Your Recommendation: A Video Editing Program Simple Enough Even for a Vid-iot Like Me

[Charmed Life Picks]

Can't thank you folks enough. This gives me many choices.

Yes, a video editor with basic audio features would be the best way for me to go at present. Much further down the road (probably not till next year) I will perhaps be recording higher-quality audio for pick demos and such, but right now I just want to launch the channel.

Thanks Again,
Scott

[FrankHudson]

I used Windows Movie Maker for years. Fairly simple and well able to do the basic trimming and on-screen titling.* Ran on low end hardware. But it's now deprecated, and no longer officially available.

I now have a more powerful Windows computer and tentatively tried to move over to Power Director, which has been constantly praised by PC Magazine as best video editor over the years for its features and speed. Not too expensive and yes, it has features upon features and renders faster than anything else, but I find it hard to learn, even to do some fairly basic things I rely on.

On Windows I'd consider Adobe Premiere Elements. I almost went with it, and might still take a turn from Power Director. I have not used the current version. They have a short term free trial which I believe watermarks the videos but might let you see if it fits your needs and expectations.

There's an online app called ClipChamp that claims to be aimed at marketing videos. I tried it briefly. There's a significantly limited free version and then a not too pricey subscription level with greater capabilities. I only looked at it briefly, when I decided to go with PowerDirector which was similarly priced. It has nowhere near the feature set of Power Director or even Premiere Elements, but if it has the features you need it might be worth a look.


*I next moved to iMovie on my much more modern Mac Mini. Had some nice features, not complicated to learn, but it crashed irritatingly too often for me. Windows Movie Maker titling actually was better than the latest version of Movie Maker.

[Rudy4]

Originally Posted by Charmed Life Picks

Thanks, Rudy. I'm on a Windows laptop and an Android smartphone, and no desire to change.

Question. Since I would be using Reaper for my business, it seems I would be considered a "commercial" user, not a private one. I'm honest to a fault, so I would want to broach this subject with them before signing up, and the more expensive "commercial" pricing option is more than I'm willing to pay at present.

Thanks Again,
Scott

As previously posted, your small business use isn't going to propel you into commercial user status.

Get some material together, download it, watch Kenny Giola's Reaper for video instructional Youtubes. You have 30 days to try it out and see if it fits your needs. If it doesn't then try something else.

When I was first starting to do basic videos I got all the usual recommendations for the "great" freeware programs out there, too. The trouble was they ended up being huge processer hogs or had other problems and I spent more time trying to overcome all the lockups, etc. until I tried Reaper.

It does what I want it to do and imposes light demands on your computer's processing power.