Top 10 Best Free Video Editing Software

Good video editing software can help you highlight your products from every angle by creating professional promos for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or anywhere else you share brand videos.

There are a variety of easy-to-use free video editing applications that will help you stand out from your competition.

Well-produced product videos are a content marketing medium that is more engaging than photos alone and can reduce the reluctance of a consumer to make a purchase.

E-commerce product videos can potentially increase conversion rates by up to 144 percent, according to the online publication Small Business Trends.

There’s a lot of desktop-based editing software available for businesses looking to create promotional videos.

The biggest advantage of free video editing software for desktops is that they tend to have more features than most mobile video editing apps.

For companies looking to make advertising images, there's a lot of desktop-based editing software available.

The greatest benefit of free desktop video editing software is that it appears to have more functionality than other applications for mobile video editing.

Check out our list of free video editing tools you can use to edit long-form content for YouTube, your e-commerce channel, or a number of other platforms if you're looking to edit your promotional videos on a budget:

1. Blender

Best professional video editing software with 3D creation suite

Blender is a 3D development suite for free open-source. It includes features to help model 3D animations and render them. The software is a joint development of hundreds of developers from around the globe. The large user group gives a comprehensive collection of resources to Blender's apps.

Blender is developed as a suite of 3D animations, but comes with a functional video editor that should be adequate for the needs of most users. More complicated edits, such as video masking, can also be handled, making Blender a powerful video editor for both beginner and seasoned users, and an excellent choice for more advanced projects that might require 3D animation.

Features include:

Path-tracer engine for realistic rendering of animated objects
Advanced rendering processes to speed up the saving and exporting of your project
Option to code game logic into the software for video game development
Advanced character animation tools for realistic kinematics
Extensive library of visual effects and vignettes

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Price: Free

2. OpenShot

Best simple video editor for beginners

The easy-to-use user interface of OpenShot makes it a perfect video editing software for novices.

While more complex tools which give more components for editing, the intuitive interface and lightweight nature of OpenShot are ideal for easy editing.

For small companies, OpenShot is an effective option and is best for clip resizing, scaling, trimming, snapping, and rotating.

Credit scrolling, frame stepping, time mapping, audio editing, and real-time preview are also available.

Features include:

Unlimited layers for watermarks, background videos, and audio tracks
Customizable title-card templates
Drag-and-drop functionality for easily adding video, audio, or image files
Digital video effects, including brightness, gamma, hue, greyscale, and chroma key compositing for green-screen effects
Powerful key-frame animation capabilities for creating animated videos

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux

3. VSDC Free Video Editor

Top free video editing software with full editing suite

VSDC's software for desktop video editing is available as a free and paid version. Although the free version has reduced features, it still comes with the full video editing suite of VSDC, including a mask tool for green-screen video effects and chroma key functionality.

The suite of software extends to include video stabilisation, comprehensive post-production effects, slideshow/presentation capabilities, 3D diagram models, and direct publication of social media if you have the money to spring for the complete version.

Features include:

Color-correction tools for a more professional look
A full suite of transitional effects
Easy-to-use image filters, similar to what you’d find on Instagram
Mask tools for hiding, blurring, or highlighting specific elements
Social media link for sharing videos on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Vimeo
HEVC/H.265 (an advanced video-compression standard), for maintaining the highest quality at the minimum file size—essential for processing 4K and HD files

Available for: Windows

Price: Free; $19.99 for Pro version

4. Movie Maker 10

Good free video editing software for Windows

For individuals looking to return to basics, Movie Maker 10 is a simple video editing app for Windows. It's great to make quick edits to short video clips that you instantly need ready.

Movie Maker 10 comes with a free edition that includes the ability to add captions with customizable fonts and colours and its suite of video and image editing software.

Features include:

Auto-preview tool for edits and effects
Auto-movie options for creating customizable cuts of your video clips
Animation tab to easily add music, titles, and credits

Available for: Windows

Price: Free

5. Lightworks

Best online video editor for real-time project sharing

A simple and intuitive gui is included in Lightworks, so it's easy to pick up. Lightworks also provides a series of comprehensive video tutorials, making it one of the software choices on this list that is more open and easy to learn about Linux video editing.

In any videos you edit on the programme, Lightworks has a suite of original stock videos and music clips approved for use, enabling you to give any marketing video a polished look.

Features include:

High-quality simple trim functions for fast and precise video editing
Speed optimization, letting you continue to edit while importing new content
Multicam editing for syncing clips from multiple cameras
Real-time team project sharing with full control over which user has editing access
Easy sharing of videos with fast export to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Instagram
Supports a wide range of video formats

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Price: Free $24.99 per month for Pro version

6 Shotcut

Best open source movie maker for audiophiles

Shotcut is a cross-platform, open-source video editor with an extensive selection of tutorial videos. A wide variety of formats, including FFmpeg, 4K, ProRes, and DNxHD, are also supported.

However, Shotcut was originally intended for Linux, so some may find the interface a little quirky. In spite of this, it is still a top-notch publisher.

Shotcut also offers comprehensive options for audio editing, making it suitable for audiophiles. Users can make bass and treble changes, build bandpass philtres, adjust gain, add dynamic compression, and much more thanks to its host of fine-tuning audio tools.

Features include:

Support for the latest audio and video formats via FFmpeg, the leading multimedia framework
Native timeline editing, which allows users to import video files directly into their project file rather than a media library
Multi-format timeline for mixing and matching resolutions and frame rates within a project
Advanced audio filters like balance, bass and treble, bandpass filters, compressor and more

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Price: Free

7. HitFilm Express

Best free video editor with all-in-one editing and professional visual effects and tutorials

HitFilm Express may feel a little advanced at first, if you don't have a lot of video editing experience, it's used to produce Hollywood-style movies, but it's worth the learning curve, as it's one of the best free all-in-one video editors available.

(When you download the software, HitFilm asks you to share a social media status update, but that's a small price to pay.)

Hitfilm provides animation tools that allow audio and video transitions to be produced and edited without the need for composite shots, which is a massive time saver when editing.

Features include:

Professional grade video editing
Composite shot enhancements that allow you to animate two separate shots together for surreal video effects
Unlimited video and audio timeline track creation
An adaptive trimmer that lets you re-trim your clips after adding them to the timeline
Ability to copy a group of attributes from one clip and apply them directly to another or to a whole project
Audio mixer for fine tuning sound for professional quality output
Various transition options, such as push, zoom, and dissolve

Available for: Mac and Windows

Price: Free; $497 for TK

8. DaVinci Resolve 16

Best free video editing program for professional editors

In a single production tool, DaVinci Resolve integrates advanced 8K editing, colour correction, visual effects and audio post-production, making it the programme of choice for many professional editors of movies, TV shows and commercials.

DaVinci facilitates both offline and online editing, and its high-performance playback engine saves time, even for processor-intensive file formats such as H.264 and RAW, while editing and trimming.

For certain users, the complex features of DaVinci Resolve might be too comprehensive, but its free version is ideal for more advanced projects.

Features include:

Dual timeline for quick navigation, cutting, and trimming
A dedicated trim interface that gives you the ability to edit in minute detail
Intelligent auto-editing that syncs audio and visual clips for you
Built-in tools for picture-in-picture effects, retiming, stabilization, dynamic zoom, text, and audio
Facial recognition that detects faces in your clips and automatically creates bins based on the people in each shot
High-quality motion estimation speed changes and frame rate conversions to easily and realistically speed up or slow-down clips

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Price: Free, $269 for the full Studio version

9. VideoPad

Best free video editing software for sound mixing

Thanks to its uncomplicated, easy-to-use gui, VideoPad is a decent starting point for those just becoming familiar with video editing apps.

VideoPad is packed with professional features such as multiple displays for quick editing and limitless overlay audio tracks, despite its deceptively simple controls, providing users with the option of getting more control over their sound mixing without the added complexity of more professional editing tools.

VideoPad doesn't come with as many advanced features as some of the other free video editing applications on this list, but there's enough here to make it worth the free download with options to add light effects, fine tune colours, and overlay text and pictures.

Features include:

Double built-in screen (one to preview selected clips, one to preview complete sequence) for easy and intuitive editing
Pre-made, customizable transitions for polished professionalism
Exporting presets to easily create video files optimized for specific platforms—such as Facebook and YouTube—and post them directly from within the software

Available for: Windows

Price: Free

10. iMovie

Best free YouTube video editor

IMovie comes with Mac OS as a common standby. Like many native Apple apps, iMovie is easy and uses a simple drag-and-drop interface to transfer files from your drive to your workstation.

To improve your YouTube marketing efforts, it's a simple way to create powerful videos.

A major benefit of iMovie is that files are stored on Apple's cloud, so you can work on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac interchangeably on your project.

Also, iMovie is constantly being updated, so you can always look forward to new features and updates.

Features include:

Support for 4K resolution, allowing users to create cinema-quality films
Cloud-storage functionality that allows you to work on the same project from your iPad, iPhone, and Mac
Dozens of studio-quality title animations for professional-looking credits
Stylish, contemporary video filters built for specific film genres, such as western and sci-fi
Built-in music, sound effects, and voiceover recording so that your sound and picture editing are always consolidated
Speed controls that let you make high-octane action scenes faster and sports highlights slower

Available for: Mac

Price: Free