Video will continue to play a big part in business, social sharing in terms of communicating with your customers or potential customers.

A few years ago, I created a video to show what I felt were the best free video editing software I’ve tested. That video was one of the highest viewed video on my channel, but things have changed a lot since then.

Here’s the updated video.

At the moment, I use Shotcut and HitFilm Express. Both are equally good for what I do. HitFilm Express has a slight edge due to it being a free software with paid upgrades. It is more polished.

In terms of getting a video out fast, in someways Shotcut is better. Requires less clicking around to do somethings like adding titles.

Check out my courses if you want to learn how to use either Shotcut or HitFilm Express.

Video Transcript

The best free video editing software in 2019.

We will take a look at this in this video. If you don’t want to watch through the entire long video, then I will give you three what I think is the best free video. Number one, HitFilm Express, number two Shotcut, number three, DaVinci Resolve.

Okay, now if you want to see the other options and the reason why I choose these three, then you got to stick around and watch this video. Okay, so head on to the list and let’s look at what else is available out there.

Okay, now my criteria for choosing the best video editing software for me in 2019 is

  1. it has to be free, it must not have any watermarks,
  2. it should be able to create 1080p videos without any problems because hello, were are in 2019,
  3. it cannot be crippled in terms of the length

Some so called free software just let you create a minute, two minute videos, those are useless, alright.

What are some of the other options?

Number 1 is Blender. Blender is a free software. Unfortunately it is quite hard to use in my opinion. I’ve tried it because, actually Blender is a very powerful 3D compositing tool. You can make an entire movie inside your computer with Blender from scratch.

Okay, for video editing and for me, I found it a little bit difficult to learn and no so intuitive even though I’ve watched and tried my best, I scratch it off my list

But, if you are looking for a free 3D compositor, I think that is what is right for you.

Next on list is Lightworks. Now, I’ve tried before in the past as well I struggled a little bit but the software is good and in the past has been used to make movies and it has a good forum and I think a lot of people are still using Lightworks.

Unfortunately you can only Export to 720p for the free version. For the paid version, it can do I think it goes up to 1080p and also 4k and all that. Okay, so this the two.

Next up on the list is OpenShot. I tried OpenShot for a short while. Make a few videos there. It is not that intuitive it is not that polished and things are kind of slow. I’m not sure now as they’ve created a new version out.

Next up, my really close two and there are the two video editing software that I am using even today one is Shotcut at Shotcutapp.com I’m going to put the link down there Shotcutapp is actually quite a good free software.

What I liked about it is the interface is very clean so if your new to video editing you won’t get overwhelmed like with a lot of other video editor that you see because in the usual your editor the screen is just so cluttered up.

If you’re the type of person that is a slightly afraid of computers, you’d say “o shoot” when you see a video editor screen.

Okay then Shotcut is the one for you okay you can do green screen, multi track and all that on it and it is actively being developed so Shotcutapp.

Now HitFilm Expresses is also a free software. From the name you know that it is used for making movies movies. Right.

HitFilm Express

It is very polished software, however, learning HitFilm would take a little more time compared to Shotcut. There are just more options, menus etc.

However if you want some of the more advanced features then HitFilm express is a good choice I mean the advantage to Shotcut is that when I pull videos out from that camera this one that I’m shooting myself with this camera creates audio in terms of Dolby files.

Okay now I don’t use the audio from the camera naturally. It is just not good but I use it to sync it up okay I used the waveform to sync it up. And in HitFilm Express, It can’t get the waveform even when I pull I mean when I pull the audio from the camera. So syncing that fail become a little bit more difficult.

However in Shotcut there is no such difficulties.

Update Feb 2019 : The video above was recorded on Jan 2019. The good people at FXHome released the latest version of HitFilm Express on Feb 14. Now it possible to read the audio from my camera!

So one last software is DaVinci Resolve, the giant in the room. Davinci is a mighty powerful software. I read good things about it unfortunately I couldn’t get it to run on my laptop which is several years old i5, with 8GB of RAM apparently it needs more heavy duty hardware, the video card and maybe several video cards, to run best and several SSDs.

Okay but I’ve seen that some people I managed to get it chugging along with just one SSD. Again it is free so if you have a powerful computer you can check all of those out so anyway this is my take on the best video editing software for 2019.

If you need any tutorial check out the links I have some courses on using HitFilm Express and Shotcut. These are the two software that I’m using and one last thing or the second last thing is that video software is something that is personal to you it would depend on what’s best for you rather than what’s best for other people.

I’ve use Vegas or some version of Vegas in the past now I think it’s changed name. I’ve use software like Camtasia, I’ve used Movie Maker as well. In conclusion, in conclusion for somebody like me, and you saw some of the videos on my YouTube channel or my courses.

I would say HitFilm Express and Shotcut. One last thing remember do something small today. to build a better business. Until the next video.