Statista survey revealed that 81 percent of global marketing leaders used pre-produced videos as a digital consumer engagement strategy and another 13 percent stated they were planning to do so. Whether you want to produce high-quality content for business, academic, or entertainment purposes, the critical first step is to start with good video editing software for beginners.
1. OpenShot
OpenShot has an easy-to-use interface, making it a great tool for beginners. It doesn’t have a wide array of editing features, but it’s a solid option for beginners to use for basic editing. OpenShot helps resize, trim, scale, snap and rotate videos.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Several video effects like brightness, gamma, greyscale, hue, and green-screen
- Unlimited layers for adding audio tracks, background videos, and watermarks
- Customizable title cards
- Keyframe animation capabilities
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, and Linux
2. Movavi Video Editor Plus
Movavi is an excellent video editing software for beginners. It includes drag-and-drop controls, audio editing, transitions, and filters, and you can export to popular video formats or share directly from the software. Movavi allows users to cut and splice videos, create customized titles, and sync sound to images.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Built-in intros, videos, backgrounds, music, sounds
- Filters, transitions, and titles
- Keyframe animation of tags, overlay video, stickers, and more
Compatibility: Windows, Mac
3. Power Director
PowerDirector is a feature-packed, award-winning, easy-to-use video editing software. It’s PC Mag Editor’s Choice for 2022 and Tech Radar’s Top 2 Video Editing Software of 2022. In terms of consumer-friendliness, professional editing features, and compatibility with new technologies and formats, PowerDirector is our program of choice.
Key Features:
- Title templates
- Pop-up designers to help make video creation easier
- Chroma key for simple green-screen effects
- Share directly to social media
Compatibility: Windows, Mac
4. Lightworks
Lightworks is one of the best YouTube video editing software for beginners. Its free version offers everything you need to create high-quality videos.
Lightworkds has a simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface and consists of video tutorials to help beginners create amazing fantastic videos right from the start.
Key Features:
- Supports a wide range of video formats
- Speed optimization
- High-quality trim functions
- Multicam editing
- Easy sharing of videos to various platforms, including YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Instagram
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, Linux
5. Adobe Premiere
Adobe Premiere Pro is preferred by most video professionals, but it also has a user-friendly interface making it the perfect choice for beginners. You can edit videos for the color grade, adjust video sound, and import graphics and special effects from other Adobe apps.
Key Features:
- Import footage from any file format
- Trim footage with precision
- Add animation and video effects
- Manage your audio editing and sound effects
- Adjust colors and white balance
Compatibility: Windows, Mac
6. Movie Maker 10
Movie Maker 10 is an amazing video editing software for beginners or individuals who need a straightforward tool to make quick edits to short videos. It offers essential functions like video joining, adding background music, text caption, and more advanced features like image filters, transition effects, and pan-tilt-zoom effects.
Key Features:
- Make movies from video clips and photos
- Trim, rotate and connect video snippets
- Add and edit background music
- Supports most common media formats
- Add text captions, emoticon, and sound clips on video clips
Compatibility: Windows
7. Lumen5
Lumen5 is an excellent option for beginners looking for simple video editing software. Lumen5 can turn text into a video with the help of AI. Try it today. Copy (cut) and paste your text into Lumen5 and let the software build your video for you!
Key Features:
- AI to create videos fast and easy
- Free media files via a searchable library
- Customize your videos to complement your brand's personality
- Optimize each video to improve performance and conversion rates
Compatibility: Online
8. Blender
Blender is a free, open-source 3D animation platform with useful features. It also features video masking, cuts and splicing, color grading, and more.
Key Features:
- Audio mixing, syncing, and waveform visualization capability
- Maximum of 32 slots for adding video, images, audio, scenes, masks, and other video effects
- Speed control and adjustment layers, transitions, keyframes, filters, and more
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, Linux
9. Shotcut
Shotcut is also an open-source video editing software for newbies. It features several tutorials to help you get started. The tool supports a wide range audio editing options, video effects, video editing features, etc.
Key Features:
- Supports the latest audio and video formats
- No import is needed, thanks to native timeline editing
- Multi-format timeline to mix and match resolutions within a project
- Advanced audio filters
Compatibility: Windows, Mac, Linux
10. iMovie
Mac users probably know iMovie. This app has a simple, drag-and-drop interface and reliable video editing tools that make adding titles, music, and effects easier. Also, there are dozens of styles, animated titles, credits, and a collection of special effects, filters, and sounds available in the app.
Key Features:
- Supports 4K resolution
- Cloud-storage available
- Dozens of studio-quality title animations
- Stylish, contemporary video filters
- Built-in music, sound effects, and voiceover recording
- Speed controls
Compatibility: Mac
What to Look for in a Good Video Editing Software
A good editor allows you to edit, modify, or manipulate your video files to make your storytelling fun and engaging. But if you are unfamiliar with making videos, the journey of finding the right editing program may seem complicated.
Below are the things you need to look into when choosing among the top video editing software for beginners:
Basic Features: Provides all the essential features you need.
Compatibility: Supports your recording device and operating system.
Support: Learning materials are available to guide you.
Affordability: Its price tag should fit your budget.
Easy-to-use: The software should be easy to use. This addresses the learning curve when you first encounter video editing software.
Conclusion
There you have it! The top 10 video edit software for beginners that are popular today. Many of these software offer free trials, so you can try them out and determine the tool that works best for you. It is best to weigh the pros and cons so that you’ll be able to choose the best that matches your video editing needs. Whenever you have doubts, go back to the attributes you should look for in a video editor listed above.
