Free Video Editing Apps

There’s a lot of desktop-based editing software available for businesses looking to create promotional videos. The biggest advantage of free video editing software for desktops is that they tend to have more features than most mobile video editing apps.

If you’re looking to edit your promotional videos on a budget, check out our list of free video editing software you can use to edit long-form content for YouTube, your e-commerce site, or a variety of other platforms:

Lightworks

Lightworks includes a simple and intuitive interface, so it’s easy to pick up. Lightworks also offers a collection of detailed video tutorials, making it one of the more accessible and easy to learn Linux video editing software options on this list.

Lightworks has a suite of original stock videos and music clips licensed for use in any videos you edit on the program, letting you give a polished look to any marketing video.

Features include:

• High-quality simple trim functions for fast and precise video editing
• Speed optimization, letting you continue to edit while importing new content
• Multicam editing for syncing clips from multiple cameras
• Real-time team project sharing with full control over which user has editing access
• Easy sharing of videos with fast export to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Instagram
• Support for a wide range of video formats

VideoPad

VideoPad is a great free option for anyone who wants to create high-quality videos without spending a dime. With VideoPad, you’ll find all kinds of simple and easy-to-use features—such as 3D video editing and a sound effects library—to try different video compositions and styles. 

You can edit your videos with special effects, overlays, texts, and transitions, as well as colour adjustment and sound effects. Then export all your finished videos to YouTube, Facebook, Google Drive, and other mobile devices quickly and easily. 

The only drawback is that it may be too simple for advanced video editors. It doesn’t come with as many advanced features as some of the other free video editing software on this list, but with options to add light effects, fine-tune colours, and overlay text and images, there’s enough here to make it worth the free download.

Features include:

• Double built-in screen (one to preview selected clips, one to preview complete sequence) for easy and intuitive editing
• Pre-made, customizable transitions for polished professionalism
• Exporting presets to easily create video files optimized for specific platforms—such as Facebook and YouTube—and post them directly from within the software
• Social media sharing and publishing tools to share videos online instantly
• A large library of video transitions and visual effects to customize videos
• Video optimization tools, such as stabilization

VSDC Free Video Editor

VSDCis a full-featured free video editing tool that you can install on Windows. A fair warning though: This program might be a little hard to use for beginners because of the number of features and menus. However, if you poke around for a while and play with your videos within the editor, you'll find that it's not quite as daunting as it seemed when you first opened it.

There's even a wizard you can run to make things easier. Use it to add lines, text, and shapes, as well as charts, animations, images, audio, and subtitles. Plus, as any good video editor should, VSDC can export videos to a variety of file formats.

The VSDC Video Editor setup lets you easily install the company's video capture program and screen recorder. These are optional, but they may come in handy in certain projects.

Features include: 

• Colour-correction tools for a more professional look
• A full suite of transitional effects
• Easy-to-use image filters, similar to what you’d find on Instagram
• Mask tools for hiding, blurring or highlighting specific elements
• Social media link for sharing videos on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Vimeo
• HEVC/H.265 (an advanced video-compression standard), for maintaining the highest quality at the minimum file size—essential for processing 4K and HD files

iMovie

iMovie is free for macOS users. It offers many options for editing video and audio plus adding photos, music, and narration to your videos. It's easy for beginners to start using.

One of the best features of iMovie is its ability to make 4K-resolution movies. You can even start editing on your iPhone or iPad and then finish on your Mac.

Features include:

• Support for 4K resolution, allowing users to create cinema-quality films
• Cloud-storage functionality that allows you to work on the same project from your iPad, iPhone, and Mac
• Dozens of studio-quality title animations for professional-looking credits
• Stylish, contemporary video filters built for specific film genres, such as Western and sci-fi
• Built-in music, sound effects, and voiceover recording so your sound and picture editing are always consolidated
• Speed controls that let you make high-octane action scenes faster and sports highlights slower

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve combines professional 8K editing, colour correction, visual effects, and audio post-production in a single production tool, which is why it’s the software of choice for many professional editors of films, television shows, and commercials.

DaVinci allows for both offline and online editing, and its high-performance playback engine saves time when editing and trimming—even for processor-intensive file formats like H.264 and RAW. DaVinci Resolve’s complex features may be too extensive for some users, but its free version is perfect for more advanced projects.

Features include:

• Dual timeline for quick navigation, cutting, and trimming
• A dedicated trim interface that gives you the ability to edit in minute detail
• Intelligent auto-editing that syncs audio and visual clips for you
• Built-in tools for picture-in-picture effects, retiming, stabilization, dynamic zoom, text, and audio
• Facial recognition detects faces in your clips and automatically creates bins based on the people in each shot
• High-quality motion estimation speed changes and frame rate conversions to easily and realistically speed up or slow-down clips

HitFilm Express

If you don’t have a lot of experience with video editing, HitFilm Express may feel a little advanced at first—it’s used to produce Hollywood-style films—but it’s worth the learning curve, as it’s one of the best all-in-one free video editors available. (HitFilm does ask you to share a social media status update when you download the software, but that’s a small price to pay.)

HitFilm includes animation tools that let you create and edit audio and video transitions without the need to create composite shots, which is a huge time saver when editing.

Features include:

• Professional-grade video editing with motion tracking, colour pickers, and cropping tools
• Composite shot enhancements that allow you to animate two separate shots together for surreal video effects
• An auto-stabilizer to make shaky footage look smooth
• Unlimited video and audio timeline-track creation
• An adaptive trimmer that lets you re-trim your clips after adding them to the timeline
• Ability to copy a group of attributes from one clip and apply them directly to another or to a whole project
• Audio mixer for fine-tuning sound for professional-quality output
• Various transition options, such as push, zoom and dissolve