Best Free Software

VSDC

www.videosoftdev.com What you need: Windows 7, 8/8.1 or 10

VSDC joins a long line of video editors, such as open-source Shotcut ( https://shotcut.org) and professional-grade Davinci Resolve ( www.snipca.com/30389). Since they’re all free, it’s a case of seeing which you’re most comfortable with.

A common complaint among users of previous versions was that you couldn’t preview your videos within VSDC – instead, they launched in a separate Windows Media Player window. This version fixes that long-standing issue, allowing you to view them directly within VSDC. To reduce clutter, you can also now hide the timeline section at the bottom of the screen. Alternatively, you can detach the timeline completely and move it to a second monitor.

Other new features include support for 120fps (frames per second) video and a new, darker theme. If you prefer the lighter theme of previous versions, you can restore it by clicking Options (top right) then selecting from the ‘Used style’ options. And if you’re serious about video editing, you’ll be pleased to hear this version also supports look up tables (LUTS), which are used for professional colour grading.

A decent selection of video effects are included. Some, such as the Fire effect, look a bit amateur, but the filters and scene transitions work well, and can easily be added and previewed using the File Sequence Wizard.

VSDC supports 4K video, but we found exporting it painfully slow with a one-minute video taking just over five minutes. If you’re planning to edit a lot of 4K video, the Pro version (£19) includes hardware encoding to speed up exports.

As well as editing video, VSDC also includes a discburning tool that exports your videos to DVD and Blu-ray. It also comes with separate tools to capture your screen (both videos and screenshots) and upload videos to Youtube.