Michael Muchmore The Best Video Editing Software for 2019 Whether you're a weekend GoPro shooter or a full-time video professional, you need editing software that's powerful but easy to use. Here's how the best video editing software stacks up. Edit Video on Your PC Nothing makes an impression like moving images with sound. That's why digital video continues to grow in importance online. Couple that trend with the ever-increasing availability of devices capable of high-resolution video recording—smartphones, GoPros, DSLRs—and the case for ever more powerful video editing software becomes clear.
Macbook Pro set up with an external Ultra Wide Monitor. 29UM55 $299.00 as of June 2015. Provides enough Real Estate for Video Editing. Wireless keyboard and Mouse make it even easier. Dec 14, 2018 - The best USB-C monitor for Christmas 2018: Macbook Pro and Windows laptops. HP Envy 27 27-inch 4K USB-C monitor. BenQ PD2710QC 27-inch designer USB-C monitor. Dell S2718D 27-inch Ultra-thin USB-C Monitor. LG 27MD5KA 27-inch UltraFine 5K USB-C Monitor. Acer XR382CQK 38-inch Curved USB-C Monitor.
Further, the software must be usable by nonprofessionals, and it has to keep up with new formats such as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), 360-degree VR video, and 4K and above. Increasingly, new capabilities trickle down from professional-level software to the consumer category. That's a good thing for nonprofessional movie editors, since the more-consumer-oriented software makes formerly difficult procedures a cinch for them. Read on for a survey of the latest trends in video editing software and our top picks in the field. Multicam, Motion Tracking, and Yet More Motion Advanced abilities continue to make their way into accessible, affordable, and consumer-friendly video editing software as each new generation of software is released. For example, multicam editing, which lets you switch among camera angles of the same scene shot with multiple video cameras, used to be a feature relegated to pro-level software.
Now this and many other advanced effects are available in programs designed for use by nonprofessional enthusiasts. Another impressive effect that has made its way into consumer-level video editing software is motion tracking, which lets you attach an object or effect to something moving in your video. You might use it to put a blur over the face of someone you don't want to show up in your video. You specify the target face, and the app takes care of the rest, tracking the face and moving the effect to follow it.
This used to be the sole province of special effects software such as Adobe After Effects. Corel VideoStudio was the first of the consumer products to include motion tracking, and it still leads the pack in the depth and usability of its motion-tracking tool, though several others now include the capability. The 4K Factor Support for 4K video source content has become pretty standard in video editing software, but the support varies among the products. For example, some but not all of the applications can import Sony XAVC and XAVC-S formats, which are used by Sony's popular DSLRs, camcorders, and professional video cameras. The same holds true for the H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.
Most of the applications here now can import and export HEVC, though there are still a few holdouts. 360-Degree VR Support. Several of the products here (Adobe Premiere Elements is a notable exception) still support 3D video editing if that's your thing, though the this has been replaced by 360-degree VR footage like that shot by the as the current home-theater fad. As is often the case, our Editors' Choice, CyberLink PowerDirector was the first product in this group to offer support for this new kind of video media. Other programs have jumped on board with 360 VR support, including Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro X, and Magix Movie Edit Pro.
Support varies, with some apps including 360-compatible titles, stabilization, and motion tracking. PowerDirector is notable for including those last two. Final Cut offers a useful tool that removes the camera and tripod from the image, often an issue with 360-degree footage. Video Editing 101 Of course, none of the extras matter if an app can't do the most basic editing tasks. At this point, however, all of the products included here do a good job of letting you join, trim, and split video clips. They also let you make use of special effects such as animated transitions, picture-in-picture (PiP), chroma-key (the technique that lets you place a subject against any background, often known as green screening), and filters that enhance colors or apply creative effects and distortions. With most of them you can add a multitude of timeline tracks that can accommodate video clips, effects, audio, and text overlays.
LUTs and CLUTs One of the capabilities that has been making its way into consumer-level video editing software is support for LUTs (lookup tables), also known as CLUTs (color lookup tables). This staple of pro-level software lets you quickly change the look of a video to give it a specific mood. For example, think of the dark blue look of thriller movies like The Revenant. You can download LUTs for free from several sites or use those included with some video software to give your video a specific look. One well-known LUT type is the kind that can make a daytime scene look like it was shot at night. Where the Action Is Many video editing apps now include tools that cater to users of such as the GoPro Hero7 Black.
For example, several offer automated freeze-frame along with speedup, slowdown, and reverse time effects. CyberLink PowerDirector's Action Camera Center pulls together freeze frame with stabilization, slo-mo, and fish-eye correction, and color correction for underwater footage. Magix Movie Edit Pro Premium includes the third-party NewBlue ActionCam Package of effects. And Wondershare Filmora lets you subscribe to new effect packs on an ongoing basis. Titles That Zing.
I've been seeing a lot of attention paid to creating title effects in the applications over the past year. Apple Final Cut Pro X has added 3D title creation, which is pretty spiffy, letting you extrude 2D titles and rotate them on three axes. Corel VideoStudio in its latest version also adds 3D Titling, though not as powerful as Apple's.
PowerDirector's Title Designer offers transparency, gradient color, border, blur level, and reflection in titles; Magix has impressive title templates, complete with animations. Premiere Elements offers a nifty title effect in which your video fills the text characters. Look for an application that lets you edit titles in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) mode, so that you can type, format, and time it right over the video preview. Gathering Speed Video editing is one of the most computing-intensive activities around, so you'll want the or desktop you can afford if you're serious about cutting your own movies. Most applications help speed up the editing process by creating a proxy file of lower resolution, so that normal editing and previewing aren't slowed down by the huge full-resolution files. Particularly intensive is the process of rendering your finished product into a standard video file that will by playable on the target device of choice, be that an HDTV, a laptop, or a smartphone. Most of the software can take advantage of your computer's graphics processor to speed this up.
Be sure to check the performance section in each review linked here to see how speedy or slow the application is. In rendering speed testing, CyberLink and Pinnacle have been my perennial champs. Other measures of performance include startup time and simple stability.
Again, video editing is a taxing activity for any computer, involving many components. In the past, video editing programs took longer than most other apps to start up, and unexpected shutdowns were unfortunately common, even in top apps from top developers such as Adobe and Apple. The stability situation has greatly improved, but the complexity of the process, which increases as more powerful effects are added, means crashes will likely never be fully eliminated, and they often raise their ugly heads after a program update, as I found with the latest version of Pinnacle Studio. Free Video Editing Software If you don't want to invest a lot of money and effort into your video editing exploits, there are a few free options.
Of course, if you use a Mac, the excellent iMovie comes with it. For PC users, 's Photos app (as of the Fall Creators Update) lets you join, trim, and even add background music, 3D animated effects, and titles to video. There are also some free video apps on the Windows Store, including, PowerDirector Mobile, Movie Maker, and Magix Movie Edit Touch. Some of these are quite basic, but the Magix app is fairly capable, with clip joining, transitions, and effects, in a very touch-friendly interface. Free video editing software often comes with legal and technical limitations, however. Some widely used codecs require licensing fees on the part of the software maker, meaning they can't offer free software that can handle these standard file formats. That said, the impressive open-source does a lot of the same things that the paid applications in this roundup do, including things like chroma-keying and picture-in-picture.
Shotcut is completely open-source and free, while another free option, Lightworks has paid options that remove a 720p output resolution limit. Note also that both Shotcut and Lightworks run on Linux as well as Windows and Mac. What About Apple? Though Mac users don't have the sheer number of software choices available for PCs, Apple fans interested in editing video are well served, by four products in particular. At the entry level, the surprisingly capable and enjoyable-to-use iMovie comes free with every Mac sold since at least 2011. IMovie only offers two video tracks, but does good job with chroma-keying, and its Trailers feature makes it easy to produce slick, Hollywood-style productions. In the midrange, there's Adobe Premiere Elements, which is cross-platform between Macs and PCs, and offers a lot more features and lots of help with creating effects.
Professionals and prosumers have powerful, though pricey options in. Final Cut is a deceptively simple application that resembles iMovie in its interface and ease of use, but it offers massively deep capabilities, and many third-party apps integrate with it for even more power. It also makes excellent use of the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, as shown in photo above. Premiere Pro uses a more traditional timeline and adds a large ecosystem of companion apps and plug-ins. It also excels in collaboration features. Audio Editing We still live in the days of talkies, so you want to be able to in your digital moves as well as the images. Most of the products included here offer canned background music, and many, such as Pinnacle Studio, can even tailor the soundtrack to the exact length of your movie.
All of these programs can separate audio and video tracks, and most can clean up background noise and add environmental audio effects such as concert hall reverb. A couple of the products have an auto-ducking feature, which lowers background music during dialog—a definite pro-level plus. What's Not Here There are more video editing software applications than we can fit into this roundup of the best options, which includes only software rated three stars and higher. The best known among them is probably, which was recently acquired by Magix from Sony.
Sony's product used a very cluttered interface that more resembled high-end professional video editing software from the early days of the craft. Magix has made some progress in simplifying it and bringing it up to par with the competition, but more work is needed for it to be included here.
Another program, simply has too outdated an interface, making common tasks difficult. Longtime pro video editors will note the absence of Avid Media Composer, which is simply too unwieldy for PCMag's primarily consumer audience. There are a couple of more interesting applications—NCH VideoPad and AVS Video Editor among them—that we simply haven't tested yet. The Finish Line The video editing application you choose depends on your budget, the equipment you're using, and how serious you are.
Fortunately, you're spoiled for choice with the products available. Peruse our in-depth reviews of enthusiast-level video editing software reviews linked below to see which is the right one for you. Pros: Clear, flexible interface. Lots of organizational tools. Responsive speed. Ultimate power in video editing.
Rich ecosystem of video production apps. Excellent stabilization. Unlimited multi-cam angles. Cons: No keyword tagging for media. Some techniques require additional applications such as After Effects or SpeedGrade. Bottom Line: An expansive professional-level digital video editing program, Premiere Pro CC has everything today's pro video editor needs, particularly when it comes to collaboration. Pros: Wide selection of fun video-creation tools.
Clear, simple interface. Support for 360-degree VR, 4K Ultra HD, and 3D media. Multipoint Motion tracking. Multicam editing. HTML5 video page creation.
Stop-motion tool. Cons: Middle-of-the-road rendering speeds. No search for effects or media.
Only 20 video overlay tracks. Bottom Line: Corel continues to offer one of the most feature-packed consumer video editing packages around. The 2018 update adds even more including 360-degree support, 3D titles, and action-cam lens correction. Pros: Clear interface. Edits 360-degree VR content.
Fast rendering performance in testing. Tons of effects. Multicam editing. 4K and H.265 support. Tagging and star ratings for media. Good audio tools.
Cons: Motion tracking issues on one test PC. Occasional crashes in testing. Uneven 360-degree VR implementation. Bottom Line: Pinnacle Studio is a fast, full-featured, near-professional-level video-editing application with support for 360-degree VR, 3D, and multicam edits. New color grading and four-point editing make it even more appealing, though our testing uncovered some instabilities. Pros: Lots of video effects.
Good titling tools. Trailer-like movie templates. Solid audio editing tools. Strong disc authoring. Fast rendering. Good stability. 360-degree media support.
Cons: Not much help with difficult procedures. Lacks import and organization tools.
Extra costs and coded downloads for some video formats. Bottom Line: Now with faster rendering, Movie Edit Pro offers solid stability, up-to-date support for 4K, 360-degree, and multicam editing, but it trails other video editing software in ease-of-use. Pros: Magnetic, trackless timeline. Superior organization tools, including libraries, ratings, tagging, auto analysis for faces, scenes.
Support for 360-degree footage and HDR. Multicam support. Fast performance.
MacBook Touch Bar support. Cons: Nontraditional timeline-editing may turn off longtime editors. Can't import projects from previous versions without a third-party plug-in. No stabilization or motion tracking for 360-degree video. Bottom Line: Apple's professional-level video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, brings a wealth of power in an interface simple for pros and consumers alike. Recent highlights include rich support for 360-degree content and improved stability.
Pros: Inexpensive. Plenty of video effects. Good audio tools.
Solid file format support, including H.265. Compatible with 4K content.
Burns DVD, Blu-ray, and AVCHD. Cons: Light on features.
Outdated, unconventional interface. No 360 or 3D support. No motion tracking. No direct output to social networks. Bottom Line: For less money than the competition, Nero offers a wide array of enthusiast-level video editing capabilities, but the interface is dated and it trails in support for new formats and techniques.
Pros: Beautifully simple interface. Color matching for consistent movie looks. Classy themes. Great chroma-keying tool. Lots of audio tools. Theater feature shares movies to all your Apple gear.
Cons: Not as flexible as some PC video editors. In the name of simplicity, some useful controls are missing. Does not support tagging. Lacks multicam or motion tracking capabilities.
Limited to two video tracks. Bottom Line: Apple's excellent entry-level desktop video editing application can turn your footage and photos into impressive productions.
It's time to upgrade my five year-old 27' 1900 x 1200 Dell monitor and l'm looking for recommendations and thoughts. I'm just an everyday photo guy with a Nikon D750 and a bunch of lenses and a overwhelming love of Lightroom. I want a great monitor, but i'm not a pro (yet ). I'll spend up to $1,000 if i have to, but would love not to.
I found this Things i'm wondering about: - size. It seems that monitors larger than 27' are only wider, not taller (too bad!). I certainly won't go smaller than 27'.
What are the benefits of 32'? I've read some articles that suggested that one get a 27' monitor and put one (or two) 24' monitors beside it vertically (a software engineer in my office does this) and put Lightroom's menus/panels on them so the 27' monitor is used just for the photo. This also means one could buy a great 27' monitor and one (or two) cheaper 24' monitors. resolution.
2560 x 1440 resolution is the minimum requirement for a 27-inch monitor. Is something higher, like 4K, important?
- refresh rate. I understand it's very important for gaming, but is it for Lightroom? - calibration. Some have it built in, but most don't.
I use a Spyder right now, and maybe that's fine? Is there a benefit to built-in calibration? I shoot in sRGB because my photos are mostly displayed on my monitor, my HD TV, and other friend's monitors via the web. I don't print a lot. I'm assuming 100% sRGB is good enough. Anything else?
Thanks for your thoughts. One monitor or two? I think the 2560X1440 27' monitors is sufficient however an Apple 5K might be optimum. I'm not sure if there are other mfgs that do 5K but if so then they are worth a look. I find that dual monitors are really useful for develop mode. I keep the second screen open in one all the time. So, hang on to the Dell.
You will probably need to upgrade to Win10 to manage higher resolutions as I don't think Win7 is quite up to the task. My second monitor is an ASUS PB278. It is IPS which is important unless there is more advanced technology better than IPS. My research suggested the ASUS screen utilized the same materials as the Apple iMac that I have. SRGB is adequate but there are some wide gamut monitors that approach AdobeRGB. If you find one it is worthy of consideration ONLY if you run a regular calibration on the device with a color calibration tool.
They might have been using Photoshop, where it’s common to put all the panels on a secondary display to free up the primary display to display only the image. In Lightroom, all of the tool panels (folder tree, color controls, metadata entry, print settings, etc.) are permanently attached to the primary editing window. You can't detach the tool panels.
![Video editing on a mac Video editing on a mac](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125396533/536431372.png)
It is possible to move the main Lightroom window and its panels to the second monitor, and then use Lightroom's Secondary Display feature to fill the main display with just the Loupe view, but there are some issues with doing it that way. I settle for keeping the main window and its panels on the primary display, and (usually) Grid view on the secondary display. Whether there is a benefit of going over 27” is a personal preference. Some find 30” and higher too much area to take in at a close desktop viewing distance, they prefer two 27” or smaller. Others prefer one bigger display that keeps everything in one place, while taking up less desk space than two smaller displays.
![Editing Editing](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125396533/269404165.jpg)
2560 x 1440 is an established standard, nothing wrong with it. But all devices are moving toward Retina/HiDPI resolutions, led by smartphones and tablets but increasingly laptop displays and now desktop displays. So 4K is becoming more important if you want to see your images as your viewers do. To use a 4K display, your computer will need a graphics card that has enough power and video RAM to drive 4K with good performance, especially for Lightroom. Also, older OSs and some applications are not yet fully adapted to 4K so their controls and text may appear too small. If you’ve got the hardware and the software for 4K, then you might want to go for it.
One way to find out if you’d like 4K is to go to the nearest Apple Store and look at images on the 4K and 5K iMacs. You’ll probably know right away whether 4K is something you want. Some people are blown away, others aren’t. Main display is usually set to Develop unless I'm organizing. Secondary display is usually set to Grid, but sometimes I set it to something else.
Like Survey, when I want to compare the image I'm editing to another image it needs to be consistent with. By the way, you don't need a second monitor to try this out. Just choose Window Secondary Display Show; a second window will pop up and you can play around with it next to your main window. Don't worry about this part. Macs plug into the same displays that PCs do. My Mac is connected to an NEC PA272W, which was recommended in the article you linked to earlier.
A Surface Book has exactly the same video port that Mac laptops do, Mini DisplayPort, and that's the same port it's plugged into on my NEC display. NEC PA series (SpectraView), Eizo, and the higher-end Dells. Possibly the ASUS PA series.
That's not a complete list. What exactly is wrong with your existing monitor that it needs to be replaced? The questions in your OP do not seem to lead me to understand what specifically you are wanting your monitor to do, but it cannot at present. A 'great monitor' means different things to different people. Is light uniformity important to you?
How about the monitor ratio? Some folks have strong preferences for 16:10 over 16:9. Do you want a monitor that has software that is compatible with your current Spyder? Is the length of warranty important? These are things you may want to consider beyond size (both resolution and screen measurement) and price.
They may not be important to you, but if you are going to drop up to $1k on a monitor, IMHO, you owe it to yourself to consider as many aspects/features of a monitor as possible. Color gamut can be a whole other ball of wax. There are more, and better, wide gamut choices today than in the past, but you need to understand the implications of working with Adobe RGB as well as sRGB.
There are a lot of choices at a lot of price points, and it can be easy to overbuy if you are on a budget and your needs are not highly specific. Then again, you look at a monitor for a large amount of time, and a nice monitor can be quite enjoyable, just as a bad one can drive you crazy. Good luck, -Ken. That's not exactly what I said.I was saying that mass market displays can be plugged into a PC or Mac.
Apple themselves make only one monitor these days, the Thunderbolt Display. It is getting old, not necessarily recommended even if you are a Mac user, and doesn't really work well with PCs.
The only other 'Mac monitor' that might be plugged into a PC is the non-Retina iMac computer. Some of those can be used as a monitor through their Mini DisplayPort. But it's not a great idea to buy an entire iMac just to use it as a monitor. Buy a nice standalone monitor instead. (The Retina iMacs cannot be use as external displays.).
Be careful when looking at monitors in stores or on display. They often crank up the brightness to make them look more appealing. In reality, if you are correctly calibrating your monitor for color critical work, the monitor may look quite dull as the recommended setting is usually around 120 cd/m^2. When you last calibrated, did you get any kind of adjusted read out your monitor? Yes, monitor technology has improved a bit in recent years, but monitor life if often measured in hours of service rather than age. And, some of the older monitors were built quite well. Some of the earlier NEC MultiSync panels were built quite well, and while later generations did get newer technology, some of the parts were made to be more affordable.
Does your current monitor have an IPS panel? Monitor panels can generally be looked up on the web by monitor model number. If you are not familiar with the differences between panel types, and assuming that your current panel is a TN, then any type of IPS panel is going to be a huge improvement. There are a handful of Dell U series monitors that offer good performance at reasonable prices, and they can be calibrated to reasonably good output with a Spyder. Again remember, screen size and resolution are independent of each other, so a bigger screen is not necessarily going to display more data unless it can display at a higher resolution (or is a different ratio like 16:10 vs. B&H has very useful search tools that will let you narrow down your choices based on a number of criteria.
See what is available to get an idea of what is currently being offered. And I suspect that you might be best served with a monitor that is capable of 100% sRGB. Good luck, -Ken. I use one 24' monitor vertically and one 27' monitor horizontally, and like it quite a lot. When doing a final review I put the loupe on the vertical and the single library display on the wide (i.e. Same thing basically) and hide the panels.
Then as I go through vertical shots are huge on the vertical panel, and horizontal shots are huge on the horizontal, and it makes for a nice preview. But I don't think I could ever go back to having one monitor. I'd probably have a third but it would block my view of the TV.:blush: I'm a big fan of the NEC Spectraview calibrated monitors. They are not the best known, but I think good value.
S-PVA is somewhat of a higher quality TN-type panel that Samsung and others often use. Here are two articles that help explain some of the technologies:. There are some high end PVA panels, but I suspect that you will be most happy with an IPS panel as the manufacturers (LG being the biggest) offer a lot of IQ even in base models.
NEC uses a lot of IPS panels, and Apple used them for years in their large display monitors. So, if you saw an Apple display and liked what you saw, that is what an IPS panel can do. Unless you are in a hurry, do your research on possible candidates. There are some good review sites that will tell you a lot about various popular models. Good luck, -Ken.
Yes, among other things. I also find the vertical better for reading manuals and other page-formatted material, as those tend to still be (+/-) in an 8.5x11 format and fit better vertical. It's also better for editing letters (same reason). The wide screen is better for programming either with lots of panels across or just wide lines, and better for Lightroom's main window since the panels are not tear-off, and you always need some amount of space on both sides for folders, develop, etc. So a REALLY wide panel is best for that.
Frankly it took me a few weeks to really get used to it, it just looked odd, and the wrong windows would open up there, but now I would find it hard to go back. Plus it takes less desk space.
I'll add two cautions for dual monitors. One is that wide gamuts can be hard to get working right with sRGB limits on one monitor, at least I failed miserably and set my wide gamut monitor to sRGB (sort of a color lobotomy) to make things work well together. This is likely my failing, but I did try for quite some time with no success. And people often find if they have one monitor that is substantially higher DPI (not resolution, DPI) than the other, that fonts are unreadably small on one, or if you adjust, way too large on the other.
Not just fonts but controls, etc. It may be you can adjust this, I know later windows had split DPI support, but I've read of people complaining about this on Windows 10, which could mean it is marginal support, or could mean they didn't hit the right buttons. Certainly the easiest path is if the DPI's (not resolution but DPI) is vaguely similar.
70% of one is not bad, but 30% can be for example. I don't know how Apple handles it but think the OP is on windows. I'll add two cautions for dual monitors.
And people often find if they have one monitor that is substantially higher DPI (not resolution, DPI) than the other, that fonts are unreadably small on one, or if you adjust, way too large on the other. Not just fonts but controls, etc. It may be you can adjust this, I know later windows had split DPI support, but I've read of people complaining about this on Windows 10, which could mean it is marginal support, or could mean they didn't hit the right buttons.