Best Video Editor I've used

(Please think of this more of a blog than an article) I’ve used many video editors in my life, and I decided to make some articles about some of them and how much I like each of them, let’s start.

Davinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve is a professional video editing tool by Black Magic. It is available on Windows, MacOS, Linux, and iPadOS (though more stripped down). This is what I would argue it is the best video editor on every platform there is a few catch but I’ll get to that later. First off, there is a free and paid version, the paid version has better feature that is better for companies or y’know actual professionals who depend on it for their job. The free version is mostly for YouTubers or people who don’t need that much effects or export at 4K or whatever. This is honestly better than free-trial or pay to remove ads in my opinion, and guess what? when you buy it. You actually OWN it, I know crazy, right? (If you can’t tell by now, I don’t like apps that require you to pay every month) Here are some pros and cons, so let’s talk about that

Pros

• Free of charge (90% of people won’t need Studio)
• Support almost every platform (Except for Android, ChromeOS (Can’t use it through Crostini), iOS, and BSD)
• Advanced audio editing, color correction, and animation
• Tutorials everywhere!

Cons

• Codecs support for MP4 isn’t the best (No support on Linux and no Hardware acceleration on Windows and MacOS, Only available on the Studio Version) (Blame MPEG LA)
• Require GPU (You probably have one anyways if you want to video edit, but incase you have something like Intel iGPUs probably check the next option)

Download: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a free and open-source video editor made by the KDE Community, It is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Have you ever heard of Krita, they are from the same community! (Hence the K) Anyways, this is probably the best FOSS video editor ever. It is what I used before I switched to Resolve, because of GPU acceleration reasons, but it’s still good enough for most people! Here are some pros and cons

Pros

• Free and Open-source (You can view the source code to make sure, they aren’t doing anything sketchy)
• Available on all desktop platform (Not on BSD, but I’m pretty sure you can compile it on BSD, but don’t quote me on that)
• Runs great on Intel iGPUs

Cons

• It barely uses your GPUs (It mainly uses CPU for all it’s stuff, this means rendering takes forever and playback is laggy. There is experimental GPU support but it doesn’t work for me unfortunately)
• Not many tutorial or documentation to teach you features and how to use it (There are a few, but it will not cover every feature that Kdenlive has)

Download: https://kdenlive.org/en/

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro is a video editor made by Adobe (Duh) It is available on Windows and MacOS. It is a pretty competent video editor provided you have enough horsepower, otherwise, it would be a crashing simulator. It has many nice effects that people will love. It’s not perfect though so here are some pros and cons:

Pros

• Many nice effects, and uses your GPU nicely
• Tutorial and Documentation everywhere!

Cons

• Adobe (Not a very good company, even if you pirate them it will still make you get used to Adobe products, and when you want to do something legal with it and earn money well…..)
• Very expensive when added up together (The subscription model is not good, It will cost you as long as you use the software)
• OS Support is limited (Only supporting Windows and MacOS)

Download: https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html

iMovie

iMovie is a video editor made by Apple, it is free of charge. iMovie is more meant for beginners but it’s really good at its job. I think it will serve what 70% of people want in a video editor (It even has green screen which is something I didn’t think they would have) Here are some pros and cons:

Pros

• Free of charge
• Very beginner-friendly

Cons

• Might be too basic (While it is more advanced than people might give it credit for, it’s still pretty limited)
• Limited OS support (Only supporting MacOS with stripped down version for iOS and iPadOS)

Download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/imovie/id408981434?mt=12

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a discontinued but still perfectly fine video editor from Microsoft. It is very basic, but it’s free of charge. It’s basically iMovie but iMovie is a little bit more advanced and better Ui and UX.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Simple to understand

Cons

• Too basic
• Discontinued, probably would not be installable soon
• Limited OS support (only on Windows)

Download: Not available to download anymore

Movie Maker

Movie Maker is a video editor made by V3TApps and it is the worst thing I’ve ever used, this thing is worse than Flimora. It is available on the Microsoft Store, You basically should never use this thing, just use Resolve or Kdenlive for a lower-powered PC. i’m gonna list some pros and cons anyways

Pros

• Easily downloadable from the Microsoft Store, without having to hunt and search online
• The UI feels like a Microsoft app

Cons

• Adware (Unless you pay the full version)
• Very laggy
• Limited OS support (Only Windows version that has the Microsoft store)
• Too Basic

Download: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/movie-maker-video-editor/9MVFQ4LMZ6C9?hl=en-us&gl=en&rtc=1

Conclusion

Well, this is all the video editors I’ve used. There are quite a few that I haven’t such as Blender, Final Cut Pro, OpenShot, Shotcut, Flowblade, Flimora (I’ve used it but not in huge amounts), or Capcut (Probably never gonna use this one, but as of right now? I like Resolve and Kdenlive, and I think it’s what you should use when you started to find which video editor you should use. What’s your opinion though?