15 Most Useful Free Video Editing Software For Windows
Whether you are a professional videographer, or an amateur film maker, or you just want to edit your family videos to make them more fun before you share them with friends, you are certain to need some sort of video editing software to help you. While purchasable video editing software such as Pinnacle can be expensive and take up a large amount of hard disk memory, there are several software that are equally good available for free download all over the internet.
Of course, you can use online editors as well, and just edit your videos on your browser, but if you have a slow internet connection, limited internet time, or a large number of videos you want to edit, it may be wiser to download a free software for video editing and use it offline.
We went through most of the video editing software for Windows, available for free downloading, and compiled a list of 15 of the best of these, using the criteria of lightness, speed, features, compatibility, and user friendliness. So feel free to download any of these software, as per your video editing needs.
1. Windows Movie Maker 2.6
This latest version of video editing software from Windows Movie Maker is compatible on Windows 7 as well as Windows Vista. While it doesn’t have all the features of more professional software, it is very simple to use, and ideal for home users with basic requirements.
2. VirtualDub
While VirtualDub is not really meant for general purpose editing, it is an excellent choice if you need to do some high speed linear operations on a video. It can process a large number of files through batch processing, and can even be extended with third party video filters. Though actually meant for processing AVI files, this software can also deal with BMP images and can read MPEG-1 files, though it cannot write them. VirtualDub can be used on Windows 98, ME, NT4. 2000. XP, Vista, and 7.
3. Wax
For some amazing 2-d and 3-d special effects, give the WAX software a try. Wax is very flexible and easy to use for general editing and effects. While essentially it is a basic software for home users, professionals can use it as a plug-in to more sophisticated video editors and NLEs such as Sony Vegas, PureMotion Edit Studios, and Adobe Premier.
4. Blender
One of the most powerful multi-use editing, composing and modeling tools, Blender allows you to create high quality 3D graphics, add sound effects, and edit them. Apart from Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7, Blender can also be used on Mac OS x and Linux.
5. Avidemux
Cutting, filtering, and encoding of videos can be done very simply using the Avidemux tool. Projects, job queues, and powerful scripting lets you automate your task, rather than having to manage each one manually. This program supports several file types like AVI, MP4, ASF, and DVD compatible MPEG.
6. Movica
While many video editing software such as VideoDub are restricted to AVI files, Movica is a free software for editing other types of video files such as .wmv, .flv, .rm, and .mpg files. The emphasis on keyboard shortcuts makes editing on this software quick and easy.
7. Moviestorm
Movie storm is a do it yourself software that makes creating 3D CGI animation movies simple and fun. By custom creating your characters, moving them around in the virtual studio, giving them lines to deliver in different voices, and animating them, you can create your own animation movie with this software while sitting at home.
8. T@b ZS4 Video Editor
This software for video editing and compositing gives media experts a facility to combine different types of media such as photos, videos and audio files, to create one or more files as output.
9. AVIedit
This is a great software to process digital videos, though it can only process AVI files of small executable size. It has many useful features like noise reduction, color restoration, video capturing from one frame per minute, and frame transformations.
10. StoryBoard Pro
This virtual storyboard tool helps animators and home movie makers create a plan for their video project. While using this software, you can create a title for each individual shot, indicate its type, and specify its planned length. You can even import video clips, sound clips, and pictures from other locations to be used in your storyboard.
11. DVDVideoSoft Free Studio
The Free Studio software combines all the free software from DVDVideoSoft into a single easy to use package. Free Studio can be used to convert video and audio files from one type to another, burn DVDs and audio CDs, upload and download videos and music to your computer or multimedia device, and carry out basic editings on videos and audio files.
12. AVI Trimmer
AVI Trimmer from Solveig Multimedia can support AVI or MKV files of all sizes and video or audio content, allowing you to edit them quickly and easily, without any need for encoding or decoding. The best part is that this software is lossless, which means that your video or audio files do not suffer any degradation or get out of sync on editing.
13. Zwei-Stein Video Editor 3.01
This non-destructive, non-linear freeware lets you composite and edit up to 256 video, audio, or image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained in serial order. Automatic key frames make operations like cropping and panning very simple.
14. DVD Knife
DVD Knife is an excellent tool to extract DVD clippings from DVDs and save them in DOV format. The process is very simple, you just have to select the start and end of your clip and click save. This software is able to save even very long and heavy extracts within seconds.
15. AVITricks Video Editor
This non-linear non-destructive software comes with real time preview, and alsoi time-line and tree structure presentation of the video you are editing. It lets you cut and join clips with ease, and customize & apply any of the several built in effects, such as mirror imaging and dissolve.
