Video is “hot” & it’s only going to become more relevant in the future. Millions of bloggers & businesses worldwide use video as their media of choice when it comes to demonstrating a product, showcasing how-to instructions or just connecting in person to their audience.
But there’s more to launching an effective video campaign than simply shooting footage with your phone’s camera. Getting your videos up to standard takes work — they might need to be trimmed, spliced, filtered, have a background sound track or a voice over — & producing these edits well depends on having capable software at your fingertips.
There are numerous video editing tools in the market, but if you’re just starting out you might not want to spend too much to begin with, so we’re going to take a look at a few video production utilities that you can download for Windows free of charge.
Here they are: 5 free video editing tools
Built for Windows, this fully featured free app is packed to the brim with useful tools. It’s a non-linear editor, which means that objects can be placed in any position on a timeline & have any size rather than having to occur on a straight timeline only.
The system supports a wide variety of video/audio formats & codecs, including DVD, HD & GoPro videos. Features include text & audio overlay, as well as an array of charts & diagrams & a slideshow maker. Visual adjustment effects are split into five categories — color correction, object transformation, object filters, transition effects & special fx — which makes it easy to edit video in stages & get each thing sorted in turn.
VSDC supports stylish Instagram-like filters & the ability to mask or highlight individual elements in the footage— useful for blurring backgrounds or faces (identity protection). Videos can be exported to a variety of 3rd party services, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook & Twitter.
Open source video editor with an easy to use intuitive dashboard, OpenShot is free to download for Windows (Linux & Mac). Features include:
- Trim & slice
- Slide, bounce & animate any object
- Powerful video effects — remove backgrounds, invert colors, auto adjust colors, hues, brightness
- Multi layering — add audio tracks, voice overs & watermarks
- Drop & drag interface, available in 70 languages
Free for non-commercial use, VideoPad packs a powerful video editing tool box, which includes :
- Support for all popular video formats including avi, wmv, divx, mp4, apng, mpeg & many more.
- Over 50 visual & transition effects
Free to download, HitFilmExpress offers powerful video editing tools that you’d only expect to find in expensive software. The developers also offer a dedicated set of tutorials & what they call “MasterClasses” to introduce amateurs to the finer art of filmmaking. Features include:
- Full 2D & 3D compositing
- 410+ effects & presets
- Unlimited tracks & transitions
- Support for multiple file formats
- Export to various 3rd party services, such as YouTube & others
- Mask editing & rendering, multilayer editing(with tracking)
- Combined timeline editing
Free, cross-platform, open source video editor. Supports multiple file formats for images, video & audio. Packs powerful video editing tools under its hood, which include — trim, splice, cut, dodge, burn, color enhancement & adjustment, hue correction, add text or titles, add audio, voice over & many many more (too numerous to mention). Export to a wide variety of platforms & 3rd party service.
In conclusion: So if you want to start a vlog, sell a product or even produce a full feature film, these tools are sure to get you a professional result. Just bear in mind that the specifications for each tool should be noted before you download as some of the software may require specialized foundations.
