I use quite a bit of free software to replace useless or inadequate stuff Windows does. We use Recuva to snaffle pictures from old SD cards and Audacity and GIMP (not an actual gimp) for audio work and picture editing as well as a bought life subscription to Goldwave (they're Canadian, its cheap). So would like to think they would have a nice free video botherer for YTP and the like something to rival Vegas for ease of use and integration. What I've found is far, far worse.
Lightworks
| This could easily be from some cartoon tie in on the GBA |
This is probably the best of the bunch as its remotely accessible to any newbies but still does things weirdly. Overall it looks like it should be an old XP program from 2005 such is its design, you import stuff from a folder and arrange things in bins and then click on a bank of panels at the side to create you own timeline. Even installing you'll need to register even for a free version, and the upshot is this unless you have a Vimeo or Youtube account you can't export it to popular formats such as WMV or AVI. Its a bastard headache to use and the shark logo kept reminding me of an old GBA game.
It does have a great video tutorial that is narrated by a Brooklyn gangster. Also if you are running linux, then versions are available for that as well, they'll still be opaque and obtuse though.
Blender.
Strictly speaking not a video editor as its a 3D renderer with some video editing added in, its on a par with Lightworks for complexity though, relying on drop down menus for everything. You'll see when you start it up, you'll need to use a drop down menu to even reach the editor and then faff around with a few more menus to add a video clip, which needs a few unexplained keyboard short cuts to cut. If you put in the hours you'll be able to do some great things with this, I am sure of this, its just like hitting a brick wall at 400mph and expecting to survive.
One really good thing is that it has the best tutorial videos ever with it, a seminar going through main functions and stuff split into a variety of videos. On the strength of these vids, I've not uninstalled Blender yet, that's how good they are. If they simplified the video interface or split it off into a standalone product it would be genius.
Tencoder.
This isn't really an editor as such but a video converter and a decentish Youtube downloader.
Its junk free unlike Freemake and you can update it painlessly in App to the current version. Its not that hard to do just choose your output files from the drop down menu and it'll convert it. A few caveats though some stuff will not get downloaded from Youtube, I've used this for a while now and it won't grab everything especially vevo stuff.
You can use Keepvid or another site to download them for keeps, or if you want a program to do it then AVC Ultimate is pretty good, just keep ignoring the register nag box and it should download with no worries.
Honourable mentions go to WinFF which I've used in the past and Handbrake which I've never gotten on with.
Adobe Premiere CS2.
I haven't even tested this yet on PC, and its really old now so not sure if it'll work on Win 10 but this part of the discontinued Adobe creative suite. Reading up on the comments, I see there are some formats it doesn't load but you can use Tencoder to switch them into something it recognises.
I've used and disliked Audition and a Legit version of Photoshop which I had to crack on an old PC to make it work. I may actually download this if all else fails and use it on my old desktop (CS188 poops were done in Premiere and after effects) so I know its a good pedigree.
Shotcut.
I haven't talked about Windows Movie Maker here which isn't available for Windows 10, it doesn't matter as this is the nearest equivalent out there. It didn't run in Vista when I tried but when I opened it in Win 10 bingo it loaded. It feels like movie maker although its a bit of a bastard about cutting stuff saying I should install Virtual Dub to do this which only imports AVI files.
I like WMV as a video format and this was a deal breaker for me, if they add a way to cut and past in shotcut then I'm sold as Movie maker is a terrible program. I may give it a second chance if its rectified in the future but so far then its a no from me.
Conclusion. They are either complex or missing features and stuff if you can live with this then good luck, blender seems the most capable but I would say learn 3D stuff rather then video editing.
Also Blackmagic Davinci, looks great but needs more HD space and RAM than God to get working, so its an automatic no from me.
