Tag: video

Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux

OpenShot has an easy-to-use interface that’s great for beginners. It doesn’t have a huge array of editing features, but it’s a solid option for beginners to use for basic editing. OpenShot is useful for resizing, trimming, scaling, snapping, and rotation. In addition, you’ll find features like scrolling credits, time mapping, audio editing, frame stepping, and real-time preview.

Key Features:

• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Video effects like brightness, gamma, greyscale, hue, and greenscreen
• Unlimited layers for audio tracks, background videos, and watermarks
• Customizable title cards
• Keyframe animation capabilities

Platforms: Windows, Mac

Movavi is a great video editing software for beginners. It includes drag-and-drop controls, audio editing, transitions, filters, and you can export to popular video formats or share directly from the software. Movavi also gives users the ability to cut and splice videos, create customized titles, and sync sound to images.

Key Features:

• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Built-in intros, videos, backgrounds, music, sounds
• Filters, transitions, and titles
• Keyframe animation of titles, overlay video, stickers, and more

Platforms: Windows

VSDC is a video editing software that can be used to create a movie of any length and complexity. You can use VSDC to process image and video transformations with subpixel resolution and use 10+ mask types to hide, blur, or highlight elements in your video.

Key Features:

• 4K and HD export
• Video stabilization tool
• YouTube uploader
• 3D templates
• Blending modes and Instagram-like filters
• Color-correction tools

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

Lightworks is one of the best YouTube video editing software for beginners. Even the free version includes everything you need to create professional-grade videos in HD and SD formats. It has a simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface and includes a collection of video tutorials to help beginners create amazing videos right from the start.

Key Features:

• Supports a wide range of video formats
• Speed optimization
• High-quality trim functions
• Multicam editing
• Real-time team project sharing with full control over editing access for each user
• Easy sharing of videos to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Instagram

Platforms: Windows, Mac

Adobe Premiere Pro is the choice for most video professionals but it also has a user-friendly interface making it the perfect choice for beginners. You can edit videos for color grade, adjust video sound, and import graphics and special effects from other Adobe apps.

Key Features:

• Import footage from any file format
• Trim footage with precision
• Add animation and video effects
• Manage your audio editing and sound effects
• Adjust colors and white balance

Platforms: Windows

Movie Maker 10 is a great video editing software for beginners or those who need a simple tool to make quick edits to short videos. It offers basic functions like video joining, adding background music, and text caption as well as more advanced features like image filter, transition effects, pan-tilt-zoom effects.

Key Features:

• Make movies from video clips and photos
• Trim, rotate, join video clips
• Add and edit background music
• Support most popular media formats
• Overlay text captions, emoticon, still PIP, sound clips on video clips

Platforms: Online

Lumen5 is a nice option for beginners looking for an easy-to-use video editing software. Using artificial intelligence, Lumen5 can even turn text into a video. You simply copy and paste your text into Lumen5 and let the software build your video! Lumen5 includes branding features like watermarks and logos, free audio, and font sizing choices.

Key Features:

• Artificial intelligence to create videos quickly and easily
• Searchable library with millions of free media files
• Customize your videos to match the look and feel of your brand
• Optimize every video to improve performance and conversion rates

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

Blender is a free, open-source 3D animation suite that includes a functional video editor that will meet the needs of most users. In addition to features that help model and render 3D animations, Blender also offers features like video masking, cuts and splicing, color grading, and more.

Key Features:

• Live preview, luma waveform, chroma vectorscope, and histogram displays
• Audio mixing, syncing, scrubbing, and waveform visualization
• Up to 32 slots for adding video, images, audio, scenes, masks, and effects
• Speed control, adjustment layers, transitions, keyframes, filters, and more

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

Shotcut is another open-source video editing software for beginners that includes a ton of tutorials to help you get started. Shotcut supports a broad range of formats with extensive audio editing options, tons of video effects, a vast array of video editing features, and more.

Key Features:

• Support for the latest audio and video formats
• Native timeline editing (no import needed)
• Multi-format timeline so you can mix and match resolutions and frame-rates within a project
• Advanced audio filters

Platforms: Mac

If you’re a Mac user, you’ve probably heard of iMovie. This app offers a simple, drag-and-drop interface as well as powerful video editing tools that make it a breeze to add titles, music, and effects. iMovie lets you choose from dozens of styles to add animated titles and credits to your movie, as well as an array of special effects, filters, and sounds.

Key Features:

• Support for 4K resolution
• Cloud-storage functionality
• Dozens of studio-quality title animations
• Stylish, contemporary video filters
• Built-in music, sound effects, and voiceover recording
• Speed controls

Platforms: Windows, Mac

HitFilm Express is more of an advanced-beginner video editing software but it’s worth the time it takes to learn the software. This tool is used to produce Hollywood-level films, after all. And, even the free version is more than enough for most video editing beginners. With HitFilm, you’ll get access to an enormous array of video editing tools like composite shot enhancement, picture-in-picture, behavior effects, and a lot more.

Key Features:

• Professional-grade video editing
• Composite shot enhancements (animate two separate shots together for unreal video effects)
• Unlimited video and audio timeline-track creation
• An adaptive trimmer
• Audio mixer
• Transition options like push, zoom, and dissolve

Platforms: Android, iOS

Magisto is a video editing software for beginners using mobile devices to edit video. It uses artificial intelligence to create video content fast. You simply choose your editing style, add your footage, and pick the music you want. Magisto will then edit and create your video as well as make music suggestions to match. It’s an incredible software that’s useful for streamlining to the creation process. Plus, the app lets you know how many people have watched your video from the built-in insights dashboard.

Key Features:

• Wide range of themes
• iStock integration for high-quality stock images
• Facial recognition, filters, effects, and auto-cropping
• Professional auto-editing ability
• Share videos across marketing channels
• Unlimited HD movie downloads

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

DaVinci Resolve is a video editing software for beginners that uses 8K editing, visual effects, color correction, and audio, making it the choice for many professional users. You can use DaVinci both offline and online and the free version of the software is probably all you’ll need if you’re just getting started. DaVinci Resolve offers custom timeline settings, adjustment clips, facial recognition, speed warp retiming, image stabilization, audio scrubbing, and a lot more.

Key Features:

• High-quality motion estimation speed changes and frame rate conversions to easily and realistically speed up or slow-down clips
• Dual timeline for quick navigation, cutting, and trimming
• Facial recognition that detects faces in your clips and automatically creates bins based on the people in each shot
• Dedicated trim interface that gives you the ability to edit in minute detail
• Built-in tools for picture-in-picture effects, retiming, stabilization, dynamic zoom, text, and audio
• Intelligent auto-editing that syncs audio and visual clips for you

Platforms: Android, iOS

KineMaster is a full-featured video editor for Android and iOS with easy-to-use tools like voiceovers, blending modes, speed control, video reverse, green screen (chroma key), and more. With KineMaster, you can even do frame-by-frame editing to fine-tune your video. It’s a free video editing software for beginners that will lend an air of professionalism to your video projects.

Key Features:

• Multiple layers of video, images, stickers, special effects, text, and handwriting
• Add voice-overs, background music, voice changers, and sound effects
• Edit and export 4K 60 FPS video
• Keyframe animation tool for adding motion to layers
• Instant preview

Platforms: Windows

Pinnacle Studio video editor is great for beginners and professionals. It offers advanced keyframing so you can fine-tune every second of your clips, transitions, and effects. Pinnacle includes creative effects and professional-level tools that you can use to build creative videos. With Pinnacle, you can also edit both small and large video projects quickly and easily using customizable shortcuts and workflows.

Key Features:

• Trim, split, crop, and rotate videos
• Wide range of templates, filters, and effects
• Add titles, graphics, and overlays
• Explore Seamless Transitions, Paint Effects, Video Masking, Color Grading, and more (Pinnacle Studio Ultimate)

Choose the Best Video Editing Software for Beginners

There you have it! The 15 best video edit software for beginners that we’re loving right now. Many of these tools offer free trials, so you can test them out and find the tool that works best for you. Each video editing software we’ve listed here has its own pros and cons, but you’re the best judge of what features you absolutely need and which ones you can live without. When choosing the best video editing software, though, there are a few things to consider.

Budget

For beginners to video editing, you’ll definitely want to find a software that is either free or offers a free trial so you can take the time to get to know the software and use it to edit a video or two before you commit.

Integrations and Platforms

The platform you’re going to use to edit videos will dictate the video editing software you can use, to a degree. Some of the tools on this list are available across platforms but a few of them are available only for specific platforms (such as iMovie for Mac) or devices.

User Interface

When looking for the best video editing software for beginners, you’ll want to choose a software that has a user-friendly interface with little-to-no learning curve.

Features

Think about the features that you need for your video editing projects. It helps to make a list of the features you absolutely need, features that would be nice to have, and features you don’t really need. Armed with this information, you will be less tempted to go all-in on that professional video editing software that comes with bells and whistles you’ll never use.

SociallyIn is a stand-out social media agency that offers a wide range of service to clients across industries. They help brands create lasting connections through engagement on a personal level. They are masters of creative and production with particularly nuanced expertise in social media content production. SociallyIn handles all of your social media content production needs in-house using their team of creatives who are masters in their respective skills.

Their approach is four-pronged:

Build Strategy and Brand Voice

Your SociallyIn experience starts with a discovery meeting where they work to understand your brand’s voice and target audience so they can create content that will resonate with your fans and get you the best results.

Brief

SociallyIn will then build a creative brief for your project to ensure that things are moving in the best direction for you and your target audience.

Ideation and Creation

Next, SociallyIn will brainstorm to come up with unique ideas for your various social media platforms. When they land on ideas that match up with your objectives, they’ll present those ideas to you.

Test, Measure, and Optimize

Finally, it’s time to launch your project but SociallyIn doesn’t just let you go on your way. To ensure that you get the best results possible, SociallyIn monitors your results, tests different options, and continues to optimize your campaign.

SociallyIn is one of the best video production companies, using innovation and the top creative talent to keep your brand ahead of the competition through social media strategies, custom content, influencer marketing, ROI modeling and data analysis, community management, and social media advertising management.

Film District is a video production company based in India with a strong presence in Navi Mumbai as well as Dubai, UAE. The company was founded in 2008 and provides video services including advertising and branding, corporate videos, social media videos, and more. Film District has a team of motion graphics specialists, too, so if you’re interested in having your ideas brought to life using 2D or 3D animation, they’ve got you covered. They also provide scriptwriting, storyboarding, voice-overs, infographics, and editing services. Film District has created content for Canon, Babyshop, Serco, and UNOO.

ECG Productions is a full-service video production company that has more than 10 years of experience providing “script-to-screen” video production and editing services. They’re based in Atlanta, Georgia, and offer scriptwriting, 2D and 3D animation, compositing, sound design, and original music composition. Some of their most notable clients are Comcast, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Verizon.

SONA Studios is a Sydney-based media agency that focuses on video production, live broadcasting, social media marketing, web, and design. With their skills and experience, you’ll be able to grow your brand through wider audiences, engaging content, better communications, and effective marketing.

Bastion Elevate is a video production company that offers a full range of marketing services including social media, influencer marketing, public relations, and content production. They have a highly-skilled team of professionals to help your business boost brand awareness, capture market share, and expand digital sales.

Black Production Films is one of the best video production companies with a focus on corporate films. They can help brands identify and build what they need to grow. Black Production Films use their experience and creativity combined with bleeding-edge technology to provide clients a diverse array of production services. Some of their clients include Facebook, USP, Red Bull, CNN, Shell, L’Oréal, USAID, Vice News, and Chevron.

Picturelab is a video production company specializing in explainer videos and commercials. They are experts in both live-action and animation and handle your project from start to finish to create effective campaigns that make a lasting impression.

Blue Carrot studio is a great source for video marketing and creative storytelling with heart, humor, passion, and purpose. They provide animated explainer videos, commercials, promo videos, eLearning, cartoons, and corporate videos using a number of visual and animation styles.

Ydraw creates engaging, creative, and interactive videos that brands can use to deliver their stories in a fun and attention-grabbing way. In addition to video production services, they also offer distribution and marketing.

DHD Films is a Dallas-based video production company that offers full-service video production and motion graphics. They have experience with businesses of all sizes including Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Some of their notable clients are AT&T, H&M, Jaguar, and Microsoft.

MultiVisionDigital is a video production and video marketing company based in New York. They provide a full range of services like video strategy, remote video production, production, and marketing. Their clients range from solopreneurs to global Fortune 500 companies across industries and MultiVisionDigitla has helped those clients increase sales, get more leads, improve their SEO, boost brand awareness, and built client loyalty.

Bold Content Video offers services for branded content, conference videos, and event videos in addition to the other services they provide. With this London-based video production company, you get access to their in-house team of film specialists who bring creativity, energy, and passion into every project they complete. Some of their more notable clients are Microsoft, Tommy Hilfiger, Coca-Cola, and Google.

Demo Duck is a video production company focused on product promotion, education, and brand affinity. They’re able to blend creative strategy with video production to deliver high-quality solutions.

Big 3 Media is a Singapore-based video production company that uses film, animation, content strategy, virtual reality, and graphic design to create brilliant storytelling to bring your project to life. With more than a decade of experience and a history in more than 32 cities, they’re well-positioned to tackle your project. Some of their better-known customers are Edelman, Asics, P&G, and Dentsu.

Atlanta Video has been providing video production services to all types and sizes of businesses since 1976. They’re a boutique shop that works with top products, videographers, and graphic artists in the Atlanta area. Atlanta Video covered the 1997 Olympics for IBM and has also worked with NBC, A&E, TBS, and The National Geographic Channel.

Trust Your Message to a Top Video Production Company

More and more businesses are turning to video to help them sell more, get more leads, and make deeper connections. But many businesses don’t have the resources to bring video production in-house. In these cases, video production companies like those on this list can fill a very important need.

Video is a powerful tool through which to communicate your story, moving your audience to feel, think, and behave in a certain way. When done well, video can be one of the strongest drivers of conversions no matter your type of business or industry.

What does it take to do video marketing well?

Regardless of whether you have an in-house team or hire a video production company to handle your video marketing, there are three categories of video production services you’ll either need to do yourself or make sure the company you hire offers:

• Preproduction
• Production
• Post Production

Preproduction

Preproduction is the video production service that includes creative and planning. This includes video production services like:

• Evaluating your video’s objective, target audience, method of delivery, and tone
• Formulating a budget
• Creative development and pitching
• Scriptwriting
• Storyboarding and outlining
• Shot lists (the scenes you want to include in your video)
• Location scouting (looking for places to record your video)
• Casting
• Permitting (getting the necessary permits from your municipality)
• Equipment prep and rental (as needed)
• Hiring subcontractors (as needed)

Preproduction is the first part of video production. It happens behind the scenes but it’s probably the most important part of creating a video that accomplishes the goals you want it to. Without putting in the work on the frontend, you’ll never get to the end result you need. This is where you’ll create a solid foundation upon which to build your message. It involves two very different video production services: creative and logistics.

The creative side is about creating and refining the concept of your video, writing a script, storyboarding, and making sure that you fully understand not only the story you want to tell but what you want viewers to do with that story. Logistics, on the other hand, is all about the details involved in how you’ll turn your ideas into a finished and polished video.

Production

The production part of video production is the actual video shoot. Here are a few of the video production services (and staffing considerations) that go into production:

• The Producer is involved in all phases of production from concept to completion. This includes coordination, supervision, and control of budget, talent, crafts, and more.
• The Director of Photography (Main Camera Operator) works with a Director to execute their vision for the script. They oversee the Camera and Lighting Departments and create the visuals that tell the story.
• The Assistant Camera Operator is responsible for marking a sync point between the video and audio with a clapper board (slating), making sure that the focus is set correctly, and changing batteries and recording media.
• The Field Audio Engineer mixes, reproduces, and manipulates sound and effects.
• The Gaffer is the head of the lighting department. They’re responsible for the design of the lighting plan.
• The Grip develops and builds the set for a movie, commercial, or television show. Grips work on the equipment that supports the cameras and lighting.
• Makeup Artists must know and understand makeup and the techniques used to apply it to the face and neck. Body Makeup Artists apply makeup to various areas of the body and can alter the actor’s appearance.
• The Drone Operator operates any drone cameras used for video production.
• The Production Assistant is responsible for communications between the various production departments and managing lockups.
• Specialty equipment might include high-def cameras, lighting, audio, and other equipment.

Post Production

After your video has been filmed, post-production begins. This stage includes video production services like:

• File management
• Video editing
• Motion graphics or animation
• Recording voice-overs or voice acting
• Audio mastering
• Color grading
• Delivering files

Post product typically covers everything that happens after filming is complete.

Video Production Services: Common Types of Video Content

There are hundreds of different video types or formats and there’s no guarantee that the video production company you hire offers the video production services you need for the video you want to create. Let’s take a closer look at the eight most common video production services you’ll find:

Event Video Services

Event videos range in time from 30 seconds to 3+ hours and can be a “recap” or event teaser video or a multi-camera production. This type of service is used for lectures, meetings, sports, weddings, performances, and other live events.

Commercial/Advertising Video Services

Commercials tend to be 30–90 seconds and can be scripted, docu-style, or animated. This type of service might include sponsored content, branded content, pre-roll, etc.

Promotional Documentary Video Services

These videos range from 1–30 minutes and use interview-driven storytelling. Promotional videos, infomercials, and travel videos typically fall into this category.

Corporate Video Services

Corporate videos include everything from long training videos to brand culture videos to promotional videos and are generally 1–60 minutes in length.

Real Estate Video Services

Real estate videos are typically under 5 minutes and use tons of filming techniques like drones, sliders, timelapse, and more to create a mouthwatering video experience.

Educational Video Services

Educational videos are things like explainer videos, PSAs, tutorials, and how-to videos. They can be quick, 30-second videos or longer videos for more in-depth topics.

Music Video Services

Music video services include exactly what you imagine (a musician lip-syncing to create a video for their music) but they can also be used by other clients when the video doesn’t need an audio story. Trailers and teaser videos may fall into this category.

Social Media Video Services

Social media videos tend to be 15–60 seconds and can include text, music, and narration. This type of video is used across social media platforms and does particularly well on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and most TikTok alternatives.

Video Production Services: SEO

1. Start With a Strong Video Marketing Strategy

Video is an important part of your business’s sales and marketing funnels as well as being a great SEO strategy. When you’re building your video strategy, you’ll want to focus on working video into the rest of your marketing strategy to create a cohesive marketing plan. But how do you create a strong video marketing strategy? Here’s a five-step process that we like:

Step 1: Set Goals for Your Videos

Start by outlining what you want to accomplish with your videos. These goals should coincide with the different stages in your marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, and decision).

Step 2: Speak to Your Target Audience

Once you know what you hope to accomplish, you’ll want to get a specific audience in mind that you want to target with your video. At the end of this step, you should know who your product or service is for, what you want them to do after they view your video, and where you can find them.

Step 3: Find the Story You Want to Tell

Every video should tell a complete story including a main character (your target audience), a conflict (your target audience’s pain point), the search for a solution to the conflict (your product or service), and a resolution (how your product or service makes things better).

Step 4: Stick to Your Timeline

Create a timeline for every part of your video production as well as an overall timeline that encompasses all of the other timelines. Keep in mind that things happen. Changes to scripting or messaging, delays in getting review and feedback, and delays in implementing any changes can push your timeline all out of whack. Be realistic when creating your timeline and allow yourself extra time to help keep things on track.

Step 5: Stick to Your Budget

If you’re creating a high-quality video, the budget can quickly get out of hand—especially if you’re outsourcing your video production services. Whether or not you’re handling things in-house or not, though, you still need to set a budget.

When you start with a solid video marketing strategy, you’ll be in a much better position to create videos that rank well in search engine results.

2. Optimize Your Video Titles

Creating and optimizing video titles may be included in marketing video productions services but if not, you’ll want to make sure that your video titles are fully optimized to help with SEO. Titles should include keywords related to your video’s content and grab the attention of viewers. While clickbait titles had brief popularity, viewers quickly became weary of titles that were designed simply for clicks. As such, your titles should be directly related to your video content and designed to draw attention while delivering once viewers click.

3. Include Video Transcripts

Video transcripts are a must for SEO. If your marketing video production services don’t offer video transcripts, you should absolutely write your own. And, really write them. Don’t simply rely on the auto-generated transcripts. You’ve seen them on YouTube, right? They’re not great.

Why bother with video transcripts? For starters, they make your content accessible, bringing your video to a larger audience. In addition, they make your content scrapable by search bots, essentially serving as more indexable page content.

4. Optimize Your Website

Optimizing your website may not seem to have much to do with video production services but trust us, it’s important. Adding video to a webpage can increase your rank in search engines, increase conversions, and more. Take a look at your highest-performing pages (the ones that get you the most conversions) and, if there isn’t video there already, ask your video production services company to create targeted, related videos for those pages. Video production services and website optimization work well together to get your content seen by more people.

5. Promote Your Video

Your video SEO strategy will benefit greatly from promotion. Every time your video is viewed or a user engages with your video, that content gets a bit of a signal boost that Google and other search engines use to determine where to rank your content. This creates an echo chamber of sorts in which your video gets engagement, Google and other search engines reward you for that engagement by increasing the ranking for your content, more people see your content as a result, which leads to more engagement. And so the cycle continues.

Video Production: Worth the Work

Video production services can easily pay for themselves over and over again since you can use a single video in several different ways. You can use the same video on your website, in your email marketing, on social media, and just about anywhere else. Using your video in multiple places across your marketing efforts maximizes your investment in video production services and increases your ROI. Using the information and tips in this article, you have everything you need to create a ridiculously strong video marketing strategy, regardless of whether you bring your video production services in-house or outsource to an established video production company.

Your brand has a unique story to tell that sets you apart from your competition and builds powerful brand identity. Video is one of the best ways for your brand to share that story while also keeping visitors on your website longer, keeping their attention, and getting them to engage. High-quality video and a strong video marketing strategy can bring in new customers and keep existing customers coming back for more.