Video Editing Software

Davinci resolve is great, cross platform and has a free version.

I tried Davinci resolve but it was so foreign to me that I just gave up.

So I have been using a program called 'Shotcut'. It's been really easy and a lot of videos for help. I've been using it for a while now and it's been fairly stable with only 2-3 crashes. The first one I was all the way done and exporting when it just dumped it all and of course I hadn't saved the project. I do wish there was some sort of autosave you could set up but I'm sure that could backfire also saving at a time you didn't want to.

I would like to go back to davinci soon and see if it's so foreign to me now. I think shotcut was a good step up from the old windows movie maker, but not quite the massive program davinci is.

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Anyone have a video editing software they would recommend? Free preferrably.

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buy an old-ish macbook with final cut

Lightworks is great software that up there with Adobe Premiere in many aspects. It's free if you can live with just being able to export in 720p. That is usually good enough for some good looking video. If you decide to pay for it, you get the full resolution capability up to 4k. They have discount codes they offer every now and then that bring the price for a 1 year license to around 80 bucks and even throw in Borris Graffiti. A lot of pro tools included including Chroma Key effects. Very nice to work with. Pro level software at a reasonable to free price.

It would depend on what you are wanting to do now and how far you want to take it in the future.

If you are wanting to just put together some family movies real quick or just do more basic type editing and effects, Lightworks and Shotcut are probably going to be alright for you.

If you are wanting more professional quality videos or think you might want to do more advanced editing more into the future, I'd definitely recommend Davinci Resolve. Getting started with just piecing together clips, basic transitions and effects is pretty easy. At least no more difficult than any other program. However, like bbap said, there is a pretty steep learning curve going any deeper than that but there are tons of tutorial videos out there with demo content to play with. Where DR shines is the color correction which is what they are known for but that takes things to a whole other level.

Regardless, make sure you have enough RAM and a pretty beefy graphics card. Otherwise, at worst, your programs will crash in the middle of editing and at best, take forever to render even a preview.

I use Edius, which is pro-level and pricey! But I've been toying a lot with Openshot, which is free. I've been impressed with what it does for free.