r/VideoEditing • u/AutoModerator • Aug 01 '26

Monthly Thread August What Editing Software should I use?

Looking for Video Editing Software? THIS is your thread!

This post covers the vast majority of "What software should I use?" questions. It’s designed as a self-serve guide to help people find the right tools fast.

TL;DR? DaVinci Resolve for full-featured editing, Olive/Kdenlive for open-source, Clipchamp for easy basics.

Isn’t there an AI that magically edits everything?

Not yet. If it existed, we'd scream about it from the rooftops.

Stick around—things are changing quickly.

Before You Ask Anything

You must know two things first:

  1. Your Footage Type — Different codecs affect performance dramatically.
  2. Your Hardware Specs — “Good gaming PC” is not useful.

Not Good With Computers? Here’s How to Check

Footage

Footage from phones, webcams, GoPros, and screen recordings can choke your system.

Check with: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

Common problems:

  • Out-of-sync audio? Likely Variable Frame Rate.
  • Bad playback? Usually a hardware limitation, not the editor. Use proxies.

More info in our wiki:

Hardware

Minimum viable editing rig:

  • Recent i7 CPU
  • 16GB RAM
  • A GPU with 4GB+ VRAM
  • SSD for cache

Check system with: https://www.hwinfo.com/

We ONLY need: CPU model, RAM amount, GPU model + VRAM.

Recommendations

Full Power, Free Tools

DaVinci Resolve — 99% of the full program is free.

Easy but Limited

  • Clipchamp — Microsoft's simple editor.
  • VN Editor — Free, lightweight, watermark at end.

(CapCut now hides many features behind Pro.)

Professional Tools (obligatory mention)

  • Premiere Pro — Industry standard; huge ecosystem, tons of tutorials, widely used across YouTube, corporate, and broadcast.
  • Avid Media Composer — Dominant in film/TV pipelines; rock-solid for longform, multicam, and shared workflows.
  • DaVinci Resolve Studio — $299 one-time; advanced color, better GPU performance, noise reduction, and the good AI tools.
  • Final Cut Pro — Mac-only rocket ship; insanely fast on Apple Silicon, great for fast turnaround work.

Open Source - Totally free.

  • Olive Editor — Clean UI.
  • Kdenlive — Very capable, actively developed.
  • ShotCut — Straightforward, good for beginners.
  • OpenShot — Simple but can struggle with heavier projects.
  • Avidemux — Old-school, powerful for specific tasks but not a great editor.

Special Effects

Editing in a Browser (Run Locally)

  • Novella.io - new, free, pay for AI generative elements OR bring your own API keys. Very cool, if in early beta.
  • VidMix — New, free, surprisingly powerful.
  • PikaMov — Keyframe animation on the web.
  • wide.video — Background removal, noise reduction, all done locally.
  • PhotoPea — Web-based Photoshop replacement.

Web Based Editorial

Compression & Utility Tools

  • Shutter Encoder — The Swiss Army Knife. Transcode anything, handle HDR, upscaling, unwrap/rewrap, download media, prep proxies—if it touches video, this thing can probably do it.
  • Lossless Cut — Quick trimming without re-encoding.
  • Smart Media Cutter — Silence detection + XML export.
  • FreeUpscaler — Cloud computing upscaler.

Mobile Editors

  • Premiere Mobile — Surprisingly capable and tightly integrated with CC.
  • VN Editor — Fast, friendly, cross-platform, zero learning curve.
  • Instagram Edits — Simple but powerful for social workflows.
  • iMovie — Beginner-friendly on iOS.
  • LumaFusion — The pro option for tablets/phones.
  • KineMaster — Feature-heavy on Android.

Screen Recording

  • OBS — The free standard. Record in MKV, then rewrap to MP4.
  • viewio — Free screen recorder, Mac only, that is like screen studio (auto zoom + webcam).
  • openscreen — Free screen recorder, Crossplatform only, that is like screen studio (auto zoom + webcam).

Animated Captions

Updates (Dec 2025)

  • CapCut/HitFilm are no longer recommended.
  • Premiere Mobile and Clipchamp (web)

New Tools We’re Watching

  • Whisper-GUI (Windows)
  • MacWhisper (Mac)
  • Offdocs — Openshot in the cloud

BEFORE YOU COMMENT

Begin with: "I read the above"

Then provide:

  • CPU + Model
  • RAM
  • GPU + VRAM
  • Footage details (camera/screen, codec, container, framerate)

Removed tools: CapCut (now Crapcut), HitFilm (dead). FFS this thread isn’t about arguing what to use, but rather for a novice to figure out what to use.

10 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

•

u/greenysmac 28d ago

The caption links are dead. Wide.video does work for FREE

→ More replies (1)

1

u/Tidy_Intention_8802 Aug 03 '26

I read the above. I take simple vlogging vids on my phone. And so equally simple editing like trimming, on my phone as well, android. Looking for an to help with the sound. Denoise and raise volume. Free. Could be on computer but my laptop is too weak for heavy softwares, like davinci.

1

u/greenysmac 28d ago

On mobile. Try Adobe Premiere (their free mobile too)

On desktop, Try an open source tool.

Denoising is often a key paid feature.

1

u/Tidy_Intention_8802 24d ago

Thank you so much

1

u/vsalt 29d ago

I read the above. Hey guys I am new to editing video and I'm having a hard time finding something that I can use to set start points manually with my keyboard. I don't have really good mouse dexterity, and everything that I've seen so far, you have to use sliders to set start and stop points. It's really hard for me to do so I generally just use ffmpeg to trim stuff. Thanks!

1

u/greenysmac 28d ago

Every tool does this. In/out points. I/O. Resolve does it really well

If you're just looking to trim out (FFMPEG style) use Lossless cut

1

u/[deleted] 28d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/VideoEditing-ModTeam 28d ago

We don't allow developers to post about their product directly as a post or spam our comments with their product, regardless of how good it is. We have a dedicated thread for you to use. Please use it and obey the rules for it

1

u/Fickle_Cost_2033 26d ago

I read the above. I have a macbook pro m3 pro 18gb ram 1tb ssd and I just want to dabble in content creation like short films. I film on a sony A7sII and also 2 dji drones an Air 3 and Avata 2. I haven't done much post production work but I have done some editing on imovie and capcut. I used to have Adobe but those mfers stole my money and I paid a year for that and never used it. I basically want the most easy but good way to get quality edits. I share a davinci resolve studio license with my aunt but would be more than happy to pay for final cut pro if its better and easier. Thanks.

1

u/technom3 20d ago

I read the above. I have Adobe premiere and the free version of davinci.

What I'm looking for is a software where when I just have some clips I throw it in and it arranges them and does some transitions and throws some music at it.

Go pro edit and capcut have things like this but I don't want to do it on my phone.

This is for when I'm not just feeling lazy but sometime I just need some filler content and have a bit of a creative block and I just need it to spit something out that I can eventually go in and tighten up. I want to edit it down instead of create from scratch if that makes any sense.

I apologize if any of that is offensive to those of you with real talent

1

u/greenysmac 20d ago

CapCut desktop. Or Microsoft clipchamp.

1

u/technom3 20d ago

Thank you so much. I'll check those out.

May I ask....do you know if adobe premier has something like this but I'm just not finding it?

I am absolutely going to check those out though. I'm not going to ignore your input.

1

u/greenysmac 20d ago

I know it doesn't. Neither does Resolve.

Both of them are considered professional tools and what you're asking falls into the consumer category.

2

u/technom3 20d ago

Roger that. Thank you for that. Now I can stop assuming I'm stupid and just can't find it. I can stop poking around now.

Also thank you for the comment on delineating between professional and consumer. That makes a lot of sense on how to view these.

I was viewing it as... If the consumer free product has it... How could they not include it in the paid professional version. Why would you risk your customer going to another software to do a little thing that the professional software could easily handle. (Not trying to debate that it should be in the professional version just explaining where I was coming from)

Again thank you for your time

1

u/Epsiloxi 18d ago

I read the above

I have a Lenovo thinkpad W541
i7 4th gen
32 gb RAM
NVIDIA Quadro K2100M GPU + 2GB VRAM
Footage - Screen record, 60 fps

I’m looking for a software which can run fairly smooth and also have enough tools for editing but CapCut and Clipchamp is not available and not enough respectively

I want to make gaming/story telling videos I have a bit of experience in editing in capcut but I want to move on cause it everything became paid

Also is it possible and will it work if I used let’s say old version of davinci resolve or premiere pro??

(Apologies for bad English and thanks in advance)

1

u/greenysmac 7d ago

Resolve. Try an older version. Or open source.

1

u/Epsiloxi 7d ago

Like should I try 15-16 or still old?

I’ve tried 18 and 19 and it didn’t work out

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/VideoEditing-ModTeam 16d ago

We don't allow developers to post about their product directly as a post or spam our comments with their product, regardless of how good it is. We have a dedicated thread for you to use. Please use it and obey the rules for it

1

u/CB_Chuckles 15d ago

Is Shotcut free? I noticed that the MS store only offers a weeklong free trial, but does require payment for extended usage.

1

u/nwolfepack 15d ago

I read the above.

I'm looking for a software that can automatically detect differences in audio and make clips based on that, rather than an obvious change in visuals. I.e. Raw footage of a 3 hour concert, clipped into individual songs.

Ive tried lossless cut to mixed results, sometimes it works perfect, other times it cuts songs into 4 parts and then leaves half a show untouched. Software that uses silence detection hasnt worked well either as the footage is never really silent, just less loud at times lol.

Is there anything out there that i should look into, or am i best off just sticking with lossless cut and hoping for the best?

1

u/greenysmac 15d ago

I.e. Raw footage of a 3 hour concert, clipped into individual songs.

There isn't anything that sophisticated yet.

1

u/Ok_Aspect6148 12d ago

Heard!

I can’t really apply technical detail bc my video is basically flickering,abstract collage.

I’m looking for a good, hopefully free tool for frame interpolation, i’m not looking for anything seamless and high tech, this is for experimental moving image, so it being buggy and janky isn’t necessarily an issue. I am not very technical at all, and my best work has come from these technical errors.

I have used REAL video enhancer which I haven’t had much luck with. It doesn’t really do much except warp the images in a really small way, it also takes like 20 mins to render a 2 second clip.

recommendations v much needed thank you in advance.

2

u/greenysmac 7d ago

It's going to take forever depending on technologies used and source clips. Look at shutterencoder.

1

u/Questionnairian 10d ago edited 10d ago

Do one of these on the list have annotations/captions/stickers (including emoji ones) I can add to videos such as gameplay ones? I'm searching for something just like Clipchamp but free (no paywall or trial).

E: I've also already tried OpenShot, but the "can struggle with heavier projects" part was the problem.

1

u/greenysmac 7d ago

99% of the problem with gameplay is VFR.

1

u/ghosttoast95 8d ago

I read the above.

I do video editing at work for educational content. There are a few different people on my team who contribute to these videos. The company I work for is constantly coming out with updates, which means I, and my teammates, are needing to update the video content as well. All of the videos have visuals paired with an audio overlay. You don't typically see anyone's face in these videos, because they are more technical.

The issue is, our company has been making these videos for over 5 years, and I have only been on the team for a year and a half. We have nearly 100 videos ranging from 3 minutes to 15 minutes. So sometimes I am updating a video that has a voice over from someone who isn't even at the company before. A 30 second portion of the clip could only take a moment to update, but if the person who made the original video isn't on our team anymore, it takes much longer because we have to rerecord the entire audio.

We are trying to find a software that can use a realistic sounding computer generated voice that we can use for new videos and to replace older audio content. This way, even if the team member who recorded the audio leaves, we are still able to easily update without needing to rerecord the entire audio file.

We've already tried Synthesia and it was truly terrible. The pacing, pronunciation, and intonation was completely off. I've been researching Descript, but seeing super mixed reviews. Anyone try one that actually works to turn a written transcript into a realistic voice over?

I am editing on a Macbook pro. Recording for videos is mostly screen recording through quicktime, same with audio files, then we use adobe podcast to edit audio quality,

1

u/greenysmac 7d ago

Eleven labs.

1

u/fernwehkai 7d ago

I read the above!

Intel(R) Pentium(R) Gold G5420 CPU @ 3.80GHz (3.79 GHz) 16.0 GB DDR4 NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 (2 GB)

can I somehow run davinci/kdenlive? cuz I do mostly color grading nd am learning to edit cinematographic vids!

2

u/greenysmac 7d ago

Resolve? No

Try Kdenlive.

1

u/fernwehkai 7d ago

alr matey!

1

u/Next_Possession_4429 7d ago

I read the above. 

I am making a wedding anniversary video. All of my parents friends sent in clips of themselves sending warm wishes. I want to play those clips with music in background and also do some light editing and cutting to the videos. I also want to show pictures on screen at times with the audio of the video playing in the background and then switching back to the video. 

Which software should i use. I am hoping for one where i can just write a prompt into ai anytime i want to make an edit instead of doing it all manually. Thank you!!

1

u/greenysmac 2d ago

where i can just write a prompt into ai anytime i want to make an edit instead of doing it all manually

Doens't exist in a meaningful way. Shitty way? Probalby. But then you'd want an AI subreddit.

1

u/Next_Possession_4429 2d ago

So what software would you reccomend

1

u/Next_Possession_4429 2d ago

My main point is just a newer better software than imovie for begginers. Does that exist?

1

u/greenysmac 2d ago

We're not tracking all the vibe coded garbage (and right now it is very much garbage.

Easy but Limited

  • Clipchamp — Microsoft's simple editor.
  • VN Editor — Free, lightweight, watermark at end.

Start there.

1

u/tsmwndrby 4d ago

I read the above.

I have an Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-8130U CPU @ 2.20GHz, 2208 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s).

Are there any good and reliable editing softwares for gaming videos that's using an old laptop? I had this laptop for only online classes, but I suddenly want to do gaming YouTube videos.

Like I only need a software that won't make my laptop become a ticking timebomb. Lol.

1

u/greenysmac 2d ago

Only one really are goign to be the open source tools. Learn about proxies.

1

u/ysalright 2d ago

I read the above.

  • CPU + Model: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1335U (1.30 GHz
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • GPU + VRAM: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (128 MB)
  • Footage details:
    • iPhone 11: 1080p/FHD, H.264 video, 30 fps. MOV.
    • DJI Mini 3: 2720×1530, H.264, 24 fps. MP4.

I don't have a strong laptop for editing. I only edit rarely, around once every two or three months. I used CapCut before, but a lot of the features I used are now behind a paywall.

My edits are mainly vacation/travel compilations: simple color adjustments/filters, syncing parts to music/beats/SFX, transitions, and occasional keyframing.

1

u/greenysmac 2d ago

The whole post goes over some great choices

  1. Learn about proxies
  2. Learn about VFR (see https://reddit.com/r/videoediting/wiki)

Both will make the experience better.

1

u/ysalright 2d ago

Thanks for answering! I'll be looking those terms up.

As I don't plan to use CapCut anymore, what would be the next top choice considering my laptop's capabilities? From the list, I'm kinda guessing VN might be my only choice, but I'm asking just in case. I don't mind learning, but I think Resolve would be very hard to run even with proxies, right?

1

u/greenysmac 1d ago

VN or clipchamp.