The best way to find the video editor that's right for you is to try a number of different programs and see which one feels comfortable. Movavi is not as feature-rich as Premiere Elements, but it does have iMovie's pleasant white-on-gray color palette, large windows for viewing multiple clips, and an easy-to-access menu of transitions and special effects. MORE: 12 Mobile Video Editors for Your Smartphone or Tabletįor those who have had a taste of the forbidden Apple and can't live without something that resembles iMovie, there is one option: Movavi Video Editor. In addition to coming with a whole bevy of tutorials, from 'Instant movie basics' to 'Applying effects,' Premiere Elements has two modes: 'Quick' for users who want to just bang out a simple video, and 'Expert' for those who want to play around with up to three simultaneous video streams and five simultaneous audio streams. Adobe Premiere Elements, on the other hand, provides some of Premiere's best features with a much more manageable $100 price tag. If you want something that's both versatile and easy to use, however, you're going to have to shell out a few bucks.Īdobe Premiere Pro is one of the most popular choices among professional video editors, but its $800 price tag is admittedly not friendly for newcomers. They're free, so you have nothing to lose. Of course, if Kate's Video Toolkit or VSDC sound like a good fit for your needs, by all means, download them and try them out. Not that any of this is incredibly easy or intuitive, of course: Expect a lot of trial and error, combined with frequent trips to forums and infrequent support from the program's creators. VDSC has more features a veteran editor would expect, such as running two videos simultaneously (like the picture-in-picture feature on a TV), including multiple audio tracks (narration and a soundtrack) and being able to process a large variety of different video formats. The Video Software Development Community (VSDC) Video Editor exists at the opposite end of the usability spectrum.

That's about the extent of it, and your time would probably be better spent learning how to operate Movie Maker. Kate's Video Toolkit allows you to trim clips and join them back together with rudimentary transitions. This program is easy to use, but makes Movie Maker look positively robust in comparison.

Windows version of imovie