FREEWARE AND FREE VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE

VirtualDub

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.

Wax

Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Wax can create 2D and 3D special effects and can work in two modes - as a standalone application which would appeal for home users/beginners, and as a "plug-in" to video editors/NLEs which would be more useful for professional editors. Currently Wax can work as a plug-in with Sony Vegas, Pure Motion EditStudio and Adobe Premiere and work for integrating with various other NLEs is in progress.

Virtual Edit

Virtual Edit is a semi-professional software video editing package aimed at ambitious content creators to video novices, who want to produce material with a slick and professional look, on a limited budget. Virtual Edit has been written by experts with experience in the Television and Broadcasting industries, which has been encapsulated in this simple software package.

Virtual Edit will run on Laptop and Desktop PCs running Microsoft Win98SE/ME/XP/2000. Also if you have a DV camera with a DV-out, you can capture video straight into a Virtual Edit Project and start creating.

Movica

Movica is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for editing WMV, FLV, RM and MPG video files.

Movica Features:

• Select or delete multiple portions from a video file.
• Copy, paste and fine tune the selections.
• Join multiple files together
• Split movies into smaller files
• Save and play selected scene without editing the movies

ZS4 Video Editor

ZS4 is a video editing and compositing software which aims to provide media experts with a facility to combine a variety of media types (currently photos, videos and audio files) into one (or more) output file(s).

ZS4 Video Editor can be used like an object oriented photo-manipulation program with a timeline: things that can be manipulated in a photo (workshop) program can be manipulated in ZS4 using parameters which alter over time.

The ZS4 Video Editor is worth using when:

• The final output is a combination of more than 2 media sources rendered simultaneously. (like nine talking heads separately filmed, but later arranged in a 3x3 video wall combination)
• Every aspect of the compositing process needs to be 'tweened with an adjustable interpolation algorithm, from rotation angles to audio volume and chroma key sensitivity etc...
• It becomes necessary to create custom effects and imaging processes by combining any number of effects using a highly flexible and infinitely variable toolbox of imaging "primitives".
• The user likes to be limited by their own imagination instead of the software-makers ideas of the "desirable".

Jahshaka

Jahshaka was written from the ground-up to work in different environments, and lets you use the tools you need to get the job done in real time. Thanks to the power of OpenGl and OpenMl you can do this on anything from PC's to Mac's to high-powered Sgi workstations and not have to worry about mixing video, audio and graphics card, installing custom hardware and drivers, or spending millions of dollars for high end speed, power and functionality.

Jahshaka uses todays next-generation hardware to do everything in real time, regardless of what box you are running on. Thanks to the power and economics of mass markets, todays pc's come with everything you need to create any kind of media you want. Todays graphics cards would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just a few years ago? and deliver an unbelievable level of power and speed into your hands. This is the power that drives jahshaka.

Jahshaka's morphing interface allows you to work as a editor when you are editing, to work as a compositor when you are creating effects, as a audio enginer when you are mixing, and as a animator when you are doing 3d. It will even allow you to create your own hybrid interfaces to match your workflow.

This power and flexability has been unheard of, but its coming your way soon. Imagine a system simple enough to edit home videos and mix audio tracks, but powerful enough to edit HDTV, create film effects or animate a flock of seagulls.

Jahshaka fixes many of the compatability and file sharing problems that exist in large facilities today. The ability to run multiple seats of jahshaka off a single server, with full project and media sharing solve the problems of distributed vs shared storage. Everybody can use the same disk-array? and work together without the massive slowdowns of having to move large media files around your network. Jahshaka loves multi tasking, multi user, media sharing environments.

AVI Edit

AVIedit allows you to join and split avi files, extract frames and do whatever you want... You can capture video by number of ways, including one-frame-per-minute (web camera) option, workaround annoying 2 Gb file size limit, send your videos to printer, heavy compress it and post to your webpage. You can change framerate, duration, frame size, color depth of your videos and other properties, even without recompression and without loss of video quality. AVIedit allows you to convert avi clips to bmp and bmp to avi, animated GIFs etc.

AVIedit Features:

• Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in host system
• Regular polygonal selection feature
• Import (convert) series of BMP, JPEG, PNG and TARGA files into a single AVI movie
• Preview video on the computer screen (1:8 to 4:1 zoom) with control of brightness and contrast
• One-shot capture single frames and live video with auto enumeration
• Save extra info (authorship, copyrights etc.) within a file
• Cut/copy/paste some frames of AVI clips
• Distort single images and AVI files using more than 30 built-in effects (each can be customized by user)
• De-noise video
• Do any fancy transformation of frames
• List files import (plain text format)
• TWAIN imaging (use scanners, digicams etc.)
• Export an AVI file into separate frames, animated GIFs or new clip
• Add, delete or re-compress an audio track of the clip
• Use bluescreening (chromakey) and layers
• Resync your "talking heads"
• Do gamma-correction of video and color conversion (grayscale etc.)
• Apply twirl, emboss and some never seen video effects
• Can create some nice text titles as AVI file
• Import anmated GIF's as .AVI
• Convert Autodesk FLI/FLC to AVI
• Export AVI to Autodesk FLI/FLC
• Import MP3 files to add sound tracks to AVI
• Split interlaced video fields to get slow motion effect
• Convert DV avi Type 1 to Type 2 and back, with optional adding extra audio track
• Import (convert) MPEG1 files to AVI for easy editing
• Supports English, German, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, French, Czech, Ukraine, Swedish and other menu languages

SolveigMM AVI Trimmer

SolveigMM AVI Trimmer is a free video editor allowing you to AVI movie cut extremely fast and lossless. This freeware AVI editor software is small, smart, easy to use and involves no encoding/decoding processes. That is why users express their preference for SolveigMM AVI Trimmer if they want to cut commercials, cut video files or edit video for YouTube.

LiVES Video Editing System

LiVES is a free, open source video editor and a VJ tool.

LiVES mixes realtime video performance and non-linear editing in one application. It will let you start editing and making video right away, without having to worry about formats, frame sizes, or framerates. It is a very flexible tool which can be used by both VJ's and video editors - mix and switch clips from the keyboard, trim and edit your clips, and bring them together using the multitrack timeline. You can even record your performance in real time, and then edit it further or render it straight away as a new clip.

Cinelerra

Cinelerra does primarily 3 main things: capturing, compositing, and editing audio and video with sample level accuracy. It's a seamless integration of audio, video, and still photos rarely experienced on a web server.

Cinelerra CV

For years, some people have wanted a way to edit their audio and video in one place as fluidly as writing text. Cinelerra tries to be a single location for all your audio and video editing needs. All the recording, editing, and playback are handled here. It can be used as an audio player. It can be used to record audio or video. It can even be used as a photo retoucher.

There are two types of moviegoers: producers who create new content and revisit it for further refinement, and consumers who want to acquire the content and watch it. Cinelerra is not intended for consumers. Cinelerra has many features for uncompressed content, high resolution processing, and compositing. Producers need these features in order to retouch many generations of footage, which makes Cinelerra very complex.

avidemux

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license.

Kino

Kino is a non-linear DV editor for GNU/Linux. It features excellent integration with IEEE 1394 for capture, VTR control, and recording back to the camera. Kino captures video to disk in Raw DV, AVI, and Quicktime formats.

You can load or import (requires ffmpeg ) multiple DV clips and edit them non-destructively using a variety of techniques including simple split, join, cut-and-paste, and drag-and-drop operations. Then, you can save the project to a SMIL XML document. Most edit and navigation commands are mapped to equivalent vi commands. Also, Kino can export the project in a number of formats:

• DV over IEEE 1394
• Raw DV, DV AVI
• Quicktime DV (requires libquicktime or Quicktime 4 Linux )
• Still frames: PPM, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, TGA, and whatever other gdk-pixbuf modules are on your system
• WAV
• MP3 (requires lame )
• Ogg Vorbis (requires oggenc )
• Ogg Theora (requires ffmpeg2theora )
• MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (requires mjpegtools 1.6 or 1.8 )
• DVD Video authoring (requires dvdauthor )
• MPEG-4, H.264, and Flash Video (requires ffmpeg )
• ... or anything that can read raw DV from a pipe (e.g. ffmpeg) through user-extensible script

The FX mode ( FX ) provides some basic audio and video effects such as filters and transitions for audio and video. It also provides extensibility through a plugin API. At the time of this writing, all plugins have been incorporated into the Kino releases.

Kino does not offer multitrack capabilities through a timeline user interface, but do not let that discourage you. Many things that would require a multi-track timeline can be accomplished with more planning and manual operations. Some of the built-in effects include:

• Color video generator
• Gradient video generator
• Generate video from stills
• Video noise generator
• Audio gain envelope
• Audio dub
• Audio mix from WAV (or any format supported by ffmpeg )
• Audio fade in or out
• Audio crossfade transition
• Monochrome
• Sepia
• Inverse
• Blur
• Soften
• Flip
• Mirror image
• Kaleidoscope
• Keyframeable pan and zoom
• Keyframeable brightness, contrast, gamma, hue, saturation, value, and white balance (color temperature and green tint)
• Charcoal
• Titler (using Pango) with motion and fading
• Superimpose stills with motion and fading
• Keyframeable compositing transition (e.g., fly-in)
• Numerous and user-extensible wipe transitions
• Rudimentary (blue or green) color key
• Dissolve wipe
• Fade to/from color

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a non linear video editor for the KDE environment running on Linux.

Kdenlive is based on the MLT video framework which relies on the FFMPEG project.

Kdenlive Features:

• Multi track editing
• Accepts many audio / video / image formats: mpeg, avi, dv, vob, wav, ogg, mp3, gif (non animated), jpg, png, svg, ...
• Export to many formats: mpeg, dv, vob, realvideo, flash, theora, wav, mp3, xvid, quicktime, ...
• Audio and video thumbnails
• Basic audio / video effects: blur, sepia, volume, brightness, ...
• Basic transitions: crossfade, push, picture in picture
• Real time preview of all effects
• Add markers and guides to easily manage your project
• Copy & paste of clips, effects and transitions
• Easy firewire dv capture
• Customizable layouts
• Desktop integration (add files to your project with drag & drop)
• Multi track view (preview monitor is split in 4 with one track in each part)