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Top 10 Free Video Editing Software
You may have a big collection of home videos recording all happy times in your life. Why not edit your home videos to be better for free and share with the world by uploading to Youtube or just share with your friends? Free video editing software is easy to use with basic editing features such as trimming, plitting, cropping, resizing, zooming, rotating and more.
There is some good free video editing software and here are the selected top 10 with applicable OS in the title. Of course, if you want more advanced and professional features, you may opt for commercial software.
Windows Movie Maker--Windows
Windows Movie Maker comes preloaded in the Microsoft OS. It supports basic video editing features including cropping, panning, trimming, zooming, titling, audio track, as well as over 100 transitions and movie effects. And the Vista version provides support for Direct3D integration. It supports such import formats as ASF, AVI, M1V, MP2, MP2V, MPE, MPEG, MPG, MPV2, WM and WMV, but supported export formats are only AVI and WMV.
In Windows 7, Windows Movie Maker has been removed and its counterpart Windows Live Movie Maker is available for download, but Windows Movie Maker 2.6 which is ported from Vista also works in Windows 7.
iMovie--Mac
Like Windows Movie Maker, IMovie comes preloaded in the OS for Mac users, so it is free only when you buy a new Mac system; otherwise, you need to purchase it. It is easy to use and has many add-ons and advanced features such as cropping, zooming, trimming, panning, titling and adding transitions as well as mixing audio and video streams together. Furthermore, you can publish your works to YouTube by one-click. The import formats include 3GP, MPEG, MP4, MOV, M4V and MOD and export formats are MOV, MP4 and M4V.
ZS4 --Cross-platform
Being continually developed, ZS4 is an updated version of Zwei-Stein. It is an advanced video editing and composting tool which allows you to combine various of media files like photos, videos and audio files into one or more video mixes. Its basic editing capabilities are rotating, cropping, trimming, panning and inserting transitions, but no titling. The import and export video formats are a bit limited, just AVI and MJPEG. However, it has over 150 internal video effects to personalize your clips.
Wax--Windows
Wax is of high performance and so flexible that it can work in two ways: as a standalone app for home users or beginners or as a plug-in to other video editors for professional editors.
The accepted import format is only AVI but works can be exported to AVI, MPEG and FLV formats. The basic video editing functions such as trimming, rotating, cropping, zooming, panning are available, except titling. It also can combine image, video and audio files into one or more video files and add transitions and special effects (including 2D & 3D effects) to your video clips by using certain plugins.
VideoThang--Windows
Very easy to use, VideoThang is a good choice for quick and basic editing. You can mix video, audio and image files to create one or more new visual files and add special effects and transitions to your clips. Its supported import video formats are AVi, FLV, MOV, MPG and WMV and export format is MPG. Basic editing features of VideoThang include trimming, cropping, zooming, and titling. You can upload your images and videos from YouTube, Picasa and Photobucket; for the finished videos, you can download it, send it to your friends by email or share it on video sharing sites.
Jahshaka--Cross-platform
As an unfinished project, users may have many problems with Jahshaka for the complicated interface without help existing but some tutorials on the website and the requirement of open libraries for installation. But once you master it, you will find it’s a professional and serious video editor with powerful editing, encoding and animation tools, wide file-format support, node-based effect, and editing in DV, SD, HD and film and more cool features.
Fortunately, it was reinvented in February, 2009 to get back under the way of development and we may look forward to getting a better free video editor. In addition, someone said it didn’t work in Windows Vista. I’m not sure about this since I didn’t try.
blender--Cross-platform
Blender lets you edit, create interactive 3D contents, add effects, manage your sound and render out films. It is a free yet powerful animation maker with animation elements classified into Interface, Modeling, Rigging, Rendering, Animation, UV Unwrapping, Shading, Physics and Particles, Imaging and Compositing, and Real Time 3D/Game Creation. And it supports plenty of 2D and 3D formats. However, it’s not so user-friendly and learning it may occupy you for a while.
Pinnacle Video Spin--Windows
Powered by Pinnacle, Video Spin is easy to use and gives you quality output with many useful features but to use the advanced features you need to buy a premium version. If you just want to do some quick, simple and quality video editing, it is a good choice.
Its supported import and export video formats are 3GP, AVI, MPEG, MP4, MOV and WMV. It performs well with basic video editing capabilities such as trimming, cropping, zooming and titling. Special effects and transitions as well as combining audio and video tracks are available. What’s more, you can export your works directly to YouTube and Yahoo Video.
Avidemux--Cross –platform
Avidemux is one of the tools that are easy to use and stable in performance with plenty of features. It supports a wide range of file types including 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, MPEG, MKV, MOV and MP4 for import, AVI, FLV, MPG, MPEG, M1V, M2V, MP4, MKV and OGM for export. All basic editing functions are available, trimming, cropping, zooming, etc. It allows combining different video and audio files and 2-pass encoding, but special effects and transition are not supported.
VirtualDub--Windows
VirtualDub is a reliable free video editor that allows capture, basic editing and export to quality AVI files. The import video file formats it accepts are AVI and MPEG1 and export format is AVI. Its basic editing features include rotating, cropping, resizing, flipping, trimming, rendering and so on. It can process numerous files in a batch and allows remixing videos and audeos. However, it has no additional filters and need to be complete with third-party video filters.
The above list is the 10 free video editing software we recommend. Each one has its own traits and advantages. You may try and find out the one that works best for you depending on your personal needs.