Update: The latest version of VSDC features a vastly improved user interface, with a smart new dark design and the ability to detach the timeline. This gives you a lot more flexibility with your free video editing software, particularly when working on multiple monitors.
The software now also supports 360-degree video, and allows you to export clips at 120fps. There are look-up tables (LUTs) for pro-level color grading too, and automatic alignment when dragging objects. Original review continues below.
VSDC Free Video Editor is a feature-packed non-linear video editing suite that can compete with even expensive editing software. There are no extra programs bundled in the installer – just the occasional prompt to upgrade to the premium edition.
VSDC Free Video Editor
Download here:VSDC Free Video Editor
Developer: Flash-Integro
Operating system: Windows
With VSDC you can create video projects from a combination of video clips, still images and audio files, with a resolution of up to 1,980 x 1,080 (full HD) and a maximum frame rate of 30fps. There's also a built-in screen capture tool for recording video and taking still images from your desktop – ideal for software reviews and tutorials. VSDC also offers an extensive range of video and audio filters, plus stylish transitions.
You can export finished projects in a variety of formats, with handy ready-made profiles for popular devices. VSDC also provides a way to burn your project onto DVD – a feature rarely available in free editing software.
User experience
Videos in VSDC Free are made up of 'objects', which include video clips, images, audio files, sprites, animations and many other elements. You can layer these in various ways, including blending, overlaying, and masking. If you're interested in picture-in-picture or watermarking effects, this is an incredibly simple way to do it.
You can also add charts and text, which makes VSDC a brilliant tool for creating presentations with much more impact than a standard slideshow.
Each object you add can be edited, moved and cut independently – nothing is final until you export your finished project. The audio and video effects are well worth exploring. They include various Instagram-style filters, as well as special effects like fire, smoke and water – all of which are fully customizable.
If all that isn't enough, VSDC Free receives regular updates that add even more features. The latest version is significantly faster than previous iterations, and includes a stabilization tool that's ideal for footage shot with a shaky smartphone. It also enables you to upload multiple files to YouTube (if a project has been split into multiple parts, for example), and there's a new smart export profile for Instagram.
The premium version of VSDC Video Editor is even faster thanks to integrated hardware acceleration, but this isn't available in the no-cost program and you won't be able to export your project if it's enabled. To disable hardware acceleration in the this version, select the cog icon in the top right, click 'Acceleration options' and uncheck the box marked ‘Use hardware acceleration for encoding video’.
Latest updates
VSDC Free Video Editor is now available as a 64-bit version, offering much faster performance. There are new text outline settings, and various other additions and bug fixes. For full details, see the developer's release notes.
The competition
Want to see what else is out there? Watch our top 5 competitors below!
- Check out our full guide to the best free video editing software
- Pros
Inexpensive; free version available. Supports 4K editing and output. Decent PiP, chroma-key, and transparency tools. Lots of file format support. Small install size.
- Cons
Awkward interface. Can't play preview in the timeline editor. No multi-cam, motion tracking, or 3D support. No Help feature. Occasionally unstable in testing.
- Bottom Line
If you really don't want to pay much for video editing software, VSDC Video Editor can do a decent amount with your clips, but top products are far easier to use, more stable, and more powerful.
If you just want simple video stitching and trimming, you may not want to spend close to $100 for an enthusiast-level application like CyberLink's PowerDirector. Unfortunately, if you choose a low-cost option such as VSDC Video Editor Pro (which costs just $19.99), you may get frustrated when using it. Although it does have some fairly advanced video editing tools, VSDC is one of the least user-friendly applications I've tested in a while.
- $99.99
- $129.99
- $99.99
- $129.99
- $79.99
- $299.99
Pricing and Starting Up
VSDC Video Editor is available at two levels: Free and the $19.99 Pro edition—still far cheaper than most capable video editing software, and the version I reviewed. The paid version adds support for more media types, more advanced settings, hardware acceleration, sub-pixel resolution, and audio waveform editing. It also adds premium support and extra masking and chroma-keying capabilities.
The program runs on Windows XP SP3 through Windows 10 (though no one should be running old, unsupported operating systems!). The installer weighs in at 36 MB—svelte, compared with most video editors, which often top the scales at over a gigabyte. After installation, the program takes up 122 MB on the hard drive. My PC did generate an error message and a reboot, but after that everything worked as expected.
When you first run the application, a welcome panel explains that editing a video project is a simple three-step process of opening a new project, editing, and exporting. The panel links to help websites for each of these steps, rather than showing you how to do them within the program, which would be more helpful.
Interface
As you might expect from such an inexpensive program, VSDC's interface lacks the polish of, say, CyberLink PowerDirector. For one, it didn't accommodate my 4K monitor, instead showing some very tiny interface elements. The center of the program's startup interface shows five square buttons under the Start Project Now group and eight round ones under Get to Know Top Features.
Startup choices include Blank Project, Slideshow, Import Content, Video Capture, and Screen Capture. Features include effects such as color correction and filters, 4K editing, blending, masking, chroma-keying, waveforms, 3D charts, and combining multimedia.
Annoyingly, the program uses Windows Media Player to preview projects; it pops up when you try to view a preview. You can skip to but not scrub to different positions in the editor—that's a huge drawback. It's strange that you can move to points in the video, but not actually play it in the editing window. And unlike almost every video editor, it doesn't let you stop and start playback with the spacebar. Equally annoying is that, as you preview, the insertion point on the timeline doesn't keep sync with what you're watching. There is a separate Cutting and Splitting window that somewhat makes up for this limitation, however, by letting you preview a clip while cutting regions. But even that is awkward to use, making even basic trimming more difficult than in any editor I've used.
Making the interface even more cluttered, along the immediate left side and top of the preview window are Photoshop-like toolbars for things like adding and aligning shapes and text. Missing among all this is a Help feature.
You see any Projects you've created in a left-side panel, with their included Scenes. Instead of the modes you find in most video-editing apps, which take you through the standard progression of source organization, editing, and output tasks, VSDC has tabs along the top in more of an Office app layout. As in an Office app, most of these simply change ribbon tool options, but the Export option changes the main interface for output configuration.
Basic Video Editing
If you choose Import Content from the starting screen, you can only add one file at a time—a limitation I haven't seen in a long time in any video editor. But once you're in a project, you can add multiple files at once. You can't add multiple video clips directly to the timeline, but only through the File sequence wizard, which inserts transitions. These are added to the timeline as a single Sprite, which initially shows up as one track on the timeline, but double-clicking this expands to the full number of component tracks.
Drag-and-drop support is very limited, and not possible within the timeline, though you can drag clips onto the video preview window. I could slide clips back and forth within their tracks, but not move them from track to track. To do this, you need to use arrows on the toolbar above the video preview.
When you create a new project, you can specify the author, resolution, frame rate, and audio format. Next, you see the File's sequence wizard window, which lists transitions for your movie's clips. Only the Perspective set seemed to be 3D, and for some reason the most common transition type—fade—is buried deep in the list. In the same window, you can add multiple clips. But when I did this, the transitions weren't applied in the main timeline.
The auto-contrast, auto-levels, and auto-gamma options didn't improve my image. Nothing like the new dehaze tool in Adobe Premiere Elements, which works well. For manual adjustment, you tap the ellipsis […] next to a setting in a right-side panel. When you do this, a full-screen-width adjustment line appears, which you can add keyframes to gradually increase or decrease the level. Yes, it works, but it takes some sleuthing to figure out.
Fancy Video Effects
Cropping, rotating, transparency, and creating picture-in-picture video effects are quite easy in VSDC. You simply drag the borders where you want for cropping and PiP, and a rotate button makes quick work of turning your video over. But you can't animate PiP, aside from simply moving the image across the screen as time progresses. With PowerDirector, you can use keyframes to move a PiP around and resize gradually.
VSDC's Instagram style filters and old-film styles are also welcome effects, as is the workable chroma-keying. The latter did let me remove a green background, but the results weren't as impressive as with other software like Corel VideoStudio or CyberLink PowerDirector.
A few advanced video techniques that you won't find support for in VSDC include multi-cam, 360 VR, 3D, and motion tracking. In its favor, VSDC accepts and lets you edit 4K video content without any complaints. It does let you create shape masks, which you can even use to pixelate areas in the video and follow motion paths, but the program doesn't automate it or even make it easy.
The text tool is actually WYSIWYG, letting you type over the screen image. A good selection of fonts and colors are at your disposal, but you don't get the more advanced text options found in other software, such as 3D, rotation, and transparent cutout text.
The software also includes a separate Converter tool that offers a large selection of output options for popular devices and online uses, including FLV, MKV, and SWF.
Audio
You can add a soundtrack and apply several audio effects such as fade, chorus, delays, and low-pass filters. There's even a pitch change effect. I got into trouble, however, when I tried adding more than one effect to the audio, and sometimes I just heard silence. You can show audio waveforms on the timeline, but those are not adjustable.
Performance
I tested VSDC's rendering time by creating a movie consisting of four clips of mixed types (some 1080p, some SD, some 4K) with a standard set of transitions and rendered it to 1080p30 MPEG-4 at 15Mbps, H.264 High Profile. Audio was MPEG AAC Audio: 192 Kbps. I tested on the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IC running 64-bit Windows 10 Home and sporting a 4K display, 16GB RAM, a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700T CPU, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M discrete graphics card.
The test movie (that played for just under 5 minutes) took 5:05 for VSDC Video Editor to render. That compares with 1 minute and 56 seconds for Pinnacle Studio, 2:34 for PowerDirector, 4 minutes and 20 seconds for Corel VideoStudio, and 5:18 for Adobe Premiere Elements. So VSDC isn't the worst at rendering speed, but it's definitely not a leader. I should also note that the program stopped responding several times during testing and had to be restarted. Not something you want in the middle of building a digital movie.
Sharing and Output
The number of output file options is impressive. VSDC even supports the relatively new H.265 codec, and an illustrated dropdown lets you choose popular devices to target with your output. Motion JPEG and animated GIFs are also options, but Blu-ray and even AVCHD are not options. There's a DVD-burning tool, but you get no help with creating menus or chapters.
You Get What You Pay For
If you really don't want to pay for a more-established video-editing program and can get used to its frustrating and often counterintuitive interface, VSDC Video Editor can do some interesting things with your digital media—if you're very patient. Features that worked well include picture-in-picture, transparency, and the effect filters. But the app was unstable in my testing, and far too many features lag too far behind what more-expensive software offers for me to call this a good choice, even given how cheap it is. For both more ease of use and power, check out our Editors' Choice video editing software, Corel VideoStudio and CyberLink PowerDirector on the PC and Final Cut Pro X on the Mac.
VSDC Video Editor Pro
Bottom Line: If you really don't want to pay much for video editing software, VSDC Video Editor can do a decent amount with your clips, but top products are far easier to use, more stable, and more powerful.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.blog comments powered by DisqusThere are many mind-blowing video editing softwares out there, but the problem is that all of them cost you a fortune if you plan to buy them. Now, a person faces the dilemma that what if after paying the money, it will cater to his needs or not. Here comes, VSDC, the best free video editing tool with features like Chroma, zoom effect etc. It has a slight bit of learning curve, but i have compiled all the things it can do in this article.
Choose the required resolution of the video initially
At first, when you will open the VSDC Editor, click on the Blank project. A pop-up window will come up which will let you choose frame rate per second, resolution, frequency, project name etc. You can leave other things as default, but please do not forget to choose the resolution. Otherwise, the default video resolution is here set to be low and hence your final video quality will not be good. As I make videos for youtube, I keep 1280×720 resolution.
Understanding the VSDC editing interface
Now, when the editing interface, in the left side a thin bar contains all the links to import video , audio and image file into the editor. In the central area, is the preview area of the video editor, where you can play the preview of the video while editing. In the right side there are various power tools, with which you can do various operations like changing the speed, zoom effect, changing audio volume etc.
Splitting the video or audio file
Just select the video file in the timeline, drag the red line in the timeline to the point, where you want to split. Then click on editor tab given at the top. Now, click on the split into parts ( scissor icon ) as shown in below pic. The video file will get split into one break point. Now, Similarly, put the red cursor at any other point, and then click on split video icon again to split there also. Now, if you want to remove this middle split part, then click on the split part and then press delete in the keyboard to remove it.
Separating video from audio
Now, sometimes we want to mute original audio or lower or its volume. If this is the case, just select on the video file in the timeline, then, scroll down the right side power window to its bottom. Now, at the bottom, there is one option saying, split to video and audio. Just click on that, and the video and audio will be separated in the timeline. Now, you can do any operation on this audio file.
Removing background using Chroma in VSDC
Select the video file in the timeline, now click on Video Effects -> Transparency -> Background Remover.
Now, once the background is removed, just import any other video or image in the timeline to change the background.
Change video styles , just like instagram filter effect
You can change the video style and apply a filter like grayscale, sepia etc by choosing the required style.
Change video speed from Right side Power menu
You can change the video speed via right side menu. From example, if you want to make a part of the video to double the speed, split the required part and then click on the split part, select it and then change the video speed to 200%.
Make audio volume lower or higher
You can change the audio volume by making it lower or higher. First, split the video and audio, then click on the audio file and then after selecting it, just change the audio volume from the right menu.
Adding text to the video
Just take the red line to the point from where you want to put text on the video. Now, click on the left tool menu and then click on add text icon and then click on the text box created and type the text inside it. You can drag its corner to make it bigger or lower and you can also change its position by dragging.
If you are a free user Disable Hardware Acceleration option
This is important. Before exporting the project as the final output file, you must disable hardware acceleration option, as VSDC will not export the project. To disable hardware acceleration, just click on settings -> acceleration options and uncheck the option saying use hardware acceleration for encoding video.
Export project for the output Video
Finally, Click on Export project for the output video. You can selet the various formats of the video in which you want the output. Also you can click on change name to change the output directory of the result file.
VSDC
Learn more
VSDC has a lot of features you won’t find in other free video editors, like picture-in-picture, video stabilization, and the ability to upload multiple YouTube videos at once. If you can deal with its quirks, it’s one of the most powerful options available. But its interface isn’t very user-friendly, it has some major limitations, and the free version essentially throttles the speed at which you can process your videos.
Check out our full listing of free video editing software reviews and buying advice, or move up to paid video editing packages, which tend to be easier to use. .
The interface is powerful, but it’s not for the uninitiated. A great deal of information is displayed at any given time--enough to overwhelm newbies. That said, VSDC does come with a drag-and-drop, step-by-step wizard mode that will get very basic videos made even if you aren’t sure what you’re doing. It’s just too bad that the software’s most powerful features are so user-unfriendly.
We appreciate the fact that it’s easy to sort your project into multiple scenes, and that a significant number of file formats are supported for both importing and exporting. It’s also nice to see such a customizable editor—you can add and remove elements at your leisure. There are some neat effects, too: TV effects allow you to simulate old-style TV signals, and the Instagram-like filters are well-executed.
This software comes with some serious limitations, though. For example, you cannot preview a video right in the editor. When you click play to preview, it opens the video in Windows Media Player. Furthermore, previewing and exporting is extremely slow with 4K video in the free version. In fact, it’s so slow that it’s not really practical to edit 4K video. This is because the free version does not enable hardware acceleration, the most efficient way to process your video. You’ll have to pay for that.
It’s great to see a free video editor with so many features, but unfortunately some limitations like the inability to preview directly in the editing view make VSDC difficult to recommend. That’s especially true when other free video editing software doesn’t have these same restrictions. Most people would be better off trading the extra features for more efficient basics.
Vsdc Free Screen Recorder
VSDC
Learn moreVSDC has a lot of features you won’t find in other free video editors. But its interface isn’t very user-friendly, it has some major limitations, and the free version essentially throttles the speed at which you can process your videos.
Pros
- Very robust feature set for a free video editor
- Excellent support for importing and exporting a wide range of video formats
- Customizable interface
Cons
- You must preview video in a separate application
- The default interface is not very user-friendly
- Very poor performance in the free version
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VSDC Free Video Editor looks and feels just like a professional video editor. In fact, if feels almost identical to Final Cut Pro in a lot of ways. If you want to experience that style of in-depth video editing, this program is an epic way to do it for free. Be warned, though, that there's a steep learning curve unless you already have some experience.
This program checks in at about 26MB, which isn't gigantic, but is still relatively large. For that, you'll get a program that is a dead ringer for professional editing programs. It has the same sort of timeline editing style that lets you combine multiple cuts, add transitions, and render them into a complete project. As such, it isn't very easy to use unless you really know what you're doing. Few things are labeled or intuitive, and all of your tools are spread out across multiple menus. If you can find the features, there are plenty of ways to cut, reshape, and modify your video's picture and audio, though. You can even kick the quality up to 30 FPS and 1080p HD. VSDC Free Video Editor supports just about every video format you can think of, so you'll have no problem turning any video into a project.
This video editor gives you tons of control and editing power, but you'll have to know how to use it. The program could use a manual to help novice users comb through all of the features. Without that, VSDC Free Video Editor will take a lot of experimenting or previous editing know-how to figure out. It's worth spending plenty of time with, though.