Best FREE Tools for Video Editing
Did you know YouTube has over one billion active users per month? They aren’t all watching funny cat videos! More and more people are turning to online video sites to watch tutorials everything from DIY home improvements to parenting.
Last month, my washing machine broke. I’m not particularly handy, and in years past, I would have needed to call an appliance repair technician and pay hundreds of dollars to have the problem diagnosed and repaired. Instead, I turned to YouTube and watched a three minute long instructional video, purchased a five dollar hose from the hardware store, and within an hour, the machine was back in working order. Video can communicate concepts quickly, clearly, succinctly, and is a way to make sure that your learners “get it.”
Leveraging instructional video can increase engagement and retention in your eLearning courses, thereby increasing your ROI. But, video production software can be expensive and difficult to use.
However, there are some great free options out there. Here is a list of recommended free video production software for you to try!
iMovie
iMovie is video editing software for iOS and Mac computers. If you have apple devices, this is the go-to software for creating video without spending money. iMovie supports high definition video, a ton of formats, and has many of the features of its big brother, Final Cut Pro.
Download iMovie at: http://www.apple.com/mac/imovie/
Windows Movie Maker
If you don’t have a Mac, PC users can download Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker. It’s not as polished as iMovie, but Windows Movie Maker still has all of the features you need to create quality videos. With Windows Movie Maker, it’s very easy to publish videos to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or produce video for your eLearning courses.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-movie-maker-download
Audacity
The quality of the audio in your productions is just as important as the quality of the video. Audacity is a free and open source sound recording and editing platform available for Windows, OS X, and even Linux. Audacity is easy to use and is very popular for creating voiceover, podcasts, sound effects, recording interviews, or just about anything requiring audio.
CamStudio
Are you creating a software tutorial? Camstudio is a screencasting program which will allow you to record what you are doing on your PC while also recording the audio input from your microphone. Video from Camstudio is exported as an AVI file, so you will likely need to convert it to an HTML5-friendly-format. We’ll cover products which can help with media conversion in future blogs!
Download Camstudio at: http://camstudio.org/
MPEGStreamclip
Having problems importing footage from your camera into your video editor? Video comes in hundreds of different formats. MPEGStreamclip converts media into universal formats which are easily read by video editing software.
Get MPEGStreamclip at: http://www.squared5.com/
Handbrake
Video files can be very large, and eLearning usually needs to stream over networks with limited bandwidth. Handbrake is a compression and conversion program that allows users to take their finished videos and make them a fraction of their original size without sacrificing much quality. Handbrake is one of the best compression tools available, and rivals or surpasses its commercial competition.
Handbrake is available for free at: https://handbrake.fr/
All of these tools can be used to create professional quality videos which will wow your audiences. Are there any free tools that you like to use that I missed? Please let us know in the comments below.
