Non Linear Video Editor For Mac

You want to be the supreme ruler of your own virtual cutting room? Better break out the checkbook—your film-chopping powers aren't going to come cheaply.

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Linear Video Editing Software for Mac? 76 Posted by Cliff on Tuesday September 07, 2004 @07:20PM from the editing-without-post-production dept. Vilorman asks: 'Everyone knows that there is tons of linear video editing hardware out for Windows and Mac. Flowblade is a multitrack non-linear video editor for Linux. Like the above-discussed ones, this too is a free and open source software. Like the above-discussed ones, this too is a free and open source software. VSDC Video Editor: A Free Video Editor Software VSDC is a non-linear video editor which is completely free with no hidden cost, trial period or watermark. You can use it for editing video files and creating videos with various visual and audio effects.

Earlier this week we asked you what video editing software you thought was best. You responded in force, and we're back to share the top six tools Lifehacker readers use to edit their videos. While we normally limit the Hive Five strictly to five options, given that several of the options here cost more than a used car, we've expanded this Hive in order to provide a balanced spread. In this particular Hive Five, we can't promise cheap and open source, but we can promise that the contenders are—price tags and all—worthy of inclusion. A final note regarding pricing: many of the video editors can only be purchased as part of a bundle of software. For example, Adobe Premiere is part of the Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium bundle, and also includes, among other software, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.

Best Video Editing Software?

You're not the kind of person that leaves video unedited. No ma'am, with the right…

Sony Vegas Pro / Windows / $450

Sony Vegas Pro has the distinction of being frequently noted as an overlooked but high-powered underdog by many readers. While it doesn't sport as flashy of a resume as say Final Cut Pro, it is feature-packed. Vegas Pro had the ability to mix multiple video formats and resolutions without recoding, a full seven years before Final Cut Pro added the same feature. Vegas Pro started life as an audio editor and was later bought by Sony, but between its roots and Sony inheritance it brought superior sound editing tools to the table before its competitors, and still boasts impressive audio capabilities. Like Final Cut Pro, Vegas Pro has support for add-ons for Vegas Pro, which are actually user scripts coded in Visual Basic or Java Script, cranked out by communities online. Vegas Pro has no specialized hardware requirements and operates on nearly any Windows based machine, giving it both a price and compatibility edge over more expensive and hardware dependent video editors.

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iMovie / Mac / $79

When your Mac-loving friends get that look in their eyes and say things like 'It just works!' they're under the influence of gems like iMovie. iMovie is a consumer-level movie editing tool available as part of the iLife bundle of media tools. It features professional touches like frame stabilization for smoother movie playback, has drag and drop editing, easy to configure transitions, and even easier special effects for headache-free movie editing. You can get down to the dirty business of creating your stop-motion Lego mini figure space opera without needing to get bogged down thanks to the simple time lines and the easy to use interface in iMovie.

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Adobe Premiere Pro / Windows/Mac / $799

A veritable wise old man in the video editing world, Adobe Premier has been around for 18 years. One of the strongest selling points for Premier, aside from the rock-solid editing provided by nearly two decades of improvements, is the tight integration with other software packages in the Adobe Creative Suite, like Adobe After Effects. Premier lays claim to having some of the fastest HD video importing around, and even supports importing video projects from Apple Final Cut Pro. One of Premier's killer features is the built in speech-to-text function, which creates a search ready index of spoken words in your video. No more scrubbing through hours of footage looking for an exact quotel; you can search directly for it.

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Final Cut Pro / Mac / $1299

Video Editor For Mac Review

Final Cut Pro has built quite a resume in a very short period of time. Several Hollywood movies have been edited using just Final Cut Pro, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, No Country for Old Men, and Cold Mountain. If it's good enough for academy award winners, and assuming your pocket book can handle it, it should be more than good enough for your next epic masterpiece. Final Cut Pro supports non-linear and non-destructive editing of a wide variety of video formats. You can easily mix video files of varying formats and resolutions without having to spend time recoding the files. There are extensive tools for filtering and color correcting your video built right in with support for third party plugins. Since version 4 you've been able to apply effects in real time thanks to the introduction of DynamicRT.

Windows Movie Maker / Windows / Free

Although Windows Movie Maker has played second fiddle to the robust iMove in the consumer market—especially since were released around the same time—it's tough to beat free when all you need is basic editing. Windows Movie Maker supports video transfer from most consumer camcorders via FireWire and USB, and sports a time-line-based interface for easy drag and drop shuffling of your video clips. Windows Movie Maker supports over a 100 transitions and movie effects, and the Vista version has Direct3D integration for even higher quality effects. All effects are grabbed from XML, so you can create your own with a little know-how, or look to repositories on the web to find more.

Avid Media Composer / Windows/Mac / $2500

First released in 1989 for the Mac II, Avid Media Composer is the dominant application in professional broadcast and moving editing. Avid Media Composer has extensive support for multiple cameras, making it easy to group and select the best shots. There are a host of effects like inter-frame cloning and removal of imperfections when importing non-digital sources. Avid Media Composer stands out from other high-end video editors by including non-Avid products in its software bundle. Rather that reinventing already excellent products from other companies, Avid bundles software from third parties to fill needed roles like Sonicfire Pro for advanced audio editing and Sorenson Squeeze 5 for DVD compression. The newest version of Avid Media Composer can be used as a stand-alone application, unlike prior versions which were tightly integrated with bundled hardware and network storage tools.

Now that you've seen the contenders for top video editor, it's time to log your vote:

Best Video Editing Software?
( surveys)

If you have something to add—especially if you voted Other—sound off in the comments below to share your video editing tips with your fellow readers.

Video editing can be a very sophisticated task. Mac users are famous for their skills in this area. Two applications stand out for their excellence and quality, namely Final Cut Pro and Blender. Both have been used in famous films and TV programs. Here below is a description of these two apps and five others that are also a frequent choice amongst Mac users.

1. Movavi Video Editor For Mac

Movavi is a video editor application for the Mac that has a free version as well as a more full-featured Pro alternative. It runs on the Mac OS X 10.7 or later and is an easy to learn editing tool that can be mastered in well under an hour. Let’s take a look at the features included in this powerful editing software.

Free Features

The free version of Movavi is in itself an extremely useful tool for video editing. You can export your finished video to any of the popular video formats as well as uploading directly online.
Filters such as Pop-art and Old Movie let you easily add character to your home videos for a distinctive finished product.
One of the best features of Movavi is their new Montage Wizard. Incorporating elements of artificial intelligence, the program can take your footage and edit it to create a complete movie including the music of your choice.
Audio is an important facet of any quality video and Movavi offers the user a full suite of audio tools. You can manipulate audio frequency, remove background noise, and easily add sound effects to your video.
A beat detection feature lets you easily sync your video with its musical soundtrack.
The program enables you to add voice-overs or input from musical instruments for more creative flexibility.
Stickers and music tracks are provided and can easily be used with your video projects.
Capture video directly from your webcam and start editing it immediately.

Pro Features

In addition to all of the features in the free version, the professional tool adds sample videos and more music tracks. It also introduces keyframe animation to add movement to titles and overlay clips. Whether you opt for the pro or free version, Movavi gives you the ability to create quality videos in a simple and painless manner.

2. Filmora for Mac

Filmora by Wondershare is a powerful video editing application for your Mac machine running OS X 10.10 or later. Its intuitive design makes it easy for anyone to create great videos using its array of advanced features. The developers have included creative tools that enable the user to make outstanding videos by dragging and dropping moving graphics into your videos or adding effects by taking advantage of their regularly updated effects store. You can download a free trial version of Filmora to see if it’s right for you.

Free Features

With Filmora, you can edit and export videos at a resolution up to 4K and the tool makes it simple to import photos and clips from social media platforms.
You can reverse your clips and play them backwards, and frame by frame previewing is available for more precise editing.
Speed control that allows you to speed up or slow down your video up to 100 times, makes the tool an excellent choice for time-lapse videos.
Other features that give you more creative flexibility include camera shake effects, color tuning, and the ability to easily remove background noise.
You can add up to 5 text tracks and 10 music tracks to your video’s timeline.

Pro Features

In addition to Filmora’s basic features, the application includes advanced tools that allow you to create professional grade videos. Editing is made easier by the scene detection feature, which identifies scene changes automatically. Audio separation, equalization, and mixing capabilities let you fine tune the sound of your video. You can split your screen to play two or more videos at once and layering of multiple video clips can be done with the picture-in-picture feature. With advanced text editing that allows you to animate the text and titles of your videos, Filmora provides a powerful video editing tool for your Mac.

3. iMovie

iMovie was developed by Apple Inc. for its iOS and Mac devices. Released in 1999, it has been enhanced in later versions.

This app is a simple video editor for Mac that can be used to import videos using FireWire, from a USB drive or a hard drive. It has basic editing capabilities that can be used in video clips, to add effects and music. It also has video enhancing and color correction tools.

Overall, iMovie is ideal for the person looking for an easy to use tool, who is mainly interested in doing some basic editing to movie clips.

4. Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs, initially developed by Macromedia Inc. and later continued by Apple Inc. This well-known professional video editor for Mac stands out for its user-centered design, which has resulted in Final Cut Pro being at the top amongst the Mac video editing software programs currently available on the market.

The secret behind Final Cut Pro’s success is its interface, which has been designed based on non-computerized editing workflows, and thus, working the same way professionals do. Its interface has four main windows for organizing, editing and viewing. They are the browser, the timeline, the canvas and the viewer.

The browser is a virtual space for referencing and arranging clips. It is complemented by the timeline, where clips are grouped in sequences, which can also be nested inside other sequences. The canvas is used to output the contents of the timeline, and editing them with features such as overwrite, replace, insert, fit to fill and superimpose.

Finally, the viewer shows the content for each different channel of the selected clip’s audio, and has tools to adjust for scale, opacity, cropping, rotation, distortion and many more.

Final Cut Pro’s many users reflect the success of its design approach. In 2007 they amounted to 47% of the professionals in the USA market. Prizes, such as the Primetime Emmy Engineering Award in 2002, echoed this market judgment.

This video editing software for Mac has a proven record of excellence in the many movies in which it has been used. Amongst the best known titles in a long list are: The Rules of Attraction (2002), Happy Feet (2006), The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2009), Gamer (2009), By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (2009), The Patrol (2013), and the recent Saved by Grace (2016).

Other technical information includes being written in the Cocoa language, outputting films in DV, P2 MXF, HDV, XDSCAM, 2K, 4K and 5K, and running on Intel-based Mac computers supported by OS X Yosemite or later versions.

Based on its success, Apple has presented this app to the market in two versions: Pro and Express. This second version presents the same interface, but without some advanced functionality. Aimed at the non-professional editor, it is available at a more affordable price.

5. Blender

Blender is an open source and free video editing software for Mac with an outstanding differentiator over other similar apps: great functionality. Much more than just rendering – Blender is also a capable free video editor for Mac.
Written in C, C++ and Python, and available for Mac OS X 10.6 and above, this software has been used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, video games, engineering simulations, and many more.

Although Blender has been described as difficult to use, it has been very successful on the market. This app has been used for television commercials in several countries, amongst them Australia, Iceland, Brazil, Russia, and Sweden. It is currently used by the History Channel and NASA, and has been a tool for the film Spider-Man 2.

Features

Its vast array of features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animation, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and composing, and an integrated game engine.

This free video editing software Mac works by organizing data into data blocks of different types. Blocks are grouped in objects, which are edited in different modes.

The video editing is done with its Video Sequence Editor (VSE), which has plenty of functions. Examples are: Gaussian blur, color grading and several transformations.

In summary, Blender has filled a niche where high technical functionality is required. This great video editing software for Mac is the best option for complex editing tasks, such as engineering simulation and sophisticated 3D animations.

6. Avidemux

Avidemux is an open source and free video editing software for Mac, whose main characteristic is user-friendliness. Its ease of use and installation, with the added availability of a good tutorial, makes Avidemux an ideal tool for beginners in video editing.

The app can work with many video formats such as DVD, MPEG, AVI and many more. It can also handle several common audio formats, such as WAV, MP3, AAC and others.

In addition, it includes several functions for editing, cutting and filtering, which make this app a very practical tool.

In brief, Avidemux is a great tool for the beginner or unsophisticated video editor, who prefers something friendly and easy to learn.

7. Kdenlive

Kdenlive, which stands for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor, is an open source video editor for Mac. It is based on the MLT Framework, which is characterized by simplicity.

The application supports many formats, including AVI, QuickTime, FlashVideo, WMV and MPEG, among others. It also supports 16:9 and 4:4 ratios for NTSC, PAL and HD standards. A video capture Mac can be saved on a DVD.

On the other side, Kdenlive falls short in user-friendliness, particularly with its difficult interface. However, it comes with a manual that can help in answering questions.

In summary, Kdenlive is a good app for those friends of open source software, who want to edit small videos.

Free Non-linear Video Editor

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