” for YouTube or for its direct embedding in a web page, since the data available for mobile Internet connections is limited.
Conclution
As we can see, it is not necessary to spend money to start video editing, and the fact that these solutions are purely free allows the user to learn at their own pace and without pressure. However, if you have started to earn money by making videos with some of the mentioned applications, it never hurts to donate something to contribute to their development and maintenance if you do not have programming knowledge (if the project accepts donations).
Cover image: Pixabay
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