15 Best Free Video Editing Software for Windows PC in .
Kdenlive is another open source project that works on multiple platforms and unlike Olive, it has been on the market for a long time. Kdenlive brings an impressive set of effects and transitions, although they are hidden behind a less conventional layout and applied a bit differently than in the examples above. When you start a new project, you select the desired resolution and fps parameters first.
Next, you can drag your file to the Project bin, and from there — to the timeline. Just like every other NLE, Kdenlive has multiple tracks. Now, you can resize videos and drag them around the scene. The View tab allows you to conveniently choose which settings you want to be able to access quickly, and by unselecting the unnecessary ones you make more room for the preview window.
One of the most helpful features available in Kdenlive is the ability to have the Undo History list showing you every transformation applied to the video and allowing for quickly going back as many steps as needed. When it comes to the basic operations, there is a razor tool for quick splits, and the speed adjustment is available upon right mouse click. The effects need to be dragged from the menu to the footage and resized to the desired duration.
There are many color correction effects and image adjustments including blurring filters, old film styles, and RGB settings.
You can also benefit from multiple transitions, text title editor, Chroma Key, audio waveform, and more. Download Kdenlive from the official website. The HitFilm Express team aims to help amateurs achieve Hollywood-level effects. First, HitFilm automatically breaks down imported video files into video and audio tracks and displays them on the timeline as a storyboard and a waveform.
You can unlink them and remove the soundtrack in one click if necessary. Next, most basic actions can be performed right here on the timeline, too. The cutting tools are available on the left and upon right mouse click.
Make sure to check out the Rate Stretch Tool — it helps you adjust the playback speed by stretching or shortening the file on the timeline manually. Rotation, resizing, and image aligning are available in the Controls tab and easily regulated by the arrows on the preview window. Notice the white horizontal line striking through both video and audio tracks? By moving it up or down you can change image opacity and volume level.
Right next to the Controls tab, there is a library of effects — the feature-set HitFilm is known for. Go ahead and drag any of them right to the timeline and adjust the properties.
The software brings dozens of eye-catching effects including color wheels, cinematic looks, special styles inspired by Van Gogh, and much more. Keep in mind that some of the effects require add-ons. Download HitFilm Express. And these were 5 free Windows-based video editors perfect for personal use and capable enough to replace Movie Maker on your PC.
If you have ever used Windows Movie Maker, you know the frustration of navigating an awkward, complicated interface. PowerDirector's user-friendly design makes it easy to incorporate advanced visual effects into your video with the touch of a button. The program utilizes a dual-screen, customizable editing workspace to streamline your video editing process. You can also share your video straight to YouTube or other social media sites , saving you time. Overall, PowerDirector is an incredible alternative to Windows Movie Maker, featuring an extensive selection of advanced editing tools and a unique, user-friendly interface.
Beginners and professional editors alike can benefit from the high-quality results this software produces with just a few clicks of a button. Because of these features and more, PowerDirector is recommended as the best alternative to Windows Movie Maker. OpenShot offers a range of impressive-looking editing features, such as 3D animations, slow-motion effects, and text editors.
You can add unlimited tracks and layers to your timeline and use keyframes and frame accuracy to create precise, detailed edits. You can export your file in any mpeg format when producing your video.
OpenShot allows you to export a clean, polished video to your desktop in a format you can easily upload to YouTube or your social media page. This program does not offer professional tools such as chroma key, picture-in-picture, and blending modes.
This software includes many of the features you need to create intermediate to advanced video productions. It allows you to make basic color corrections and has an assortment of cinematic filters to change the look of your footage.
The program also provides LUT profiles that can help you color grade your clips. Additionally, VideoStudio Pro has multicam features that combine footage from multiple cameras. VideoStudio Pro is more advanced than Windows Movie Maker, requiring a bit of a learning curve, especially for beginners. But if you are willing to take the time to learn and want a more substantial editor, Corel is a choice to consider.
VideoPad Video Editor is a beginner-friendly video editing application with a straightforward but slightly outdated interface. It has basic editing features and tools for direct content capture , including voiceover. You can add files to your project by dragging and dropping them onto the timeline, and you can resize the content. Other features include stereoscopic 2D to 3D conversion, title animations, and camera shake reduction.
There are also audio effects like choral, echo, and distortion. VideoPad includes features to streamline your social publishing workflow. Then export to one of over 60 supported formats. However, the program is somewhat outdated and lacks advanced features such as multi-camera editing. It has a library containing extra features, but you will have to pay for each one you want to add.
Movavi Video Editor is a video editing software with a user-friendly interface and low learning curve. There are also video effects like blur, vignette, and slow-mo. The software has automated effects like fading or panning and offers a wide selection of titles and effects. You can get these features in the Video Suite version of the editor, but it is pricey. It has all the tools you need to create great content, including key framing, animated overlays, noise reduction, transitions, and titles.
Premiere Elements uses Adobe Sensei AI Technology to select specific areas of a clip to add effects, automatically reframe subjects, and fix grainy footage. Other great features include an array of slideshow styles and organizational tools. Premiere Elements has a simple interface and step-by-step tutorials , making it an easy choice for beginners.
However, it lacks some more advanced offerings such as degree editing, multi-cam editing, and screen recording. Editors in a hurry could be turned off by the very slow rendering times and output speed, which is one area where Windows Movie Maker had Premiere Elements beat. Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor. It offers wide format support for audio, video, and images. Even though you can download Windows Movie Maker somewhere else, errors or malfunctions happen frequently, because this phased-out software is no longer compatible with the latest Windows 11 and Windows Now it's time to move on with Windows Movie Maker alternatives to edit videos.
Here's the in-depth review and comparison of the 10 best Windows Movie Maker replacements ranging from simple and free tools to advanced and paid ones.
Now the built-in video editor in Windows 10 is Photos. It was originally developed for managing pictures but later upgraded with editing features when Microsoft decided to replace Windows Movie Maker with it in Windows Photos is a completely storyboard-based editor with auto and customizable modes.
Beginners who don't want to spend much time learning video editing can create videos or photo slideshows with soundtracks, themes, and effects in the auto mode.
Also, you can use a set of video creation and editing tools to customize your video including split, music, text, speed, crop, rotate, and 3D effects. Shoutcut is an open-source video editor that works on Windows, Mac and Linux without charging anything. If you are looking for a Windows Movie Maker Alternative replacement on Windows 7, this software would be a good choice for its good performance on bit Windows 7 PC and some advanced editing features like Chroma key, overlay, audio filters, and voiceover.
But it's not intuitive and beginner-friendly, compared to Windows Movie Maker, everything you do is dealing with parameters. Kdenlive is a cross-platform video editing program working on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
This none-liner video editor comes with a multi-tracking timeline and a well-organized and streamlined panel and hence becomes the primary tool for beginners to start the journey of video editing. Moreover, it has dozens of free effects and transitions for its users. And for experts, it offers you audio and video scopes like audio meter, waveform, histogram , and vectorscope to monitor your audio level and video color.
Olive is a recently-developed open-source video editor. Obviously, it can work as a powerful replacement to Windows Movie Maker. You can find all the features that you used in the legacy software, such as split, crop, text, transitions, and animate. If you invest more time learning its node composition a form of visual programming and color management, you can make the best videos possible.
It places basic editing tools like trim, cut, rotate, and effects on the top of the interface, just like Windows Movie Maker, so older users can quickly pick it up. While if you dive further into it, you'll find it more professional than Windows Movie Maker. It supports multiple media tracks to do overlay or masking and allows you to fine-tune settings in the properties panel.
The latest version is DaVinci Resolve 17 with new image processing for the latest wide gamut HDR, a powerful audio engine, AI-based magic mask and more. Different from Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve is free and won't make you feel like wasting money if you just make little use of its great talents. So you can regard it as either an easy alternative to Windows Movie Maker or a professional tool to learn. Preferred by many amateurs and film editors, this big brand always tops on lists of video editing software.
And even for the simple cut, it has various tools to deal with — ripple edit, rolling edit, slip tool, and slide tool, which trim off different parts in the clips. Although Clipchamp is an online editor, it's born with capable features like offline programs and follows a similar UI design and editing workflow.
It's simple as Windows Movie Maker but more versatile as it has a decent timeline. And the major advantage lies in its free templates, filters, and stickers. No matter how the Windows OS changes, this tool is always available as long as the Internet is connected. Kapwing, a web-based video editor, shares many similarities with Windows Movie Maker. For example, it concentrates on a single timeline and basic video editing.
But it has more useful features allowing you to add subtitles, edit audio, and add shapes to the footage. If you value the ease of use most when considering an alternative, Kapwing is definitely worth a try. VideoProc Vlogger is a free and capable video editor available for Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, and Mac.
It covers all your needs no matter you are seeking a handy alternative to Windows Movie Maker or a fully-featured video editor to start your vlog journey. This software has wide array of superb features including basic cutting and reframing tools, aesthetic filters, effects, titles, and transitions, speed ramping, motion cropping, color grading, and studio-level audio editing.
Looking for Movie Maker Alternative? Here are 5 Free Tools to Try.
Perhaps, that's the reason TechRadar has named it among the software to replace Windows Essentials suite components.
What else is good: the ability to quickly reverse your actions in a non-linear order. As mentioned before, each filter or effect you apply to the footage is eventually listed in the left-side window with a marked checkbox.
That means you can uncheck any box at any time without having to start the editing process all over again. Where to get it: Shotcut official website. If the previously mentioned software overwhelmed you a bit with the fancy non-linear video editing technology or the endless lists of features, you'll love Avidemux.
There seem to be no creative element involved. You won't find multiple video tracks or file library. In a nutshell, you can only cut, copy, paste and encode.
May it not turn you away from Avidemux though. If you have little to no interest in all those post-production bells and whistles, and only need to quickly cut out a piece of footage, go for it. Download Avidemux and you'll never regret. Not only does it take less than 3 seconds to install this software, it also provides the fastest and probably the clearest way to cut a video file into fragments. Once you've set the markers for the required time frame, simply go to the "Edit" tab in the upper menu and choose what you want to do - cut, copy, or delete the piece.
Once you're done, you can go ahead and choose video and audio output parameters. For such a basic and free tool, Avidemux has a noteworthy set of codecs to choose from. This is why calling it not just a video editor, but also an encoder is more correct.
Truth be told, there are few filters available at the configuration level - such as interlacing, noise or sharpness - but they seem to be more technically-inclined rather than serve creative purposes.
What else is good: options to add subtitles and a logo on top of video with alpha blending. These features are also available in the video output menu. Where to get it: Avidemux version of video editor for Windows 10 can be found on Fosshub, but you can also go through the official product page. Most professional video editors think Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas tend to be pricey for an average user who might only utilize them few times a year.
However, if when saying "professional" you think of advanced color correction tools, Resolve is a spectacular video editor for your Windows 10 PC available at zero cost.
You may want to check online courses devoted to Davinci Resolve available on Lynda or Udemy because mastering this beast will require a bit of a steep learning curve if you haven't worked with anything like this before.
However, Hollywood-level color grading capabilities should be worth it. On top of that, of course, you get to perform basic operations, such as cutting, splitting and sound adjusting. There are only two downsides worth mentioning and taking into consideration. First, Davinci Resolve will use your PC GPU to the fullest, so make sure to have a powerful graphic card and a good amount of memory available.
Second, there are occasional issues with recognizing certain formats of video and audio. The officially recommended format to work with is ProRes, but it also seems to work smoothly with the majority of files in H.
Where to get it: on the official product page. Scroll all the way down to find the free version of the software download link. Videopad is another multifunctional piece of software for video editing, screen recording, audio and video recording. Its free version is called demo and restricted to personal use only. No wonder the community got terribly disappointed when Microsoft stopped supporting it in Ready to see the contenders for the title of your next favorite video editing program?
Unlike Movie Maker, VSDC brings a non-linear approach to video editing, which means you can display multiple videos and images in one scene by overlaying or placing them side by side.
Download VSDC from the official website. For instance, if you want to create the famous split-screen effect, simply import two videos to the program, then grab the handler to resize each video and drag them to the sides.
Notice how the VSDC timeline includes multiple layers, and each file is placed on a new track. If you locate files under each other, they will appear in the scene simultaneously because they belong to the same time frame.
If you want videos to play one after another in a linear sequence though, you can do that, too. Just place files on the same track as you would do it in Movie Maker. The most essential video editing tools are available in the quick access menu at the top. They will allow you to easily cut, split, rotate, and crop your video or even make it opaque.
VSDC brings a full-fledged text editor as a part of its video editing suite. VSDC offers much more flexibility when working with text, too. You can create a title from scratch, fully customize its appearance, upload custom fonts, add an outline and opacity, or even apply various effects to it. Openshot is an open source video editor available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Like most open source projects, Openshot is widely supported by the community and gets regular updates.
Its interface is way simpler than the interface of VSDC, for instance, but it also brings less to the table in comparison to the rest of video editors in this roundup. Openshot has a clean, intuitive interface even your grandparents will cope with. As you may have noticed, the default layout and the workflow of Openshot are quite similar to what Movie Maker used to have, with the exception of multiple tracks on the timeline.
The most basic features — like speed adjustment, rotation, resizing, and fading — are available upon right mouse click on the file. Just like in Movie Maker, the window to the left from the video preview displays imported project files you can drag and dock on the timeline. Beginners can start videos in Storyboard mode and use one-click solutions such as Remove Beginning or Split Movie. More experienced editors can switch to frame-by-frame editing and manually tweak over effects, transitions, and titles found in this movie maker for Windows.
Like our top choice, PowerDirector, Magix Movie Studio offers tools for both beginners and professional video editors. However, this Windows Movie Maker alternative is too unreliable to give it a top spot on our list. Also, there is no dedicated free version, only a free trial, which places it below the entirely free VideoProc Vlogger.
G2 Rating: 4. WeVideo is a web-based Windows Movie Maker alternative you can get for free. It also comes with a variety of text templates and animated titles. Users can apply cool green screen effects using the chroma key tool found in this movie maker for Windows. WeVideo has green screen footage available in its stock library. There are 30 other effects available that are easily applied with one click. This is a good choice for beginners, but unlike PowerDirector, it lacks the control over effects that more seasoned editors would need.
WeVideo is a good Windows Movie Maker alternative, but only if you are willing to pay. While we like the online program for content creators, the free version is unrealistic for any serious influencers or YouTubers. It only allows 5 minutes of exported content per month, and the max resolution is p.
Key features like branding assets and direct upload to YouTube are saved for their pricey Professional or Business plans. VideoPad Video Editor is a beginner-friendly video editing application with a straightforward but slightly outdated interface. This Windows Movie Maker alternative includes features to streamline your social publishing workflow.
Then export to one of over 60 supported formats. This movie maker for Windows has basic editing features and tools for direct content capture, including voiceover.
You can add files to your project by dragging and dropping them onto the timeline, and you can resize the content. Other features include stereoscopic 2D to 3D conversion, title animations, and camera shake reduction. There are also audio effects like choral, echo, and distortion. However, the program is somewhat outdated and lacks advanced features such as multi-camera editing. This movie maker for Windows has a library containing extra features, but you will have to pay for each one you want to add.
Lightworks is a completely free and less-complicated version of Lightworks Pro, which has been used to edit Oscar-winning films. This Windows Movie Maker alternative offers a comprehensive range of sound controls, advanced color correction, and editing features like ripple, roll, slide, trim-slip, and backfill which are uncommon in free software. It offers both simple and advanced trimming and helpful tooltips that pop up to explain each feature these can be turned off as your editing skills grow.
Lightworks is easier to use than the other professional movie maker for Windows on our list, Avid Media Composer First, but still more complicated than the other Windows Movie Maker alternatives. If you are just starting as a video editor, try VideoPad or PowerDirector instead. Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor.
It offers wide format support for audio, video, and images. While Windows Movie Maker was greatly lacking in color adjustment tools, this movie maker for Windows offers color wheels for color correction and grading, and an eyedropper tool to help with white balancing.
Users will love the batch encoding for those editing multiple videos in one go, and unlimited undo and redo options. This movie maker for Windows offers a large selection of transitions and filters - including degree video filters.
And because Shotcut is open-source, it has regular upgrades made by the community. Shotcut has a higher learning curve than Windows Movie Maker, and the interface is not as clean. Although both Lightworks and Shotcut have a slight learning curve and are rated the same, we put Lightworks above it on our list because it is more feature-rich.
TrustPilot Rating: 3. This program is similar to Movie Maker for Windows because it is easy to use and offers a range of fun editing features for beginners and casual editors. These include voice-over, chroma key editing, degree video editing, and a library of trendy video effects, filters, and transitions.
Movavi Video Editor is a video editing software with a user-friendly interface and low learning curve. This program isn't as easy to use or understand as Movie Maker. Nevertheless, with a little time, you can figure things out. For example, if you want to add a filter, select Filters, and then in the sidebar that shows up, select the plus button.
This provides a large menu of filters divided into three categories: favorites, video, and audio. Shotcut can add these automated filters on the fly with your changes reflected right away. Shotcut lacks any easy upload features to popular web services, but it lets you export your video into many formats, from regular MP4 files to still images in JPEG or PNG formats.
Shotcut is compatible with Windows 10, 8. When you visit this site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your device and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests.
You can find out more and change our default settings with Cookies Settings. By Ian Paul Ian Paul. Former freelance contributor Ian Paul is a widely published freelance tech writer specializing in Windows, virus protection, and VPNs.
Tweet Share Email. What We Like. What We Don't Like. Download Microsoft Photos.
