Video Editing Software

[Jerry Bruette]

I'm looking for some video editing software for use with my Win7 system.
Things I'd like to have.

1. Ability to edit the length of the videos.
2. Ability to step through the video frame by frame and select a frame to have printed as a picture.
3. Free.
4. Easy to use. Sometimes I'm a little thick.

I'm not looking to merge videos or add a sound track. No fading in or out. I get videos on my game cameras and like to send the videos to my grand kids, but I hate sending a 2 minute video if there's only 20 seconds of action.

Dr. Google recommends Shotcut and VSDC. Anyone have experience with either of these or have another recommendation?

[Howard Garner]

OpenShot is free and might meet you requirements
I have used it some and had no problem learning it.

Howard Garner

[Jim Becker]

Adobe Premiere Elements (https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements/whats-new.html)

Yes, it has a $99 cost, but it's an excellent and easy to use application with good support. But that may be more capability than you are asking for given your description...

[Myk Rian]

I've been using Power Director for many years. There is a free version that I believe inserts a watermark. I found it to be very user friendly.

[Bill Carey]

Been using VSDC for about a month now, and I like it. Initially it looked WAY too complicated but once I started working with it, it wasn't too bad. Took me about an hour to import a video, split it into video and audio tracks, edit the video portion and record a new voice over. But there are many options I probably won't use, which is ok - ya never know. And they have an interesting business model: the software is free but to get the manual it costs you 19.99. Not the end of the world, just kinda weird. So I sprung for it and it helps a lot.

[Mike Henderson]

I've been using Power Director for many years. There is a free version that I believe inserts a watermark. I found it to be very user friendly.

I use PowerDirector, also - the pay version. It's pretty easy to learn. I don't use it that often so I have to learn it each time I use it.

I also have Adobe Premiere Elements but haven't learned how to use it yet. I use Photoshop Elements quite a bit and Adobe had a special to get Photoshop and Premiere for a cheap price so I bought it. I'll have to spend some time with it and learn it.

Mike

[David M Peters]

Hey Jerry, I'd recommend trying out DaVinci Resolve (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/), it's free and constantly updated and of very high quality. The company makes their money on high-end hardware and professional users so they can afford to humor us hobbyists.

I use it to simple edits - trim, transition and the occasional voice over. And they recently added an easier-to-use quick edit screen geared towards people like us.

[roger wiegand]

I've used a bunch of video editing software over the years, none of it seriously, so I never remember how any of it works between sessions. Deja vu all over again, as it were. Anyway, the last couple of projects I did I used iMovie, which came free on my computer. I was impressed, the learning curve was near zero and I could readily do everything I tried for simple editing tasks.

For other reasons I recently acquired a full Adobe subscription, so I'll give Premiere Pro a shot the next time around. I expect it will have more of a learning curve. It's what most of the folks I know who do video editing as part of their job use.

[Curt Harms]

Been using VSDC for about a month now, and I like it. Initially it looked WAY too complicated but once I started working with it, it wasn't too bad. Took me about an hour to import a video, split it into video and audio tracks, edit the video portion and record a new voice over. But there are many options I probably won't use, which is ok - ya never know. And they have an interesting business model: the software is free but to get the manual it costs you 19.99. Not the end of the world, just kinda weird. So I sprung for it and it helps a lot.

That business model is not unheard of. Red Hat Enterprise Linux software is free, the $$ is for support. IBM just bought Red Hat for $34 billion so that business model worked pretty well in that case. For video editing, there is kdenlive. I've never used it, just know the name. Price is right, free but it might be somewhat complex to install, dunno. I also don't know if it'll work with Windows 7.

https://kdenlive.org/en/download/

[Steve Schlumpf]

I have Shotcut and used it to edit videos of my granddaughter. Zero experience with video up to that point and it did take reading/experimenting with the software for a bit but overall, it was easy to use, did what I wanted and it was free. Not sure how easy it, or any video editor, would be to use on Win7 as it processor taxing while using.