Seeking Recommendations for Free Video Editing Software for Mac

[box_of_cards]

Hi everyone,

First of all a HUGE round of applause to all the creators on this board! So many videos which I could enjoy!

Now I have an idea for a video of my own and beeing a complete beginner in video editing, I am looking for advise on which program to choose. I am working on a Mac and am looking for a free-to-use software solution that can cater to my specific needs. Here's what I'm looking for in the software:

Mixing Clips of Different Resolutions: I need to combine multiple video clips with varying resolutions into one seamless video.
Adding Text and Pictures: The program should allow me to overlay text and pictures onto my video clips easily.
Counter Feature: Having the ability to add counters (e.g., timers, number counters) in the video would be highly beneficial.
AI-Based Upscaling: A feature that utilizes AI to upscale lower-resolution footage to higher resolutions would be fantastic.
Soundtrack Cleanup: The ability to clean up soundtracks and improve audio quality within the software.

I'm fairly new to video editing, so a program with a user-friendly interface would be preferred, but I'm willing to invest time in learning if the software fits my needs well. If you have any recommendations that meet these criteria, please let me know. I greatly appreciate any advice or insights you can provide!

Thanks in advance!

[senorgif2]

Davinci Resolve should do everything you need, but you will not be able to get AI upscaling for free from any video editor AFAIK. The way one can add effects using resolve can be incredibly powerful, but also has a learning curve. I don't really understand it myself, but if you bother to learn it you can do some amazing things with it.

[eatsl]

You could do the upscaling with stable diffusion and the shutter encoder, depending on what machine you have.

https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI
https://openart.ai/workflows/lemur_runn ... kBumKLnIej

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/
https://www.reddit.com/r/shutterencoder ... om_images/

br

[knobhobby]

A second vote for Resolve. They have good tutorials on the website that walk you through making products and supply the source footage. Plus the online community is thriving, so there's a lot of youtube videos and whatnot.

[phx]

Now I have an idea for a video of my own and beeing a complete beginner in video editing, I am looking for advise on which program to choose. I am working on a Mac and am looking for a free-to-use software solution that can cater to my specific needs. Here's what I'm looking for in the software:

The 4 "Big ones" in no particular order are:

• Avid Media Composer. There's a free version which is quite limited. Probably not the tool for this, but I'll include it anyway. You'll see this being used for a lot of movie production and documentaries. It's main strength is that it can be operated mostly from the keyboard only, and that it does extremely well if you have massive amounts of footage. Also very strong on collaboration. It wants a particular workflow based on proxies though, and that might not be what you are after. Steep learning curve which pays off after a while if you like the style.
• Premiere Pro. Not Free. Has begun eating Avid's cake quite a bit in the last couple of years. If you are generally using the Adobe-suite of tools, you'll fit right in. Way more modern than Avid in the way you edit.
• Final Cut Pro. Not Free. Mac only. Works around the concept of a "magnetic timeline" where the timeline ripples automatically and removes gaps.
• Davinci Resolve. The Free Version is surprisingly strong. The paid version has all the AI-goodies however, and also has noise reduction which can come in clutch. It has the strongest tools for color grading out there to the point where big feature films are often edited in Avid or Premiere, then brought over to Resolve to grade color. The editing features are improving at a fast pace, and you have more and more people switching to it. A distinct strength of Resolve is that it has a built-in compositor in Fusion and a bulit-in DAW in fairlight. A downside of Resolve is that it uses a 32bit floating point pipeline for it's video, so it requires more beefy hardware to run. It plugs into the M-series of Macs very well though.

If you want something which is more accessible for a beginner, you could look into e.g. Capcut, which has a more toned down interface that is less daunting.

Overall, it's more important to get some editing experience rather than worry too much about the program you are going to use. Your experience generally transplants between the NLEs after a while.

As for your list of requirements:

• Mixing Clips of Different Resolutions: Most NLEs do this. However, you might want to look out for clips of different frame rates because that requires handling as well, and not all NLEs do this the same way. 4K footage in a 1080p timeline can be really nice because it allows for transformations (panning/zoom) while retaining image quality.
• Text & Pictures / Counter Feature: Simple text and pictures are typically possible within the NLE. For more advanced stuff, you'll typically use a dedicated motion graphics tool, i.e., Adobe's After Effects or Fusion inside Resolve. Note that if you go with Fusion, they typically recommend having at least 32 gigabyte of RAM.
• AI-Based Upscaling: This is typically either not part of the NLE or it's in the paid versions. You can use a dedicated program then import the upscaled version. In general, upscaling is nice, but it isn't a 100% solution. If you are zooming a bit in 1080p footage, it can be nice to improve the image quality, but trying to fit a 640p image in a 4K timeline is going to be a mess.
• Soundtrack Cleanup: All NLEs do some basic sound-track manipulation. For dedicated sound design, you want a DAW, either built-in as in Resolve (fairlight) or as a separate program (Pro Tools, Audition, ...). The not-so-secret secret of editing work is that it is very dependent on sound, and you get a lot of the way by sound alone, so NLEs are mini-DAWs as well.

[box_of_cards]

Thank you all for your input! I decided to go with DaVinci resolve. Here the title of the project I am working on. I have the idea, I have all the material, let's hope I can learn enough video editing to make it work.

knights2.jpg (637.96 KiB) Viewed 182 times