Shotcut

You can't beat the price (Free!). This program gets the job done. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles as expensive programs but it does plenty enough to do most basic projects. I've done numerous music videos and little comedy skits that I've uploaded to YouTube and they come out great. They look totally professional and the feedback I've gotten has been very positive. My action camera records in .mov format which is hard to edit with. I convert my raw files to .mp4 which makes editing much easier and I'm unable to discern any loss of video quality. All in all, Shotcut has been a great choice for me.

Some of the functions aren't intuitive. It takes a little while to figure out how everything works. Also it's slow while it publishes your final work but if you're patient it's well worth the wait to save money. It lacks a variety of scene transitions that more expensive programs have but it does have the basics.

I find Shotcut very useful although it takes a little while to learn it by heart as it is a bit complicated. It's relatively simple, though looking at its interface if you're used to navigating video and even audio editors. Ironically it is complex as you have to select certain dropdowns to get to what you want to achieve, but I won't tag it as a con as we need to learn the software before saying that it's good or bad. You can't just dismiss a software and tag it as not user friendly just because you don't like how the interface looks. It's not the developer's fault that you're too lazy to learn it.

So, the rewards are very satisfying because this software can process 4K videos. And unlike what most people say about it, this one is a professional tool if you just maximize all its feature. For instance, you can easily download LUTs that are free from third party sites, along with filters to spice up your video projects and use it here.

I must add that the feature of chroma key is a gem from this software. I was even surprised it has this and it keys in the color like a charm, as it detects decently the edges and does very good blending of foreground and background. If you notice Youtubers nowadays, green screen usage has become a norm and this feature is a holy grail found in this video editing software.

I can only point two cons but I guess the crashy and laggy part sometimes when a lot of elements are stacked is due to my RAM and processor. I need to test it on a higher specs computer to be able to have a fair assessment. The second one is for some reason the text/ subtitle elements have a hard time lining up when you're doing adjustments on the timeline. I always make it a habit not to use undo because for some reason it executes two undo commands instead of one, and that's when I notice the text are messed up. Even if it's just one undo command or if you add other elements on the video fragment with the current text, it affects it.

What I liked most about the software was that it had the features of a professional video editor such as Adobe Premiere Pro. It could also process 4K HDR 10 video at 120FPS which other video editors struggled to render these types of video formats. My favorite part about it is that it doesn't have an ANNOYING WATERMARK. Basically some of the other editors I tried showed a giant watermark across the screen that said the company name or it said Free Version but Shotcut has no watermark.

Originally when my team picked this software for free I thought it was going to be easy to use but I thought wrong. But after a few days of learning I was using Shotcut in no time. I just think people should know that because it isn't easy to learn at the start doesn't mean you can't learn it.