Macs and video editing have long been up a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Professionals were editing in Avid back in the late 1980s, and iMovie debuted in 1999 alongside the FireWire-enabled iMac DV. Today’s Macs are much more powerful than their ancestors, and that means even free apps are capable of doing some amazing things with video. It’s surprising how much you can do without spending any money: in some cases the only difference between free apps and their extremely expensive siblings is a handful of features only pro editors will need. That’s a smart business strategy; the tinkerers of today could be the pros of tomorrow.

There’s one video editor we’re disappointed not to include: (VLMC). It's based on the VLC video editor – one of our must-have apps – but it’s still in alpha, which means it’s not reliable enough or finished enough for prime time just yet. Free editors don’t get better than this.

Lightworks puts professional video editing tools within the reach of all Mac owners, regardless of budget might look a bit frightening if you’re not used to high-end editors. And that’s about the only negative thing we can say about it, because Lightworks is one of the most powerful free video editors you can download. The same technology that’s been used in proper films like Pulp Fiction and 28 Days Later is completely free for home use. Lightworks can be as light or as complex as you want: it’s as happy trimming a single clip to size as it is adding real-time effects, correcting colours or adding voiceovers. It’ll happily output in a format and resolution suitable for YouTube and Vimeo, but the highest quality options – 4K, 3D, Blu-Ray – and massive list of supported file formats are only for paying customers.

TechRadar readers can get 40% off a monthly license using the voucher code TECHRADARLWPROMONTH2017. Apple’s own movie app is easy to master and ideal for simple video editing Apple's own video editor used to be free with new Macs and chargeable for everybody else, but these days it’s completely free for anyone who wants it (provided they have OS X 10.11.2 or later). It’s fairly simple to learn and packs a lot of useful features including audio editing and colour correction, and since last year it’s supported 4K video too. Don’t expect blisteringly fast 4K performance on a low-end Mac though, as it’s very demanding. IMovie isn't Final Cut Pro and it doesn’t pretend to be: it’s designed for home and small business users who want to make or edit videos and who don’t need complex, expensive apps, and it’s great for beginners. Another professional video editor that's free to install on your Mac Here’s another app you’ll find in professional toolkits. Is a US$299 (£299, AU$499) app designed for post-production and packed with tools for adjusting, editing and correcting both audio and video.

The free version, is almost identical, with some limits you probably won’t notice. Its 4K tops out at UHD 3,840 x 2,160, whereas the paid product goes up to 4,096 x 2,160.

Filters for film grain, lens flare and lens blur aren’t available to free users without watermarking; you don’t get the extensive collaboration and workflow tools of the Studio version, and the really complex audio and video filtering is greyed out. That sounds like a lot of omissions, but it really isn’t. DaVinci Resolve delivers a serious set of pro tools for free. Perform quick edits and take total control over video and audio encoding is a handy app for simple editing tasks, so if you’re looking for something you can use to make quick edits and cuts this may well be the free video editor for you. Unlike most video editors for Macs, there’s no timeline with multiple tracks to cut between and you don’t get any flashy wipes or transitions. What you do get is an exceptionally quick way to trim footage and rearrange sections.

Avidemux also includes practical filters for removing noise and other irritants. Guzzidiag info for mac download. Its most useful feature is its superb exporter, which gives you total control over the video and audio encoding rather than just asking you to pick a file format. The audio options are particularly good. Surprisingly powerful without being a pain to learn is an interesting alternative to better known video editing apps, and while it takes a bit of setting up (for example, to use animated titles you’ll need to install the free app too) it’s surprisingly powerful. OpenShot offers transitions with real-time previews, timeline-based editing, 3D titles and special effects, audio mixing and editing, and a range of visual effects including color correction and chroma key compositing.

As is often the case with open source software, the interface isn't as slick as commercial alternatives, but don’t let that put you off. OpenShot is an excellent free video editor for macOS, and it’s really easy to get to grips with.

Brilliant for beginners, but also powerful enough for more advanced users Some video apps put every single feature on screen at once, which is enough to make even experienced users feel a bit lost. Not – its interface stays out of the way, bringing up what you need when you need it without filling the screen with things you don’t want. Shotcut covers all the essentials, but our favourite feature is its filtering. There are stacks of audio and video filters that you can layer to create interesting effects.

There’s no preview before you apply your filter, but it’s non-destructive editing so you can easily roll back if it doesn’t do what you hoped. There are lots of export options, and while there aren’t presets for specific devices (something that’s handy if you’re making movies for mobile) it’s easy to fine tune settings and codecs.

Much more than just rendering – Blender is also a capable free video editor We know what you’re thinking:? Isn’t that a 3D rendering app? Yes, it is, but it’s also a really good free video editor too. It cuts, splices and masks, mixes audio and has up to 32 slots for adding items, masks and effects. There’s a good selection of file formats, with AVI, MPEG and QuickTime as well as the various 3D file formats. The interface can be as simple or as complex as you like, and because the app is in constant development it’s constantly getting better and better. Blender might be overkill for basic home movies, but if you’re keen to learn new things it’s a fantastic tool for doing so.

Michael Muchmore The Best Video Editing Software of 2018 Whether you're a weekend GoPro shooter or a full-time video professional, you need editing software that's powerful but easy to use. Here's how the best video editing software stacks up. Edit Video on Your PC Nothing makes an impression like moving images with sound. That's why digital video continues to grow in importance online. Couple that trend with the ever-increasing availability of devices capable of high-resolution video recording—smartphones, GoPros, DSLRs—and the case for ever more powerful video editing software becomes clear. Further, the software must be usable by nonprofessionals, and it has to keep up with new formats such as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), 360-degree VR video, and 4K and above. Increasingly, new capabilities trickle down from professional-level software to the consumer category.

That's a good thing for nonprofessional movie editors, since the more-consumer-oriented software makes formerly difficult procedures a cinch for them. Read on for a survey of the latest trends in video editing software and our top picks in the field. Multicam, Motion Tracking, and Yet More Motion Advanced abilities continue to make their way into accessible, affordable, and consumer-friendly video editing software as each new generation of software is released. For example, multicam editing, which lets you switch among camera angles of the same scene shot with multiple video cameras, used to be a feature relegated to pro-level software. Now this and many other advanced effects are available in programs designed for use by nonprofessional enthusiasts. Another impressive effect that has made its way into consumer-level video editing software is motion tracking, which lets you attach an object or effect to something moving in your video. You might use it to put a blur over the face of someone you don't want to show up in your video.

You specify the target face, and the app takes care of the rest, tracking the face and moving the effect to follow it. This used to be the sole province of special effects software such as Adobe After Effects. Corel VideoStudio was the first of the consumer products to include motion tracking, and it still leads the pack in the depth and usability of its motion-tracking tool, though several others now include the capability. The 4K Factor Support for 4K video source content has become pretty standard in video editing software, but the support varies among the products. For example, some but not all of the applications can import Sony XAVC and XAVC-S formats, which are used by Sony's popular DSLRs, camcorders, and professional video cameras. The same holds true for the H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.

Most of the applications here now can import and export HEVC, though there are still a few holdouts. 360-Degree VR Support. Several of the products here (Adobe Premiere Elements is a notable exception) still support 3D video editing if that's your thing, though the this has been replaced by 360-degree VR footage like that shot by the as the current home-theater fad. As is often the case, our Editors' Choice, CyberLink PowerDirector was the first product in this group to offer support for this new kind of video media. Other programs have jumped on board with 360 VR support, including Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro X, and Magix Movie Edit Pro. Support varies, with some apps including 360-compatible titles, stabilization, and motion tracking.

PowerDirector is notable for including those last two. Final Cut offers a useful tool that removes the camera and tripod from the image, often an issue with 360-degree footage.

Free Video Editing Software For Mac

Video Editing 101 Of course, none of the extras matter if an app can't do the most basic editing tasks. At this point, however, all of the products included here do a good job of letting you join, trim, and split video clips.

They also let you make use of special effects such as animated transitions, picture-in-picture (PiP), chroma-key (the technique that lets you place a subject against any background, often known as green screening), and filters that enhance colors or apply creative effects and distortions. With most of them you can add a multitude of timeline tracks that can accommodate video clips, effects, audio, and text overlays. LUTs and CLUTs One of the capabilities that has been making its way into consumer-level video editing software is support for LUTs (lookup tables), also known as CLUTs (color lookup tables). This staple of pro-level software lets you quickly change the look of a video to give it a specific mood. For example, think of the dark blue look of thriller movies like The Revenant. You can download LUTs for free from several sites or use those included with some video software to give your video a specific look.

One well-known LUT type is the kind that can make a daytime scene look like it was shot at night. Where the Action Is Many video editing apps now include tools that cater to users of such as the GoPro Hero7 Black. For example, several offer automated freeze-frame along with speedup, slowdown, and reverse time effects. CyberLink PowerDirector's Action Camera Center pulls together freeze frame with stabilization, slo-mo, and fish-eye correction, and color correction for underwater footage. Magix Movie Edit Pro Premium includes the third-party NewBlue ActionCam Package of effects. And Wondershare Filmora lets you subscribe to new effect packs on an ongoing basis.

Titles That Zing. I've been seeing a lot of attention paid to creating title effects in the applications over the past year. Apple Final Cut Pro X has added 3D title creation, which is pretty spiffy, letting you extrude 2D titles and rotate them on three axes.

Corel VideoStudio in its latest version also adds 3D Titling, though not as powerful as Apple's. PowerDirector's Title Designer offers transparency, gradient color, border, blur level, and reflection in titles; Magix has impressive title templates, complete with animations. Premiere Elements offers a nifty title effect in which your video fills the text characters.

Look for an application that lets you edit titles in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) mode, so that you can type, format, and time it right over the video preview. Gathering Speed Video editing is one of the most computing-intensive activities around, so you'll want the or desktop you can afford if you're serious about cutting your own movies. Most applications help speed up the editing process by creating a proxy file of lower resolution, so that normal editing and previewing aren't slowed down by the huge full-resolution files. Particularly intensive is the process of rendering your finished product into a standard video file that will by playable on the target device of choice, be that an HDTV, a laptop, or a smartphone.

Most of the software can take advantage of your computer's graphics processor to speed this up. Be sure to check the performance section in each review linked here to see how speedy or slow the application is. In rendering speed testing, CyberLink and Pinnacle have been my perennial champs. Other measures of performance include startup time and simple stability.

Again, video editing is a taxing activity for any computer, involving many components. In the past, video editing programs took longer than most other apps to start up, and unexpected shutdowns were unfortunately common, even in top apps from top developers such as Adobe and Apple. The stability situation has greatly improved, but the complexity of the process, which increases as more powerful effects are added, means crashes will likely never be fully eliminated, and they often raise their ugly heads after a program update, as I found with the latest version of Pinnacle Studio. Free Video Editing Software If you don't want to invest a lot of money and effort into your video editing exploits, there are a few free options. Of course, if you use a Mac, the excellent iMovie comes with it. For PC users, 's Photos app (as of the Fall Creators Update) lets you join, trim, and even add background music, 3D animated effects, and titles to video. There are also some free video apps on the Windows Store, including, PowerDirector Mobile, Movie Maker, and Magix Movie Edit Touch.

Some of these are quite basic, but the Magix app is fairly capable, with clip joining, transitions, and effects, in a very touch-friendly interface. Free video editing software often comes with legal and technical limitations, however.

Some widely used codecs require licensing fees on the part of the software maker, meaning they can't offer free software that can handle these standard file formats. That said, the impressive open-source does a lot of the same things that the paid applications in this roundup do, including things like chroma-keying and picture-in-picture.

Shotcut is completely open-source and free, while another free option, Lightworks has paid options that remove a 720p output resolution limit. Note also that both Shotcut and Lightworks run on Linux as well as Windows and Mac. What About Apple? Though Mac users don't have the sheer number of software choices available for PCs, Apple fans interested in editing video are well served, by four products in particular.

At the entry level, the surprisingly capable and enjoyable-to-use iMovie comes free with every Mac sold since at least 2011. IMovie only offers two video tracks, but does good job with chroma-keying, and its Trailers feature makes it easy to produce slick, Hollywood-style productions. In the midrange, there's Adobe Premiere Elements, which is cross-platform between Macs and PCs, and offers a lot more features and lots of help with creating effects. Professionals and prosumers have powerful, though pricey options in. Final Cut is a deceptively simple application that resembles iMovie in its interface and ease of use, but it offers massively deep capabilities, and many third-party apps integrate with it for even more power. It also makes excellent use of the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, as shown in photo above.

Premiere Pro uses a more traditional timeline and adds a large ecosystem of companion apps and plug-ins. It also excels in collaboration features.

Audio Editing We still live in the days of talkies, so you want to be able to in your digital moves as well as the images. Most of the products included here offer canned background music, and many, such as Pinnacle Studio, can even tailor the soundtrack to the exact length of your movie. All of these programs can separate audio and video tracks, and most can clean up background noise and add environmental audio effects such as concert hall reverb. A couple of the products have an auto-ducking feature, which lowers background music during dialog—a definite pro-level plus. What's Not Here There are more video editing software applications than we can fit into this roundup of the best options, which includes only software rated three stars and higher.

The best known among them is probably, which was recently acquired by Magix from Sony. Sony's product used a very cluttered interface that more resembled high-end professional video editing software from the early days of the craft.

Magix has made some progress in simplifying it and bringing it up to par with the competition, but more work is needed for it to be included here. Another program, simply has too outdated an interface, making common tasks difficult. Longtime pro video editors will note the absence of Avid Media Composer, which is simply too unwieldy for PCMag's primarily consumer audience. There are a couple of more interesting applications—NCH VideoPad and AVS Video Editor among them—that we simply haven't tested yet. The Finish Line The video editing application you choose depends on your budget, the equipment you're using, and how serious you are.

Fortunately, you're spoiled for choice with the products available. Peruse our in-depth reviews of enthusiast-level video editing software reviews linked below to see which is the right one for you.

Pros: Clear, flexible interface. Lots of organizational tools.

Responsive speed. Ultimate power in video editing. Rich ecosystem of video production apps. Excellent stabilization.

Unlimited multi-cam angles. Cons: No keyword tagging for media. Some techniques require additional applications such as After Effects or SpeedGrade. Bottom Line: An expansive professional-level digital video editing program, Premiere Pro CC has everything today's pro video editor needs, particularly when it comes to collaboration. Pros: Wide selection of fun video-creation tools. Clear, simple interface. Support for 360-degree VR, 4K Ultra HD, and 3D media.

Multipoint Motion tracking. Multicam editing. HTML5 video page creation. Stop-motion tool. Cons: Middle-of-the-road rendering speeds. No search for effects or media.

Only 20 video overlay tracks. Bottom Line: Corel continues to offer one of the most feature-packed consumer video editing packages around.

The 2018 update adds even more including 360-degree support, 3D titles, and action-cam lens correction. Pros: Clear interface. Edits 360-degree VR content. Fast rendering performance in testing. Tons of effects. Multicam editing. 4K and H.265 support.

Tagging and star ratings for media. Good audio tools. Cons: Motion tracking issues on one test PC. Occasional crashes in testing. Uneven 360-degree VR implementation. Bottom Line: Pinnacle Studio is a fast, full-featured, near-professional-level video-editing application with support for 360-degree VR, 3D, and multicam edits. New color grading and four-point editing make it even more appealing, though our testing uncovered some instabilities.

Pros: Lots of video effects. Good titling tools. Trailer-like movie templates. Solid audio editing tools.

Strong disc authoring. Fast rendering. Good stability. 360-degree media support. Cons: Not much help with difficult procedures. Lacks import and organization tools. Extra costs and coded downloads for some video formats.

Bottom Line: Now with faster rendering, Movie Edit Pro offers solid stability, up-to-date support for 4K, 360-degree, and multicam editing, but it trails other video editing software in ease-of-use. Pros: Magnetic, trackless timeline.

Superior organization tools, including libraries, ratings, tagging, auto analysis for faces, scenes. Support for 360-degree footage and HDR.

Multicam support. Fast performance.

MacBook Touch Bar support. Cons: Nontraditional timeline-editing may turn off longtime editors. Can't import projects from previous versions without a third-party plug-in. No stabilization or motion tracking for 360-degree video.

Bottom Line: Apple's professional-level video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, brings a wealth of power in an interface simple for pros and consumers alike. Recent highlights include rich support for 360-degree content and improved stability. Pros: Inexpensive. Plenty of video effects.

Good audio tools. Solid file format support, including H.265.

Compatible with 4K content. Burns DVD, Blu-ray, and AVCHD. Cons: Light on features. Outdated, unconventional interface. No 360 or 3D support. No motion tracking.

No direct output to social networks. Bottom Line: For less money than the competition, Nero offers a wide array of enthusiast-level video editing capabilities, but the interface is dated and it trails in support for new formats and techniques. Pros: Beautifully simple interface. Color matching for consistent movie looks. Classy themes.

Great chroma-keying tool. Lots of audio tools.

Theater feature shares movies to all your Apple gear. Cons: Not as flexible as some PC video editors. In the name of simplicity, some useful controls are missing.

Does not support tagging. Lacks multicam or motion tracking capabilities. Limited to two video tracks. Bottom Line: Apple's excellent entry-level desktop video editing application can turn your footage and photos into impressive productions.