Hi guys.
Which video editing software are you using.
I’m looking for something free, basic and easy to use.
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MAc or Windows?
DaVinci Resiolve … Mac/Win
- Free?
- Basic? - Better than basic.
- Easy to use? - Takes a little bit of investment of time and effort, but the long-term potential makes it worthwhile.
There are others - but that’s the one I use and have got to really like.
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Sorry. I should have mentioned that. It’s windows.
Thanks I’ll give that a try.
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I use Hitfilm Express. Free for most functionality, you can buy add-on packs if you want to do something particularly fancy.
It’s pretty powerful - just resource hungry.
Seriously thinking about paying out the cash and switching to Premiere Pro.
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I moved from Premiere to Resolve.
Premiere is great but the cloud pricing is a bit annoying. You never own the software and the total cost racks up over the months or years.
Think I’m going to upgrade to the studio version of resolve. It’s £229 but at least you own it and your not shelling out to Adobe every month. It’s hard to justify £20+ per month for an amateur like myself who’s not out to make money.
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Yes, that’s the reason I’ve not done it so far.
Frankly I’m torn. My system struggles with Hitfilm, but I’m not sure whether it’s going to work with Premiere any better. Hitfilm is powerful, but it’s a bit impenetrable sometimes and most training resources are either Premiere or Final Cut Pro.
Might be better off buying a new laptop.
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My laptop is far from cutting edge, albeit about 1 year old. (Actually - it was an end of line - so technically more like 2/3 years old.)
Absolutely no issues using DaVinci Resolve.
Premiere can be alright on older laptops by reducing preview quality but may take a bit longer on export.
I used it on an old 3rd gen i5 laptop with integrated graphics. At 1/4 preview it was still usable but very slow to export.
You should be able to do a trial before starting a subscription.
Like Dave said though, Resolve is quite stable as well on older laptops and might be worth a shot since it’s free.
I shall give both a play then.
Hitfilm can be made a little less hungry by using proxies, but this eats HDD space and we go through a load of that already. I preview in 1/4 but it’s still not happy.
Sadly, I think the fundamental problem might be the laptop spec. It’s got an decent i7 processor in there, but with only 8GB RAM and a single HDD, it’s struggling.
I find that Resolve is very light on resource usage whilst editing compared to (older) Premiere and even pretty nippy with rendering, depending upon how many things it’s have to do to each frame, of course. The more tweaks one does, the more it has do at this stage - but that will be processor limiting rather than drives.
A second HDD could be a quick/cheap route to improved performance.
I do have source on the HDD and render to the SSD, but never checked the disk performance … mainly because it’s never been slow enough to investigate.
I’ll try a HDD->HDD render later and let you know what I find.
Thanks. That would be useful.
Thanks also for the real world view on resource demands. Very useful.
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I use film maker pro, it’s completely free, of course you can add bolt ons, but photos within videos or vids within vids, no problem. Titles are easy as well. I suppose it’s considered basic but it does a brilliant job and can be used on iPhone, iPad or computer. I can sit at work and edit stuff on my phone, it’s so easy to use.
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Definitely CPU limited. (It was rendering from D: to D: … the HDD, not the SSD)
Just 5GB of the memory was being used by Resolve
But that said, from some stills and a 10 min 1080 source, it took 3min 43secs to render a 3min 03sec 720p low compression MP4, (5:55 to 1080), one that had all sorts of significant speed changes (all gradual/sliding changes of speed), zooming, and grading.
For me - rendering speed/time isn’t that important, I want to be able to tinker at the edit stage without feeling I’m hitting the processor speed buffers … and that it does well.
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Haha you were properly thrashing that CPU!
Thanks for that. Very interesting.
Am getting slightly sick of having to save after every single edit action when editing 4K because the software just crashes repeatedly and then takes forever to compile. Much food for thought.
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Taken my first video but need help on what is an easy editing/ movie maker program. Bit of a silver suffer. Must admit not really been bothered about IT until now. Have windows 10 plus, mini iPad . Sorry to appear dumb but we all have to learn. Sadler left it for 75 years.
Moved your post over to a pre-existing thread that might already have the answer you are looking for. 
There’s also : Which video editing software
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As you are using Windows 10 then I can thoroughly recommend Windows Movie Maker.
Even though the app itself is discontinued it is super easy to use and, in my opinion, easy to understand and work your way through. It is limited due to its easy access but it will get you started. Follow this guide: How to install Windows Movie Maker on Windows 10 to install if you don’t have it already.
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