Video Editing Software for PC.

Looks like people on here use Video editing software on the videos they post.

So which Video editing software would people recommend, preferably free, although good software can be worth paying for.

Main use would be making short excerpts from videos\sound taken with one of my cameras, Akaso Brave4 or Techalogic FHD1080.

PC Is currently Windows 8, laptop is Windows 10.

I'm a long time user of Sonic Foundry Vegas, which was so good Sony bought it and the whole of Sonic Foundry then rebadged it as Sony Vegas Pro... and there Vegas languished with few updates for many years until it was bought by a German company which renamed it Magix Vegas and also other versions using the same general codebase, which I believe they have been improving.

I like it because it's p*ss easy to use. Literally drag and drop, far less settings to worry about than Premiere, DaVinci etc. Unless you need to dig for advanced settings, the defaults generally work great. I rarely use many of it's advanced features for Youtube videos, and I have the old Sony version which doesn't output 4k video. It can accelerate rendering utilising some graphic cards, but you'd have to ask Magix about which.

https://www.magix.com/gb/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Pro

Edited September 4, 20223 yr by I893469365902345609348566

Thanks for the suggestions.

I am going to give PowerDirector and DaVinci a go, hopefully I can run them inside a virtual machine so I dont have to install and then un-install on my main desktop.

Magix does have links to a 'free' version, but it looks like yo have to pay a years subscription (circa £28) to use it.

ShotCut - open source - a lot of youtube tutorials, I use the basics and have a slow lappy and not the best keyboard trackpad for my PC it's hard to master - but you will require a decent I5/I7/Ryzen 5+ CPU and good spec PC/laptop ie 16GB ram win 10 SSD not hardisk and GPU 1660+ etc. Encoding is easier & faster with GPU.

Free versions normally have limitations unless you pony up, watermarks encoding restrictions etc

My Dad just gave up on win8 and got win 11 new lappy, support ends soon for win8

hopefully I can run them inside a virtual machine so I dont have to install and then un-install on my main desktop.

Some types of software run fine in VMs however audio and video editing apps tend not to work very well due to the latency, the VM cannot keep up.

I changed to Apple many years ago after continual problems video editing on a PC. Bought an imac with FCP6. Although I have upgraded the imac at some time, I still have a partition on the drive so that I can continue to edit on FCP6.

OK, not everyone's cup of tea, but it has served me well.

On the other partition of the HD, I have FCPX, but I still need FCP6 to be able to download my video files from CF card. Or at least, that is the easiest way I have found. Very outdated, I know, But it will serve my purposes.

My Dad just gave up on win8 and got win 11 new lappy, support ends soon for win8

My desktop was aging Windows 7 and some modern Software I wanted would not run on it.

So I installed Windows 10, what a disaster. It was real real real slow opening up programs and compiling stuff.

I gave up on it, ran up an install of Windows 8 (on the exact same hardware) and that is around 3 times faster even doing basic stuff like opening programs etc. Chalk and cheese.

Not tried Windows 11 but if Windows 10 is anything to go by, I doubt I will bother.

Some types of software run fine in VMs however audio and video editing apps tend not to work very well due to the latency, the VM cannot keep up.

Sure, I realise that. But its fine for testing stuff. You take a snapshot before installing software you want to test then when you have checked it roll back to the original VM.

Last job before retiring was Windows network support. We had around 600 Windows servers to look after, around half were VMs.

aging Windows 7

What spec? I am running an I7-3770 (3rd gen) on desktop with a GTX960 also SSD for OS - I would say you may get away with a GTX 7XX but the support is limited - My desktop will handle editing fine but like mentioned its mainly a NAS/ media streaming/gaming rig from the sofa with a TV as a monitor so I didn't bother with a decent wireless keyboard although it works well enough I wish I had now but price was £25 or £100+

Oh the better half is not chuffed with me, I got busted looking at rescue rigs on CEX - its a gamble really PSU wise but video edit on the cheap(ish) throw in a 240GB SSD £22 & another 8GB ram (all could be purchased later)

https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail?id=sdescusi5457069b&categoryName=desktops-windows&superCatName=computing&title=custom-i5-4570-8gb-ddr3-500gb-hdd-gtx-1050ti-w10-b&referredFrom=search&queryID=5889081ba08c0d1a2d91e377a593e07c&position=49

I am tempted myself lol darn energy futures might not be able to power it next month.

Magix does have links to a 'free' version, but it looks like yo have to pay a years subscription (circa £28) to use it.

Looks like they've gone the subscription route like many. But you can try before you buy. Make sure you're trying the version you're thinking of possibly buying.

If software and hardware are stable, even old computers can render video. I edit @1080P using Sony Vegas on a Core2Quad Q9400, 2GB RAM, ATI 5450 running Windows XP. Renders are slow but complete if no heavy effects are added. Too many pointless effects in the chain make it crash, like my creaky old PC did while rendering this. Three hours and was it worth it? Well, no lol. Proceeding slowly because...badgers!

@1m 11s A pedestrian stopped, like the badger but further away, and not directly in front of my front wheel this time. There was more time and space to stop voluntarily.

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by I893469365902345609348566

My desktop was aging Windows 7 and some modern Software I wanted would not run on it.

 

So I installed Windows 10, what a disaster. It was real real real slow opening up programs and compiling stuff.

 

I gave up on it, ran up an install of Windows 8 (on the exact same hardware) and that is around 3 times faster even doing basic stuff like opening programs etc. Chalk and cheese.

 

Not tried Windows 11 but if Windows 10 is anything to go by, I doubt I will bother.

Re Windows 8, yikes don't do it..

It sounds like your Win7 to Win10 upgrade didn't go well if your having performance issues that bad. I would wipe the HD and do a clean install, I did this recently on my gaming PC as and it runs really well now.

Sure, I realise that. But its fine for testing stuff. You take a snapshot before installing software you want to test then when you have checked it roll back to the original VM.

 

Last job before retiring was Windows network support. We had around 600 Windows servers to look after, around half were VMs.

My laptop is a Macbook Pro Retina 15" mid 2014 with i7-4870HQ with 16GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M second graphics card.

It's dual-boot with Windows7 Bootcamp OS native as default but I can boot into MacOS too when I need to. When I bought this is was one of the most powerful off the shelf laptops available, today it still performs very well but I have looked after it an cleaned it out internally regularly, reapplied thermal paste to CPU and GPU etc, replaced battery pack etc. with iFixit and generally taken care of it. Adobe Premier runs like a dream on it in native Win7

I have VMWare running (had it for many many years now, before I used to use Ghost floppy to clone everything), however attempting to run any audio/video SW causes issues in any VM, it will stutter, especially video, the VM cannot cope...trust me even with basic tasks. So I'm not sure that a VM is even fit for purpose for testing these types of apps as it will be a terrible experience?

What spec?

Cannot recall exactly, but I do remember the laptop I am using here was about the same, so I guess the desktop was;

Core I7 @ 2.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, OS on SSD.

What was clear was how much slower it was on Windows 10 versus Windows 7 and 8, on the same hardware. Too much fancy stuff in Windows 10 maybe.

So I'm not sure that a VM is even fit for purpose for testing these types of apps as it will be a terrible experience?

I will let you know, I will be using Oracle VirtualBox on this laptop, as its free, I do have a licensed version of VM Workstation 14 on my desktop.

This laptop is Core I7 2.8Ghz, 24GB RAM, single SSD hard disk.

Too much fancy stuff in Windows 10 maybe.

did you fresh/clean install win 10 or follow the upgrade path via windows updates. I find a clean install complete format works better.

There's some way of shoe-horning Windows 7 into 12th gen Intel CPU based systems, and this thought is making me itch. Luckily I don't need one, i7 4790 on my video editing PC is fine for now. Powerful graphics cards are much more available these days, and with new Intel discrete graphic cards coming onto the market, there will be lower priced GPU acceleration of video editing soon (one hopes).

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/09/intel_arc_pro/

Windows 7 will be my final Microsoft OS. I've installed "Never 10":

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by guerney

ShotCut - open source - a lot of youtube tutorials

Open source video editors really have advanced since the last time I looked. Shotcut supports LUT (Look Up Tables) colour profile files - I've just downloaded the portable version and will give it a whirl. It also supports multi-core processing, which may be of interest to [mention=11305]soundwave[/mention], if Shotcut multicores across two Xeon CPUs on his server board. I recall he mentioned Davinci doesn't.

At home I use Sony Vegas Professional 13 on Windows 7, and Adobe Premier at work. Editing with Vegas is rapid, and Shotcut seems to have taken many cues from it's user interface, which is good thing - means the learning curve may be similarly short.

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by guerney

Last job before retiring was Windows network support. We had around 600 Windows servers to look after, around half were VMs.

600?!?! You'll regret revealing that - I now know who to PM when Windows plays up...

did you fresh/clean install win 10 or follow the upgrade path via windows updates. I find a clean install complete format works better.

Yep - upgrades to Windows 10 are awfully unstable and slow at work. Clean installs work a lot better, but I'm sticking to Windows 7 at home... Never 10!

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

I will let you know, I will be using Oracle VirtualBox on this laptop, as its free, I do have a licensed version of VM Workstation 14 on my desktop.

Please do report back on how that goes? I very much doubt graphic card co-processing will work terribly well, but look forward to being wrong.

Windows 7 will be my final Microsoft OS. I've installed "Never 10":

And Microsoft have assured us that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows.

And Microsoft have assured us that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows.

In base 10, 11 usually follows - Microsoft makes far more profit selling cloud, which is worrying. Means they'll keep churning out half-ar&sed, flaky ill thought out incompetent operating systems. It wouldn't be so bad if Apple wasn't making their own CPUs, else I'd consider assembling hackintoshes in future.