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Kevin Stratvert

🎬 3 BEST FREE Video Editing Software for PC

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Today, we are going to look at the three best free video editing software for PC. And this software is truly amazing. You can do things like remove the background behind you. You can also convert text into speech. Hello, I’m a computer speaking. That is pretty cool. You can even design your very own custom lower thirds, just like this one. You can also layer one video right on top of another video, and you can also apply some really cool filters and effects. In fact, I don’t know why you would pay for video editing software when there are so many good free options out there. Let’s check out these apps. First, we’re going to look at a free video editing app called ClipChamp, and this one is made by Microsoft. On Windows 11, go down to your start menu and search for ClipChamp. And you should see it as a pre-installed app. You can also get it directly through the Microsoft Store. Simply search for ClipChamp, and then you can install it. You can also use it directly in your web browser. Simply type in clipchamp.com, and then you can sign in with a Microsoft account, which is completely free to set up. When you first launch into ClipChamp, you’ll see an interface that looks like this and right up on top, you can jump directly into a new video. Or down below, you can also start from a template and ClipChamp has many different available templates. So let’s say you’re pulling together an Instagram post or maybe a short for YouTube, but you could start with those right here, and there are so many different options to choose from. When you first launch into a project, you’ll see this editing interface and it’s really simple and intuitive to use. Over on the left-hand side, you see your media, and this is where you could import things like videos, audio, images, and GIFs. You can simply drag and drop files from your computer directly into ClipChamp, and then they’ll show up in your media. One of the really nice features is you could also pull media in from your phone very easily. Right up above next to import media, simply click on this dropdown and here you could pull files in from your phone or any one of these services. Once you’ve imported in some media, you can simply click on one of your files and you can drag it down to the timeline right here. Here I can drag a few different clips onto my timeline. And you could also add multiple tracks. Here I could pull this video file and I can place it above the other ones, so this gives me two different tracks and there I can see the layer underneath. I can position this wherever I want. In the top right-hand corner, I can also change the dimensions of my video project. So let’s say I want to pull together a video for Instagram or TikTok, here I can switch it to 9 by 16, and I have all of these other options as well. Down below, if I select a clip on my timeline, over on the right-hand side, I can adjust all of the properties related to that clip, here I could adjust the volume, I could adjust the fade in or fade out, I could apply various filters, and one of the really neat filters, you could even apply a green screen filter to remove a green screen background. Here you could also adjust colors, you could adjust the clip speed, so you have lots of different options over here. If we look over at the left-hand side, here we have all these different options. Here, you can record and create, so you could record your screen and camera, just your camera, or just your screen, and it turns out it’s a really good screen recorder. Down at the very bottom, you can also take text and you can convert that into speech. And this is a phenomenal feature, you could choose all these different languages, all these different voices, different voice styles, it’s well worth testing out. Back on the main editing screen, right here, we also have access to all of those templates that we saw on the landing page for Clipchamp, so here you can get to all of them right here. Over on the left-hand side, you also have a massive collection of stock music and sound effects. The one thing to caution though, is only some of them are free to use. If we scroll down just a little bit here, you’ll see a diamond icon, and this is a premium song. You have to upgrade to be able to use it. If you use it in your project without upgrading, it’ll place a watermark on top of your video, and no one likes a watermark. Just like with the music and SFX, down here, you also have a massive collection of stock video, and you have some free options, and then you also have some premium options. So you’ll just have to be aware of which ones you’re choosing, and here you also have stock images that you could insert into your project, and here too, you have some free ones, and you also have some premium ones. As we continue moving down this list, here, I could also insert text into my project, and you have so many different options that you can choose from. Just like with media, here, you could select some text and you could drag it right onto your project, and just like with video clips, here, I could click on the text, and over on the right-hand side, you have all sorts of different properties that you can modify related to that text. Back on the left-hand side, you also have various motion graphics that you can insert, and you have lots of different options that you could choose from. You even have Giphy, which is a really fun one to explore. Next up, you also have various transitions, and you have lots of different options. With one of these transitions, simply pick the one that you like, and you can press on it, and then drag it onto the timeline between two of your clips, and that’ll apply the transition. Once you’re all done with your project, in the top right-hand corner, you can click on export, and currently the highest quality level that you can export at is 1080p, and I would venture to guess that 4K is coming soon, but currently, this is one of the big limitations. All in all, Clipchamp is an excellent choice for beginner and intermediate users. It’s just so simple and intuitive to use. If you want to learn all of the latest Clipchamp tips and tricks, you can check out the playlist right up above. If you want a little bit more power and control, like let’s say, for example, that you want to build your own visual effects, or maybe you want to be able to use keyframes to adjust properties over time, then some of the next options will likely be a better match. Next up, we’re going to look at an app called CapCut. This also happens to be one of the most popular mobile video editing apps, and they recently released a desktop version. This is made by the company ByteDance. That’s also the company behind TikTok, so they know a thing or two about making a successful video. To get CapCut, head to the website capcut.com, and here you can use it in your web browser, or you can download an app. Now, unlike Clipchamp, where you get the same exact experience as on the web or in the app, with CapCut, I found that you get a more feature rich experience if you download the app. So I would recommend doing that. When you first launch CapCut, you’ll land here on the project screen. In the top left-hand corner, I would recommend signing in. When you sign in, you won’t get a watermark on your video. Unlike Clipchamp, you don’t have a big collection of templates that you can choose from. But that’s okay. Let’s click on start creating. This drops us into the main editing interface, and currently we’re on the media view. And just like with Clipchamp, it’s very easy to get your media in. You can simply drag and drop files from your computer and then release them into the app, and here we see all of the media. And just like with Clipchamp, here I could select a file or one of these clips, and I could drag it down to my timeline down below. Here, I’ll drag a few different clips down onto my timeline. And you also get multiple tracks. Here, I could take this clip and I could place it above the other clips on my timeline. Once you start pulling down clips onto your timeline, and you start telling your story, you might want to make some adjustments to the individual clips. Here, I have this clip selected on my timeline and in the top right-hand corner, I have all of my properties related to this clip. And there are so many options here. Here, for instance, I can adjust the scale of this video clip. Here, I can zoom in or out. And one of the neat things that you can do with CapCut that you can’t do with ClipChamp is you can set key frames. Over on the right-hand side, I can click on this icon to place a key frame. That basically defines the properties at this point in time. Here, I can move forward on this clip. And let’s say I want to zoom in at this point. Here, I could drop another key frame. Now, when I play my video file, you’ll see that it zooms in between those different key frames. Back on the right-hand side, you have all of these different settings. Let’s say you have shaky video, here, you can stabilize it. You also have other features like cutout. Maybe you have a green screen or a chroma key that you want to apply. You could do that here. Also, if you have a person in your video, you could automatically remove the background with a feature called auto cutout. One of my favorite features is right up here under enhance. If you have a person in the video clip, you can make adjustments to the way the face looks. Here, when I check this, it automatically identifies my face. and maybe I want to brighten it up, or maybe I want to give myself smoother skin. I can do all of that right here. As I go down, you could also apply facial beauty and you could also adjust the makeup, the body. This is really fantastic AI functionality that identifies parts of your body so you can target different changes. On top, you can adjust the audio related to a clip. Here, you could adjust the speed. You could animate a clip so it fades in or fades out. Here, you could also apply tracking. Let’s say you want to apply motion tracking. You could do that right here, and you also have other adjustments that you can apply on this last screen. If we look over on the left-hand side, just like with Clipchamp, I can access stock audio. Here, you have music that you can apply, and you also have various sound effects that you can apply. The one thing I really like about CapCut is all of them are included, so there are no premium files that you have to upgrade to access. Just like with Clipchamp, up on top, I can insert text into my project. And here you see all these different options of text that I can insert. Just like with the video clips, here, when I place text on my timeline, here, I can adjust all the different properties related to this text. So, I have lots of different options to get the text to look exactly how I want it to look. Within text, on the top right-hand corner, you can also type in some text. And here, if you click on Text-to-Speech, just like with Clipchamp, here, you could have CapCut read out your text in all these different voices. And one of my favorites, you can also have a vocalist sing your text. This is a really fun one to experiment with. Over on the left-hand side, under Text, there’s also something called Auto Captions. This is where CapCut will listen to the audio in your project, and it’ll automatically convert it into captions. That’s a really nice feature, and you could also customize exactly what that captioned text looks like. Back up on the top bar, here, you also have various stickers that you could insert into your project. Let’s say you want to add an animated subscribe button. You can do that. Here, you also have various effects that you can apply. Here, you have video effects, and you also have various body effects that you can apply. And here, too, you have many different options. Up on top, I could also apply various transitions. Here, I could look through some of the trending transitions. And similar to ClipChamp, here, I could simply take one of these transitions, and I could drag it between two of my clips on the timeline. Back up on top, I also have various filters that I can apply to my video. And here, I simply drag one of these, and I could drop it on top of one of my video clips to apply that filter. One of the really nice things about CapCut is that you have a big selection of shortcut keys. In the top right-hand corner, you can click on Shortcut, and this shows you all of the different shortcut keys that you have available to make your editing so much quicker. Another really nice feature, let’s say that you’re recording a video, and you want to provide a voiceover. Right here, you can click on this microphone icon, and you can now record a voiceover for your project. They make it really easy. Once you’re all done with your video project, in the top right-hand corner, click on Export. And here, you could define all the different settings. One of the things I really like is here, you can export in up to 4K quality. One thing to watch out for, remember to check this box that says remove watermark from your video before you export. All in all, CapCut is an excellent choice, whether you’re a beginner all the way through to an advanced user. To learn all of the greatest CapCut tips and tricks, be sure to check out the playlist right up above. Last up, we’re going to look at the free video editing software that I personally use on my YouTube channel, and it’s called DaVinci Resolve. This is software that many TV and movie studios use on their productions. That’s how good it is. To get DaVinci Resolve, head to the following website. You’ll find a link right up above. On this website, there’s a free version, and there’s also a studio version. The free version gives you more functionality than you’ll find in most paid video editing software. That’s how good the free version is. The studio version has some additional effects and filters and AI tools, which you have to pay for, but again, the free version will give you 99% of what you need. When you first launch into DaVinci Resolve, here, you’ll land on the project screen, and here, you can kick off a new project, or you could go back to one of your recent projects. Now, unlike ClipChamp, you don’t have templates that you can start from. Here, I’ll click into an existing project. This drops me into the main editing interface, and just like with ClipChamp and also CapCut, in the top left-hand corner, I can click on the media pool. And here, I see all the media related to this project. Here, too, I could also drag some clips from my computer, and I could drop them into my media pool, so I could start working with them. Over on the right-hand side, you’ll notice that I have two different preview windows. In both ClipChamp and also CapCut, I only had one. So what’s the difference here? Well, this window over here allows me to preview clips that are in my media pool. So here, I could preview one of these clips. I could also set in and out points for this specific clip before I bring it down to my timeline. Over on the right-hand side, I have another preview window. And this allows me to view or preview my project as it’s coming together on my timeline. To bring a clip down into your timeline, we do the same thing that we did in all the other apps. Here, I could go up to my media pool. Here, I could select a file, and I can drag and drop it down onto my timeline. And here, I could position it where I want it. And here, too, you also get multiple layers or tracks for your video clips. When you click on a clip on your timeline, you can go up to the top right-hand corner and click something called the Inspector. And this allows you to modify all of the different properties related to this clip. And just like with CapCut, you can set keyframes at certain points in time to modify these different properties over time. Over in the top left-hand corner, here, I’ll close the media pool. And here, we could also insert all these different effects. Right up on top, you have all sorts of different transitions that you can insert. Over here, you also have different audio transitions. Here, you could insert text or titles onto your project. Here, you simply drag one of these items, and here, you can drop it onto your timeline. Here, you also have different generators. You have different effects. Here, you have all sorts of different filters that you can drag and drop onto any one of the clips on your timeline. So you have so many different options. DaVinci Resolve does so much more than just basic video editing. In fact, it’s kind of like an application with many other applications within it. If we look down at the very bottom of the screen here, currently, I’m in the editing interface, and that’s what we’ve been looking at so far. But over here, I could also click into another page called Fusion. In the Fusion page, you can pull together some simple or very complex visual effects. For example, if you want a logo to glow and float above your hands, you can pull that off within Fusion. Down on the very bottom, there’s also another page for color. Within the color page, you have just about all the tools you could ever imagine to get the specific look and feel that you want for your video project. Down below, you also have something called Fairlight Audio. And just like with color and visual effects, here, you have all the different tools that you need to adjust the audio of your project. Here, you can click into effects, and there are all sorts of different effects that you can apply to your audio tracks. Down at the very bottom, when you’re all done working on your project, here, you can click on Export, and you have all sorts of different export settings to export it exactly the way you want to export it. And here, you could go all the way up to 8K Ultra HD. All in all, DaVinci Resolve is the most powerful video editing app that we looked at today. Basically, if you can imagine something, you can make it come to life in DaVinci Resolve. The downside with that, though, is it also has more complexity. And as a more complex app, it also has a steeper learning curve. If you’re interested in learning how to use DaVinci Resolve, maybe you’re just getting started, I’ve included an introductory video right up above that’ll show you all of the fundamentals. Hopefully, you found video editing software today that works for you. Let me know down below in the comments, which one did you decide to go with? To watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing. And there’s that lower third that I made in DaVinci Resolve. That’s the kind of stuff you can do. I’ll see you in the next video.

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