Amazingly, in the free version you get nearly all the features; the main restriction for the free license version is the output formats – you can only export a web compatible file at 720p. If you want to export a few projects into a different format fairly cheaply, you can buy a one-month licence for £14.99. Lightworks is undoubtedly some of the best free video editing software for Windows 10. What you’re getting is a fast and very powerful editor with a superbly designed timeline. It does everything you can imagine a big production needs it to, with great hardware and video format support, and powerful project sharing so many people can work together easily.
It's a powerful piece of kit for a freebie, handling video capture and advanced editing with ease. The timeline enables a high degree of control so you can trim and mix together your audio and video clips exactly how you want them. Because it's a slimmed-down version of a professional suite, you may find that the interface isn't the easiest to navigate.
But there are plenty of good tutorial videos that will get you up and running pretty quickly – and you won't have to pay a penny, as long as your projects are non-commercial. Read TechRadar's 03. More suited to presentations Lightworks and DaVinci Resolve are ideal if you’re making a slick-looking film, but if you’re making a presentation and want to add text, lines, charts and other special effects to it, might be the free video editor for you. It includes Instagram-style filters, lots of special effects including colour correction and blurring, and there’s a mask tool so you can apply effects to part of the video (for obscuring faces, for example). There’s a video stabiliser to help remove camera shake from footage taken with GoPros or drones, and also a powerful chart tool for adding graphs to presentations. Unlike Lightworks, the free version of VSDC will export to a range of different formats including AVI and MPG.