Video Editors

Howdy folks,

I'm looking for good video editing software that can handle H265 MOV 4K-60fps video files. In the past, I used Windows Movie Maker until it died, after which I moved on to iMovie, which I used on my phone for a while. From pre-2019 until 2021, I also used AVS Video Editor, but that kept crashing all the time or randomly freezing.

I have moved on to DaVinci Resolve now, but I only need basic editing tools like cutting a video, removing parts, and putting them together with transitions. DaVinci Resolve also installs other stuff that I don't actually use, taking up a good portion of space (around 6.1GB installed). The videos are mainly for my YouTube, as I'm a rail enthusiast, so I collect a lot of individual videos before editing and putting them together. Use PC Spec one, as this is my main PC that I use most days.

What do other people use? I would like recommendations for another program that can do the above. While DaVinci is good, I don't use it that often.

Camtasia

Is very good but it is quite expensive.

That's one I haven't heard of before, although pricing is a little questionable. I tried CapCut and there was another but I can't remember what it was called.

I use WonderShare Filmora to edit my YouTube videos its not free.

Try this: Video Converter
This is an old and basic (easy) application that let's you cut out video sections, joint, split, convert, etc.
It says it handles H264 (don't know about H265).
Works on audio files also. It's free.

FreeBooter said:

I use WonderShare Filmora to edit my YouTube videos its not free.

[Official] Wondershare Filmora: Edit Video as a Pro

Filmora is an all-in-one video editing software for desktop and mobile. Easily create professional videos with intuitive tools, AI-powered features, and creative effects.

filmora.wondershare.net

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It don't look to bad this one, but I don't need the extras like cloud storage or AI.

SumpterX said:

Try this: Video Converter
This is an old and basic (easy) application that let's you cut out video sections, joint, split, convert, etc.
It says it handles H264 (don't know about H265).
Works on audio files also. It's free.

Click to expand...

This looks like a video converter type of software, not sure its an editor?

Josey Wales said:

Camtasia

Is very good but it is quite expensive.

Click to expand...

I'm a big fan of Camtasia, but they have jacked the price up and continue to dop so in a big way. See this post for details:

FelixTheCat said:

It don't look to bad this one, but I don't need the extras like cloud storage or AI.


This looks like a video converter type of software, not sure its an editor?

Click to expand...

You must have just read the page title (that's the name of the program). This is not a sophisticated frame editor. But for the purpose stated by FelixTheCat it should do the job. Cut sections of video, join, append, add audio, extract images, subtitles, change brightness/contrast/saturation, crop, rotate, flip. Good enough for basic work without weeks of learning curve, internet, AI intrusion.

I haven't worked with that high resolutions yet, but for up to 1080p I use VirtualDub2 which has a lot video filters. It saves an AVI video file with AVC compression but you can save to other formats, even HEVC by installing the appropriate codecs. A very good codec collection is K-Lite codec pack. However it doesn't support hardware accelerated video compression (such as NVEnc AVC) unless you use an external encoder. For that I use Handbrake. In fact I can do all the editing in VirtualDub2 and then frame serve to Handbrake for using NVenc. Is not as fast as working on Handbrake directly but a lot faster than working exclusively in software in VirtualDub2. If I want to cut certain video parts, I can see the start and end frames of the section in VirtualDub2 and then use these in Handbrake. Unfortunately Handbrake has no preview to find the frames there nor it has editing capabilities. I can only do simple resize and crops and then save each video section to a separate MKV file. I then use NKVToolnix to merge the sections to a single file.

Another tool I have read about is OpenShot but I haven't use it much, so I can't tell how good it is.

For those interested VirtualDub2 frame server produces a signpost file with .VDR extension. This can opened directly in old TMPGEnc 2.x application which would convert it to MPEG or MPEG2 video. Newer versions cannot open it directly. But I can use a simple Avisynth script and convert it to .AVS file. There are several applications that can open this .AVS file directly including AVStoDVD which converts it to DVD. However, by using tge avfs utility of Vapoursynth I can link this .AVS file to virtual .WAV (audio only) and .AVI files. These can be opened everywhere including Handbrake. Yes, it is a little complicated but I don't mind as long as I can use VirtualDub2 video filters and render the final video in any other application.