Many times we need a good video editing software or movie maker tool to create a home movie or edit our existing videos. Although Windows comes with built-in Windows Movie Maker application but it provides very limited features.
Today in this topic, we are going to put together the best free video editors and movie making software which provide lots of professional features and can be used as an alternative to Windows Movie Maker as well.
Almost all these software support Windows XP, Vista and 7 and some of them even support Linux and Mac OS as well.
So without wasting time, lets list them:
- Windows Live Movie Maker
- Avidemux
- VirtualDub
- Pinnacle VideoSpin
- VideoLAN Movie Creator
- Wax
- AVS Video Editor
- AVI Trimmer
- Lightworks (Thanks Vincent)
- Free Video Converter (Thanks Olivier)
Please give them a try and let us know which one do you like the most and why?
This article was posted by VG in following section: Software.
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soldier
Wow I just started thinking about making some vids but didnt want to use wmm
Vincent
Lightworks also works pretty well, they have a native 64-bit build too, though it's still in public beta.
lightworksbeta.com/
anand
nice share, is AVS Video editor is free?
Ryan
Thanks for this. Very useful indeed.
john
thanks!! i was looking for other movie makers other than windows movie maker and i found it here. i'll download this now.
Christian
I get away with free software in Linux.
Olivier
Seriously! Freemake is not on the list.
Simple to use, does everything: any format to any format at any resolution.
Change mkv to mp4, flv to mov, m2ts to avi, you name it. Crop, cut, change audio streams,...
And it does it for audio, I just changed a full flac album to mp3 with two clicks (choose-go)
Change 1920 to iPhone. Works with pictures. You get the idea.
Check Freemake Video Converter, Free (duh) and 5 stars by just about everybody.
VG
Thanks Vincent and Olivier for suggestions. Added to the list. :)
Olivier
Let"s be clear.
Freemake Video Converter is the Window's equiv of Handbrake on Mac.
... only better
Check CNET Download to check the specs and eval.
Try it and it's blow away time.
Tech note: Most of the video converters are slap-ons (front-ends) to pieces of ultra high tech software:
FFMPEG or MPLAYER. If you want absolute performance learn to use FFMPEG
from the DOScmd window. You can find profiles with Google for one-pass, two-pass,
high-res, gen-quality, and if you futz about a bit (say ffmpeg /?) and search goog
you can find the profiles that the pros use. But for a very large mkv (28gb) with 12gb pixel depth
and DTS it will take you some twelve hours or more to shrink it. But that is super extreme.
Unlikely and probably illegal..
wildgoosespeeder
I only use Windows Movie Maker 2 for Windows XP because it has a capture feature which produces the best results out of all the other capture tools I've used. Other capture tools when capturing from my capture device would produce out-of-sync audio/video, have studdering frames, or have a poor framerate. WMM2 has a nice steady 30 FPS. Just a sample using a real Nintendo 64:
watch?v=rLQwpFKUVwM