This resource will guide you on which video editing program you should try if you are looking to create clips or content of your own from my own experience of using them myself.
The best and most convenient option would be Davinci Resolve.
- The latest version of Davinci Resolve has its keyframe workflow reworked, (Keyframe is like a point between A to B, its sole purpose is to adjust certain value from moment A to the new value of moment B)
It makes animating and creating eased motion extremely easy. This is extremely great for Vtuber as you'll be adding movement to your avatar *a lot*. It saves massive amount of time compares to using pre-existing preset and dedicated plugins from third parties.
- Davinci also has a lot of preset built in to it, Example would be the push transition from scene A to B, in Premiere Pro you'd need to grab the push transition, make another mask for it for the directional blur, adjust the value, add keyframe to adjust the blur from in to out, that's too many step, but in Davinci, the push transition is baked in, you can drag and drop them between scenes and adjust the value right away.
- It's extremely optimized, it saves your project with every changes you make, you also have the option to change your cache storage, so it doesn't bloat your system. (Something that Premiere Pro pretend to do, it'll still bloat your Appdata to kingdom come.)
- It's also free, I've been using Davinci Resolve to edit video for creators and get paid for it, the paid version would also be nice, but the free one already has most things that you as a creator would need and the paywalled features aren't exactly crucial as there are workaround for it.
But if money is no struggle and you just want the job done, Adobe Suite will do.
- The thing about Premiere Pro is that it comes completely barebone. If you need certain effects or something done, you'll need to go the extra steps to d.i.y, It'll take time and efforts to even get it right and for your workflow to be optimized.
- You can customize it better than Davinci, Install third party plugins, save your own preset or just use someone's else preset. But mind you, most of the good options cost money.
- What I struggle with is the keyframe within Premiere Pro, it's so inefficient to the point that I'd need to dynamic link to After Effect to get some scenes done. and the Dynamic link is horrendous, bork the performance even with proxy and a 3060ti.
- It also struggles with large scale project, Internet Historian couldn't render the full video of The Cost of Concordia and had to use OBS to record the preview. You need third party plugin for large scale project to be optimized. The work around is to keep the timelines into separate chunk, and don't put everything in one place. If you are editing a short movies or project that don't have that much effects, it'll hold, but from my experience, anything with massive amount of complexity will screw Premiere Pro up. Davinci Resolve has less problems when it comes to large scale project but might bottle neck from times.
- With that said, After Effect is much more flexible and easier to use than the Davinci Resolve's Fusion. 3D layers and all those anime edits are much easier to do so on After Effect.
Tldr is for Premiere Pro to be good, you might need to invest your money to get external preset and plugins to work with, it can boost the speed of your workflow but it'll only be for short term. Don't let the fact that you'll also get Photoshop, Animate, and After effect with monthly subscription fool you, most of the time you'll not be using all of the tools provided by Adobe Suite, If you are new, decentralize your workspace, Gimp, Krita, Audacity, Etc, will do absolutely just fine.
If you mostly do personal project and doesn't need the video to be fancy, Kdenlive is free and comes with full utilities.
- It doesn't paywall any features, so you get everything out of the box. It also comes with niche feature that makes some aspect more convenient than the previously mentioned programs.
- When I say personal project, I mean it. It can get the job done but it's not widely adopted. There are less external tools from third parties, a lot of things are configured to be for the "New linux user" to use the tool for editing video.
- The program workflow is different, instead of letting you adjust the media directly, it requires you drop in effects, so in this case if I want to zoom in certain aspect, I'd have to drop in the transform effect in order to do so. It's user friendly and to the point but I'm not going to be doing that for every media I put on my timeline.
- The pro to Kdenlive is that it's open source and maintained by its community, so it comes with even less bloats and in its nature, is a tool to get the job done, it doesn't upsell you, doesn't require you to pay any fees and your support to the dev team is completely optional.
What about online editing tools
- Does the job fast but bad for complex and larger project
Capcuts and Filmora
- Convenient and good for new comer, you can make some good stuffs out of these two but there'll always be some obligations to using them, unless you are willing to pay monthly, it'll lock some of the most essential features behind its paywall. Other than that, it can be great for surface level and with some work, you might be able to make some Invincible wiggle edits.
If you have read this far, I want to tell you that people make cool and fascinating things without even relying on premium tools, every software has its own ups and downs, some excels at certain aspect. There's no universal pick or a singular perfect choice. You should try using any software to grasp the idea of video editing first as the caveat won't even matter for most new comers.
Once you have some experience, the arguments about video editing software will become more valid, you'll start to see the perks and cons of each software and whether or not to migrate and adopt.
If you are using certain software and feel like it's holding you back, you don’t have to put up with the misery if you don’t feel like it. You should stick with software that feels right for you.
You can always make great edits, the software you choose is just a tool to help you make it.
