Video and image editing is a complex process requiring time, patience, and specialized software. If you don’t know what you’re doing, your final products can look amateurish, which is never the intention of most content creators. Using the wrong tool can result in wasted time that could have been spent creating top-quality videos.
1. Adobe Premiere
One of the most patronized products from Adobe.com is Adobe Premiere. It is a powerful video editor perfect for professional video editing and home movie making. It has all the features you need to design, edit and deliver high-quality videos in various formats for web, broadcast, and cinematic release. Premiere also supports multiple formats, including 1080p HD video output, 4K resolution, and more.
Adobe Premiere is one of the most popular video editors because it provides a wide range of features while remaining relatively easy to use. You can start a project using pre-loaded templates or create custom ones from scratch. You can add graphics, music, titles, and more to your project using Adobe Premiere’s extensive effects library and filters. A timeline makes it easy to see how your project plays out visually so you can make adjustments as needed before exporting it as an MP4 or AVI file.
Key features of Adobe Premiere
- Timeline: This is the main editing window where all your clips appear on a timeline that you can manipulate to adjust where they start and end.
- Hover Scrub: This feature enables you to scrub through your footage without having to touch the keyboard or mouse. Just hover over your footage with your mouse cursor and watch it playback on its own.
- Multiple Video Tracks: Multitrack editing allows you to place various video and audio tracks into one project for more complex edits.
- Keyframes: Keyframes are points along a clip where you can set an effect like zoom or pull focus without manually adjusting each video frame after it has been edited together in your project timeline.
2. Lightworks
Lightworks is a free, open-source video editing tool that’s been around since 1994. It’s cross-platform, which means it works on Windows and Linux as well as Mac OS X.
Lightworks offers many of the same features as other professional video editors. You can split clips, trim them down, add audio tracks and even apply effects in real-time while editing.
Lightworks is a video editing software that has been around for years. It has a very powerful toolset and is used by many professionals in the industry. Lightworks is available for both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.
Key features of Lightworks
- Support for multiple codecs and formats: Lightworks supports the most common video formats, including DV, HDV, AVCHD, M2TS files, etc. In addition to this, it also supports all popular audio formats, including OGG, MP3, WAV, etc.
- Advanced video editing tools: Lightworks provides plenty of advanced tools that can be used to edit videos effectively, including chromakey effects, 3D transitions, filters, etc.
- Professional audio editing tools: The audio editor of Lightworks includes support for multi-track audio recordings, which can be easily edited individually within the program.
- Export options: You can export your edited video directly from Lightworks as an AVI or other format file or burn it onto DVD if required.
3. Hitfilm Express
HitFilm Express is a powerful video editor with all the features you need to turn your raw footage into a Hollywood-quality movie. The software supports 4K video processing and rendering, which makes it one of the best choices for people who work with ultra-high resolution videos. You can also add 3D effects, special effects, transitions, and filters to your footage, which allows you to create professional-looking films.
HitFilm Express also includes a variety of visual effects that allow you to enhance your videos through text overlays and animated graphics. Some include titles and lower thirds, while others will enable you to add drop shadows or other visual elements over top of your footage. The app lets you use multiple layers at once, creating complex compositions or adding various elements onto a single layer without losing quality from its source material.
Key features of Hitfilm Express
- Animated titles and credits: This feature allows you to create animated titles and recognition for your videos.
- Customizable motion graphics: You can customize motion graphics by adding animation effects such as shadows, reflections, glows, etc.
- Video stabilization: This feature helps stabilize shaky videos by removing unwanted vibrations.
4. DaVinci Resolve
It is professional-grade editing software that offers a wide range of features, tools, and effects for the editor to play around with. One of the main reasons why many editors use DaVinci Resolve is its editing capabilities. It can handle any footage, whether a DSLR, GoPro, or any other type of camera.
The software has a fantastic color correction tool that allows editors to do color grading in real-time as they edit their projects. This makes it easier for them to get the perfect look they want on their videos without waiting until they finish editing them before they can start working on the color grading part of the project.
Another reason why DaVinci Resolve is becoming so popular among editors is because of its powerful audio editing tools. An editor can use several audio effects. At the same time, they edit their projects, such as noise reduction, equalization, and others, which help them get rid of unwanted sounds from their audio track, which otherwise could have been very distracting during playback time.
Key features of DaVinci Resolve
- Professional editing tools: The app comes with a wide range of professional editing tools like color correction and grading tools.
- Color correction: You can adjust exposure levels, color balance, contrast, and saturation levels using the color correction tool in DaVinci Resolve.
- Color grading: The app also lets you create cinematic looks using LUTs (lookup tables), essentially pre-set filters that give your footage a specific look and feel. You can adjust these LUTs to tweak their intensity or change the overall look of your footage.
5. OpenShot
OpenShot is a good tool for video editing because it’s very easy to use. There are some advanced features, but overall it’s very simple and straightforward. It doesn’t have the steep learning curve that many other video editors do. The interface is clean and precise, and you can jump right in without spending hours reading tutorials or experimenting with settings.
OpenShot is a free, open-source video editor that makes creating and editing videos easy. It supports various formats, including MP4, MKV, VOB, FLV, and many more.
It features a simple interface that’s easy to navigate, with tools for adding images, text, and audio tracks to your video. It also has a comprehensive list of key features:
Key features of OpenShot
- Video Import: OpenShot supports a wide variety of video formats, including MP4, MKV, VOB, FLV, and many more.
- Video Export: You can export your finished movie as an MP4 file or export individual video clips as PNG files.
- Audio Editing: OpenShot supports multiple audio tracks, so you can add music or narration to your videos in real-time while editing.
- Transitions: Use transitions between clips to create exciting effects like wipes or fades when transitioning from one shot to another.
At this point, a video editing tool is nearly inescapable for anyone trying to make content for the web. A video editor will make your job much easier and faster, even if you’re doing simple animations.
Of course, there are plenty of options to choose from, which makes it all the more important to do your research. Hopefully, our video editing tool guide has helped you narrow down your options and find something that will work well for you—and your project.
