There are many video editing softwares available for free download today, but not all of them make the mark. If you download free video editors there won’t be the same enriched features or sleek interface that one would expect in proprietary software.
However, there are quite a few best video editors that can meet most of the needs of a home user and some of the requirements of the professional.
I. Wax Video Editor
One of the best video editors turns out to be Wax. It is a flexible linear compositing and special effects software that can be freely downloaded from its homepage at DebugMode. Wax is able to create 2D & 3D special effects and can be used as a standalone application ideal for home users and beginners, or as a “plug-in” to other video editors. The latest Wax v2.0e can work with Sony Vegas, Pure Motion EditStudio and Adobe’s Premiere Pro.
There are many sophisticated plug-ins, presets and ready made transitions including full featured 3D compositing with 3d objects and text, lighting, shadows, texture generators, particle generators, chromakeying, keyframmable masks, video opacity et al. It supports AVI, WAV and images as input and can output in AVI, MPEG, WAV, Flash or in image format. There are also several user-created tutorials available on the site.
The problems are insufficient 2D text controls (e.g. for titles and credits) and very slow previewing times which may cause an application crash.
II. Jahshaka Open Source Video Editor
This OpenLibrary powered Jahshaka v3.0 is a very powerful open-source editing and visual effects tool. It delivers high-end effects, professional editing capabilities, 3D animation and audio mixing to create virtually any kind of media on your computer.
It is possible to run multiple instances of Jahshaka on a single server helping in project integration in a professional environment. The interface is quite difficult to master. The project is still under development and newer versions may provide better user-friendliness.
III. ZS4 Video Editor For Vista
The new avatar of Zwei-Stein is the Windows Vista compatible ZS4 Video Editor which is also a free download.
It includes more features such as unlimited video and audio tracks, zooming, panning, distortion effects, patterns such as tiling of video frames, more supported file formats and plenty of tutorials on the web.
IV. Zwei-Stein Freeware Video Editor
Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a free-to-download non-linear video compositing and editing tool which offers many advanced features and can run on PC, Linux and Mac platforms. With Zwei-Stein one can edit up to 256 video and audio clips and/or stills, each with up to 64 effects that can be chained sequentially.
Cropping, panning and custom effects are also available with automatic key frames with Zwei Stein editor. It is easy to use with an uncluttered GUI as well. Its features include Color, Opacity and Chromacity adjustments, cropping, matrix and blending effects, millisecond precision cuts, specifying key colors in a frame, object tweening a la Flash, etc. It supports input as *.avi, *.wav, *.jpg, *.gif, *.png files.
Output can be chosen between AVI, WMP, RealVideo and Audio, Wav and bitmap.
