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Geekbench painted a similarly disappointing picture. Against its OpenCL computer test, the integrated Intel graphics in the Mini were 40 percent slower than the MacBook Pro and scored only about one eighth the speed of the iMac Pro.
Jul 25,2019• Proven solutions
Many people are looking of free Mac video editing software since they have tons of videos and are eager to edit the videos either for better presentation or preservation. Are there any free video editing software for Mac users that are really good? Many people ask this in forums. Here we compare some great Mac video editors, followed by the detailed information of each editor for your reference, and we also made a comparison table for Mac video editor in terms of video format, pros and cons of the 10 best free video editors for Mac. Check it out!
Updates: Are you also looking for video editors for Windows, Linux, mobile phone, or online? Check our latest post 36 Best Video Editors for All the Platforms.
We’ve summarized the features, pros and cons of these best video editing software for Mac users in the comparison table below. You can choose the best suitable one based on your editing skills and needs at the current stage.
Level | Products | Input formats | Output formats | Pros | Cons |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
For beginners | Apple iMovie | DV, HDV, AVCHD, Apple Intermediate Codec, Motion JPEG/A, iFrame, h.264, MP4, MOV... | H.264/MPEG-4, MOV, AVI, DV... | Available on iPhone/iPad; Comptiable well with Apple ecosystem | Audio is copyrighted |
Avidemux | 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, H263, JPEG, MKV, MP4, MPEG, MPEG4, MPG, and OGM | AVI, FLV, M1V, M2V, MKV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, OGM and TS | Clean and easy to use interface; Open source software without built-in purchase | Exporting process is slack | |
OpenShot | WebM, AVCHD, HEVC... | MP4, AVI, MPEG... | Provide free built in effects and animations; Support 3D title | Buggy at times; Freeze and crash often | |
ZS4 Video Editor | AVI, WAV, Image Files | AVI, WMV, WAV, Jpg, Png | More than 120 built-in video effects; unlimited tracks | User interface is not friendly | |
HyperEngine-AV | AVI, BMP, Cubic VR, DLS, DV, FLC... | AIFF, AVI, BMP, DV Stream, FLC, MPEG-4... | Includes twelve studio-quality effects; Create slide shows | Discontinued to release new version | |
For semi-pros | Kdenlive | AVI, MP4, FFmpeg... | QuickTime, AVI, WMV, MPEG... | Open source software | Not friendly for greenhands; Update slowly |
Blender | STL, ABC, FBX... | FBX, DAE, ABC... | Fast poly modeling tools; Customizable input | Unintuitive layers system; Animation management is not smooth | |
For pros | Davinci Resolve | MP4, MOV, MTS, AVI... | QuickTime, AVI, R3D, MXF, DPX... | Learning curve is not steep; Offer advance color grading | Single screen editing workflow is not friendly |
Lightworks | MPEG-2, AVC, RED R3D, DPX, Apple Pro Res... | MPEG4/H.264 | Package is lightweight; Only need 3GB RAM to use | Effect library is limited | |
HitFilm Express | H.264, AVCHD, QuickTime, AVI, M2T, M2TS, MTS, MXF | H.264, Apple ProRes, AVI | High level ideo effects compositor | No motion graphics feature |
From the above comparison table, we can see there are so many pros and cons in different aspects. However, you may want to take look at another software - Filmora9- before you decide to use the one you like. It is anexcellnt Mac video editor that can meet your basic and advanced needs.
Wondershare Filmora9 for Mac offers some persuasive advantages over other video editing tools available for Apple Mac. It not only includes basic video editing tools but also provides various advanced video effects for you to apply. Below are some features that can help you understand the best Mac video editor. Download it now to have a try!
Upload media files from your computer or transport from all kinds of cameras, smart phones and elsewhere. Or directly drag-n-drop them to the program.
Easily complete basic video editing by clicking the icons above the timeline. Add different video effects and filters to personalize it. For advanced video editing, you can easily create green screen effects.
Save your video in different formats, share via Vimeo, YouTube, burn to DVD and more.
We’ve done some research and found out the following free video editing software for Mac users. Some of them are for video editing novice, while some free video editing software are for professionals (but if you need to use the professional features, you may need to purchase the Pro version). Hope you can find the right video editor based on your needs from the following list.
iMovie comes with every new Mac (OS X) and you don't need to pay extra money for it. The latest iMovie 11 is a great and free video editor for Mac with many great features such as movie trailer, one step effect, audio editing, etc. And in just a few steps, you can share your movies to YouTube or export videos for your iPhone, iPad, etc. However, iMovie is only free if you buy a new Mac. And when getting started with iMovie, you will find it hard to master this software. All in all, iMovie is one of the best free video editing software for Mac users and receives good reputation. You can learn some iMovie video editing tips and trick at how to use iMovie.
Features:
Pros: Available on iPhone/iPad; Comptiable well with Apple ecosystem
Cons: Audio is copyrighted, so you need to download royalty-free music by yourself
Avidemux is another great free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux and BSD under the GNU GPL license and supports a variety of video, image and audio formats, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4, MOV, ASF, JPG, AAC, AC3, etc. High compatibility with many video formats is the highlight of this free video editing software for Mac. You can also cut ads from a TV recording, or just save a small part of the video.
It also offers some filters to use, such as color correction. You can apply these filters to your video to make it more beautiful.
Features:
Pros: Clean and easy to use interface; Open source software without built-in purchase
Cons: Exporting process is slack, which means it will take longer time
OpenShot is a free, simple to use open-source video editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It is a good video editor for beginners to learn and train video editing skills. If you just want to mae some basic editing without having to spend too much time, OpenShot can be one of your best choices.
Apart from doing basic video editing, you can also render 3D animation. This free editor for Mac also supports more than 70 languages. No need to worry about the language barrier to stop you from editing video.
Features:
Pros: Provide free built in effects and animations; Support 3D title
Cons: Buggy at times; It freezes and crashes often
ZS4 Video Editor is a free video editor for Mac which provides media experts with a facility to combine a variety of media types into one (or more) output file(s). Besides Mac, it is also available for Windows and Linux. ZS4 Video Editor comes with over 150 built-in video effects which can help you bring your videos to the next level instantly.
More importanly, you can use it to combine various media files into one, like video, audio and photo. With this all-in-one editor, no more needs to install too many annoying apps.
Features:
Pros: More than 120 built-in video effects; unlimited tracks
Cons: User interface is not friendly
HyperEngine-AV is a free video editing software for Mac used to capture, edit, organize process, and export video, audio, and text to create DVD quality movies and slide shows. It comes with twelve studio-quality effects from Arboretum's Hyperprism suite of audio processors. Besides, it offers text features to display credits, section titles, or karaoke lyrics with fully editable font, size, type, color, style, alignment, and scroll direction. Definitely, HyperEngin-AV is really a good free video editor for Mac users.
Features:
Pros: Includes twelve studio-quality effects; Create slide shows
Cons: It is discontinued to release new version
Although the development team has moved full-stream-ahead on Linux, you can still use this excellent free video editor on Mac with packages available via MacPorts. Kdenlive supports almost all popular media formats, and you can easily add the files to software's multitrack timeline.
You can create 2D titles to light up project like aligning texts and rotating. For editing huge size of video file, it offers proxy to make the editing experience smoother.
Features:
Pros: It is open source software
Cons: Not friendly for greenhands; Update slowly
Like Avidemux, Blender is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. It's a free 3D graphics application and considered as one of the best free video editor for Mac. It can be used for modeling, rigging, texturing, UV unwrapping, skinning, animating, rendering, water and smoke simulations, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications, animated film, video games, or other visual effects. Blender has lots of advanced features like powerful character animation tools, modifier-based modeling tools, a node-based material and compositing system, Python for embedded scripting and so on.
Features:
Pros: Fast poly modeling tools; Customizable input
Cons: Unintuitive layers system; Animation management is not smooth
In our impression, professional-thing costs a lot. But it isn’t true when coming to video editing software like DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks and HitFilm. There are two versions for those video editing software, and the lite version or the free version usually costs no money with limited features which makes them good choice for people who are looking for professional video editing solution to some degree.
Blackmagic Design's Davinci Resolve has been growing from an advanced color-grading tool to an video post-production solution. If you are an experienced video maker and want to apply a high quality color correction/grading to your footage, Davinci Resolve's free basic version can be your choice.
Timeline curve function is a powerful feature for you to add keyframe if you want to edit a specific scene. Also it offers full 3D editing particle systems to let you release creativity.
Features:
Pros: Learning curve is not steep; Offer advance color grading
Cons: Single screen editing workflow is not friendly
Lightworks is a professional video editing software for Windows and Mac, its free version offers you limited export option. It includes video effects, multicam editing, titling, as well as the multi layered timeline approach which is perfect for advanced video editing needs.
Features:
Pros: Package is lightweight; Only need 3GB RAM to use
Cons: Effects library is limited
HitFilm Express is more like a compositing video editor, compared with Adobe After Effects, it's more easy-to-use and friendly to semi-pros. People who are not familiar with the video editing process may find using HitFilm Express difficult.
Features:
Pros: High level ideo effects compositor
Cons: It lacks motion graphics feature
You may have found the best video editor for Mac after reading this article. I’ll try my best to keep the list up to date, but if your favorite free video editor for Mac isn’t listed above, please leave a comment and let me know. This article is for mac version, click here to get more info about free video editing software for Windows.
Easy-to-use and powerful video editor for all creators.
Bring up your video to a professional level with straightforward tools.
Thanks to our sponsor Digiarty Sofware, makers of new video processing app VideoProc.
VideoProc is a new video processing app for 4K and HD videos made to be an all-in-one app for editing, resizing, transcoding, converting and more for all of your videos. The app also offers built-in tools for recording your iPhone screen, recording your Mac’s webcam and screen at the same time, and downloading online videos from over 1000+ sites, giving you everything you need to record, convert, and resize videos for backups, faster uploads, sharing and more.
For a limited time, you can get VideoProc for Free (Reg. $78.90).
Head below for a closer look at VideoProc.
Full GPU Level-3 Hardware Acceleration fully powered by Intel, AMD and NVIDIA GPUs means you get much faster video processing with VideoProc compared to a lot of the free competition. With support for 370 input codecs and 420+ output formats, it offers a 4K-capable video converter that can handle anything from simple to more complicated transcoding needs.
Whether you’re uploading videos to a service like YouTube, sharing videos via Instagram or Twitter, or simply backing up your favorite videos, there are many reasons you might want or need to convert, transcode, or resize a video you shoot on your iPhone, GoPro, drone or other camera once getting it into your Mac. With VideoProc, you’ll be able to handle more common tasks like going from H264 to H265 (HEVC), MKV to iPhone/MP4, AVI to YouTube-compatible formats, and also more intensive processing such as converting 3D to 2D video.
Editing tools
Rather than having to use a separate app for quick edits and adjustments before converting or processing a video, VideoProc provides built-in tools for easy edits like crops, rotating, subtitles, one-click effects, and merging multiple video clips together.
It also provides more advanced tools for things like stabilizing videos, noise reduction, creating gifs, lens correction, adding watermarks, and more.
A screen recorder function in VideoProc offers 3 recording modes allowing you to record your Mac or iOS screen or record from your camera while recording your screen at the same time using a picture-in-picture mode. The recording feature allows you to optionally resize or crop the area you want to record, and also provides tools for annotations including drawing, highlights, and adding text, arrows, outlines, images, and voiceovers.
Lastly, another feature of VideoProc allows you to download videos and record live streams directly from 1000+ sites including popular video streaming services like YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and more. You can then of course edit and convert your videos before processing them for wherever you want to share or store them later.
For a limited time, you can download VideoProc for Free (Reg. $78.90).