So, you are in the market for a free Video editing software that suits YouTube.
Ideal, because in this article we have our compilation list for our top picks, and we compare the features and pricing for you.
If you just want the best choice, we’ve added that right at the top of the article as this was what is most requested by our customers. So, that’ll be the “can’t go wrong” option.
Otherwise, feel free to explore all the options we’ve reviewed on the market to find something that might fit you a little better.
Enjoy the list!
The best free editing software for YouTube specifically.
YouTube is the most prominent platform for uploading clips and building a viewer base. Moreover, it offers revenue according to your likes, plays and subscribers. The trick to growing your YouTube channel is to design high-quality videos. However, as a newbie Youtuber, you may not be willing to splash on a high-end video editing software. Have a look at the products below to pick the best free video editing software for YouTube specifically:
1. VSDC
VSDC is one of the few free video editing tools in the market: without any watermarks or export limitations. It lets you create professional level nonlinear videos with its highly intuitive editing workspace. With VSDC, you can cut, split or rotate any video, clone subjects, add speed ramps and apply quick filters.
VSDC Features
Here are some exclusive features of VSDC:
Nonlinear editor: VSDC offers a nonlinear editor, allowing you to add random animations or objects and place them anywhere in your video layout. You don't have to adhere to linear rules while inputting motion graphics to your clip edits.
Motion Tracking: VSDC offers an inbuilt motion tracking feature, enabling you to analyze the object trajectory and assign it to the other subjects in your video. You can recreate older video effects by copying the motion trajectory and using it in an entirely different clip.
Sound Edits: VSDC offers a specially designed feature for music video creators. You can synchronize your video motions with the sound or beat effects. It helps you create a professional and dynamic music video, enhancing your video's outlook and providing a captivating viewer experience.
AI Art Generator: VSDC allows you to use AI-powered tools to generate artistic effects for your media files. Moreover, you have to do zero work as VSDC's art generator is a completely automated tool. With the AI art generator, you can add quirky effects to your video clips and animations.
HSL Chroma Key: VSDC offers a versatile chrome key mode, which identifies the dull or alienated colours in your video clips. You can manually readjust the newly added colours on your videos with a dial and determine the intensity of the chroma key effect.
Speed Ramps: VSDC offers quality speed ramping tools, allowing you to double up the speed or apply slow-motion effects. Moreover, all effects within VSDC are processed instantly with almost no wait time for rendering.
VSDC Pricing
VSDC offers 2 Pricing options for its video editing tools.
The "Free" version is priced at $0 and offers audio effects, video filtration, plus unlimited media exports.
The "Pro" version is priced at $19.99 and offers all functionalities of VSDC video editing tools. Moreover, it provides hardware acceleration, leading to much swifter processing.
2. DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve offers post-production and video editing tools to enhance your clips. It helps you make your edits appear true to life with animation effects and colour correction. DaVinci Resolve is an all-round tool for all your editing requirements and enables you to offer your viewers immersive clips that capture their attention.
DaVinci Resolve Features
Here are some exclusive features of DaVinci Resolve:
Node-Based Workflow: DaVinci offers a node-based workflow, enabling you to do colour grading without creating multiple instances. You can move the nodes around or copy one specific node from one workflow to another. It enables you to see the order of your image processing.
Moreover, DaVinci Resolve offers multiple types of nodes. You can add serial nodes, parallel nodes, mixers, layer nodes and outside nodes. DaVinci Resolve allows you to pass alpha channels through different nodes, giving rise to immeasurable possibilities.
Power Grades: DaVinci Resolve provides multiple ways to copy one grade on a clip to another. When you capture a still in DaVinci Resolve, you can access all nodes attached to that still. You can drag and drop these stills into your power grades. Your power grades remain consistent throughout all projects in your DaVinci Resolve database.
Contrast and Pivot Sliders: Contrast slider in DaVinci Resolve works differently compared to its competitors. It has another slider attached called the pivot. The contrast and pivot sliders are insanely powerful tools. DaVinci's sliders create an s-curve in your contrast. Moreover, you can adjust and intensify the curve. It compresses your highlights and shadows to avoid clipping.
Primaries/Offset wheels: In DaVinci Resolve, the primaries wheels and the offset function are efficiently hinged to help you grade and balance your images. The lifts, gain, offset, and primaries wheels correlate to shadows, mid-tones and highlights.
DaVinci Resolve Pricing
DaVinci Resolve offers 2 Subscription plans for its video editing software.
The Free plan is priced at $0 and offers core editing features to help you create clip edits.
The DaVinci Resolve Studio plan is priced: at $295 for a one-time license fee. It offers a 32K resolution, advanced HDR delivery and 120 frames per second. Moreover, you get advanced noise reduction and lens distortion.
3. VideoPad
VideoPad is an intuitive video editing software that offers smooth clip transitions and stunning effects. It's essentially designed to create social media clips and offers video optimization; to easily trim or mix videos. Additionally, VideoPad offers digital audio tools to help you mix and master your voice or sound tracks.
VideoPad Features
Here are some exclusive features of VideoPad:
Video Stabilization: VideoPad removes the camera shake from your video clips and stabilizes the video to create professional studio-quality footage. You can tweak the stabilization settings to maintain a touch of rawness or use the custom presets and let VideoPad determine the best stabilization settings for your clip.
Subtitles: Nowadays, Subtitles are necessary for every video type to reach a wider viewer base and get more reach for your YouTube channels. With VideoPad, you can add or edit the subtitles at every frame. Moreover, you can decide; how long you want your subtitles to appear after the voice-over ends or proceeds to the next dialogue.
Transitions: VideoPad offers several transitions to merge distinct clips or media. You can combine multiple scenes with crossfades, dissolves and zooms. VideoPad's transitions are ideal for creative social media reels or TikTok videos and allow you to set the scene for viewers. Moreover, you can add overlays and 360⁰ effects to your clip edits.
Digital Audio Tools: VideoPad also acts as a digital audio workstation by allowing you to mix and master your music tracks. It offers several sound effects like echo, delay and distortion. With VideoPad's digital audio tools, you can submerge your soundtracks with video clips effortlessly.
VideoPad Pricing
VideoPad offers 3 Pricing options for its video editing and digital audio tools.
The "Free Edition" is priced at $0 and is available for personal use without any signup.
The "Master's Edition" is priced at $129 for a one-time license fee and offers unlimited video and audio tracks.
The "Home edition" is priced at $70 for a one-time license fee and offers all features but only 2 Audio tracks. It does not come with any external plugins.
4. LightWorks
LightWorks is among the best free video editing software available in the market. It's a great tool to perform high-end video editing without paying a dime. LightWorks enables you to import assets and create footage with its user-friendly and intuitive interface. Moreover, it offers all the professional editing tools required to create immersive clips.
LightWorks Features
Here are some exclusive features of LightWorks:
Timeline Time Savers: LightWorks offers proxy workflows, helping you increase your proxy file performance from any media quality. Moreover, you don't have to wait for effect rendering or exports. With LightWorks, you can continue with your video edits while the tedious operations happen in the background. LightWorks automatically saves your progress, ensuring you don't lose your ongoing edits due to an unexpected sudden shutdown.
Creative Control: LightWorks offers you complete control over creativeness by providing powerful timelines and motion graphics. LightWorks' timeline is designed to ease your job and create fast edits. It comes with several preloaded graphic templates that help efficiently prepare quality video edits.
Cloud Connectivity: LightWorks provides cloud connectivity, ensuring your files are always accessible and do not take up your hard drive space. Moreover, you can perform edits directly from the cloud storage by dropping clips into your timeline.
Flexible Layouts: LightWorks gives you freedom over your application's layout. So you can work on an interface that boosts your productivity. It lets you determine the nits and grits of customization to help you speed up the editing process.
VFX: LightWorks offers several creative transitions, colour corrections and filters to help you design videos. You can use titling and OpenFX plugins to play around with the VFX and give a professional outlook to your videos.
LightWorks Pricing
LightWorks offers 3 Pricing options for its video editing software.
The "Free" plan is priced at $0 and offers core video editing features. You can create edits without Watermarks and do background processing.
The "Create" plan is priced at $9.99/month and is OFX compatible. It offers a digital audio workstation, 4K resolution and advanced transitions.
The "Pro" plan is priced at $23.99/month and offers audio EQ and mixing. Additionally, it supports several camera formats and provides advanced metadata.
5. KineMaster
KineMaster is a mobile video editing software that lets you edit and create promotional videos. It helps you discover creativity and manage video editing projects for any business niche. You can use your media library to create transitions between videos and perfectly crafted content for your social media.
KineMaster Features
Here are some exclusive features of KineMaster:
Social Media Logos: KineMaster lets you add png files and social media logos to your video edits. You can add animations, fades and texts to these logos to present your social media information to your viewers. KineMaster automatically removes the background from your png files and lets you drop the logo anywhere on the video.
Trimming: KineMaster offers trim presents to help you swiftly edit out the unnecessary parts of your media files. Alternatively, you can grab the end of a clip and drag it with your mouse for trimming. However, it is not calculative, and you may end up trimming out parts that you didn't intend. With presets, you can move your KineMaster playhead and line it up to the trimming point.
Pan and Zoom: KineMaster's pan and zoom features allow you to control the zooming effect between the clip's beginning and ending points. When you add the pan and zoom effect to a video, the clip slowly starts zooming in to the focal point, making your video edits more immersive.
Colour Correction: KineMaster provides colour grading capabilities within its video editing tool. You can adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and vibrance of your clips. It helps you get a professional looking style for your videos by customizing the colour grading according to your video type.
Cinematic Bars: KineMaster lets you add black bars to make cinematic looking videos. You can download png files and add them to your video edits to create a professional outlook for YouTube videos.
KineMaster Pricing
KineMaster offers 1 Pricing option for its video editing tool.
KineMaster Professional edition is priced at $4.99/month and offers access to premium assets. It removes the watermark and adds new library files every month.
KineMaster Free edition is priced at $0 and offers core video editing tools. However, you cannot remove the KineMaster watermark from your videos.
Why use video editing software at all?
Video editing software enables you to create high-quality edits and add effects to your videos.
You can perform all editing from a single interface and even render your videos for optimization. It ensures your videos are unique and fun to watch for viewers.
The general aim behind creating a video is to build your brand name and grow your viewer base. However, with tons of videos available for every niche, it's quite difficult to stand out from your competitors. Video editing software ensures you have all the necessary tools to create studio-quality edits and provide a captivating experience for your viewers.
Why should you use free editing software for YouTube?
Nowadays, YouTube is used: by almost everyone, especially content creators, to grow their viewer base. Having or shooting videos is actually the basic part that every YouTuber is familiar with and carries out. So, you need a tool that enhances your video quality to set yourself apart from your competition.
However, as a beginner YouTuber, you might not have the funds to spend on a dedicated video editing tool. With the emergence of YouTube, several companies have started offering free subscriptions and tools to help you perform basic video editing.
A free video editing software enables you to create high-quality videos for your YouTube channel without adding to your expenses. You can design high-resolution edits and studio-level content to provide a professional outlook to your videos.
Free Video editing software allows you to add transitions and keyframe animations to your footage, improving and elevating its quality. Moreover, it offers drag and drop functionality to help easily add new elements to your tracks.
Free editing software for YouTube, A Summary
Free video editing software enables you to enhance your YouTube videos without splurging any amount for a license fee. It provides all core features and is the best option for beginners or newbie YouTube channels to colour correct or trim their clips.
VSDC offers a free video editing software with several high-end functionalities. You can arrange your video clips and mix your audio to create a dynamic final cut. It is our suggested pick for free editing software that suits YouTube. Visit the website to get started.
