So I've set it as a new years resolution to try in earnest, to fulfill some of my long-term goals during 2026. One of these - and I think one of the simpler objectives - is uploading more of the best work I've made on Botb to other platforms, such as my seldom used YouTube channel.

I was curious as to whether anyone could give recommendations, on what video editing software they personally use. With YouTube being a visual platform, I wanna try and make the most of it.

I've tried and used a lot of different video editing software in the past. I mainly use Premiere Pro for editing and After Effects for everything else, BUT if I would start with video editing in 2026, I would try DaVinci Resolve. And yes, there is a free version that looks pretty good:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

agree w wrathard, i am a strong believer in after effects despite its pricing. and despite the effort we go through to escape the pricing.
if you want to take the legal way without breakin a hole intye wallet, ive no word on this

Those are good video editors, but they cost moneys. Here's "good enough" video editors:

Openshot
Capcut (browser. The donload version is spyware)

i do a good amount of editing work and i used premiere for 5ish years, it's the obvious choice IF you're well off or get it comped/discounted through work or school. i've spent the last 6 months learning davinci resolve since i'm graduating soon and won't have premiere, and i can say it's amazingly robust and in some ways better than premiere - if you see editing just being a hobby for the forseeable future i think it's a great idea to learn the free ver of davinci and stick with that until you need to upgrade! happy to answer any questions you may have with either one

i can also recommend sony vegas if you can find it, and if you're on mobile "videoshop" was pretty solid a couple years ago no clue how it fares now

seconding wrathard's recommendation of davinci resolve, it's pretty much the video editor to kill premiere. personally, i'd also recommend kdenlive

. it's foss (free & open source software) meaning you'll never have to pay for it, it has a decent plugin repository

, it's easy to use and i've personally used it for years now. if you plan on saving money with your editing software, those two are probably your best options, but of course there's also the paid version of davinci resolve and sonic foundry's vegas pro if you want something a bit more powerful

DaVinci Resolve. More practical and totally free

I use Kdenlive, and honestly it doesn't really feel like a professional level video editor but it's surprisingly good for a FOSS and community developed app. If you just want to put a bunch of clips together and do some light editing it's decent enough for that.

Most amateur video producers seem to be going with DaVinci Resolve nowadays so that's what I'd recommend.

I miss windows movie maker

I've been using VSDC Free Video Editor for years.

Not so much an editor but rather a generator - if you'd like to generate oscilloscope videos as a standalone thing (or as something to overlay on top of something else), I'd recommend checking out Corrscope

. It's fairly customizable, easy to learn, and can generate any number of separate oscilloscopes if desired if you provide it a separate audio track for each channel. It's basic, but helpful if you just want something quick to upload without needing to put in too much work.

https://www.olivevideoeditor.org/ OLIVE FUCKING ROCKS IT IS CRIMINAL HOW LITTLE ATTENTION IT GETS FROM BOTH EDITORS AND THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY RAAAAAAHHH

it looks about like premiere, so it's gonna be like kdenlive but simpler and with less visual noise, and it doesn't have much in the way of transitions and such, but it's fast and easy to work with and it's served me really well. it should have everything you need to upload music stuff, short of audio visualization, which you would probably want to create in another software anyway

Video Generation:
Nununoisy has made some great tools for generating videos for nsf, gbs and spc formats: https://github.com/nununoisy

Corrscope was already mentioned but it's a great tool if you're able to get independent stems/per-channel export from your tool of choice: https://github.com/corrscope/corrscope

Although it's got some editing features as well, and not FREE free, FL Studio's ZGameEditor is great for generating a linear spectrogram alongside some text of your choice, and I've been able to create my 2024 demo reel entirely in it - if you own any FL edition then you have access to this afaik

Video Editing:
Davinci Resolve: Some features are paid, and the free download requires a "registration" but you fill it with completely bogus information, you get redirected straight to the download (no email verification for it). It's the most fully featured video editor available.

Hitfilm: I can't super recommend this as it seems to be no longer developed? It also has some weird quirks. But it does have a free edition.

There's some FOSS options naturally but I have found that they are lacking in offerings, your mileage may vary though. Some options like Kdenlive were mentioned but i've also seen some people use Openshot or whatever it's called nowadays.

If you have an Apple device I believe it comes with iMovie which can be used freely for basic video editing for collages or whatever, I don't know how well it works for basic video editing.

Video Compression:
If you're using Davinci you might notice it exports really large .MOV files.

Handbrake is free and will compress the video down to your specifications, its defaults are ok but tweak them to your liking and save that as a preset. The much smaller files are often in indistinguishable quality to the exported original. I use it to compress my ripped DVDs as well from 4-8GB to like a max. of 2GB and the quality there as well is indistinguishable.

There's some brilliant info here, thanks everyone!!
Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve, Openshot, Sony Vegas all sound like potentially good fits for me. Adobe stuff is always so pricy for my shoestring budget haha, but I appreciate premier pro and after effects being highlighted.
I think I'll start by looking at Kdenlive and DaVinci respectively, and see if one of those two suits my evil pigeon purposes. :))

Edit: Oooh more recommendations appeared while I was leaving my comment, I'll add them onto my list of look-in-to's! Once again appreciated!
I actually do have corrscope, and as you say Kilo it's very good! One of my hopes is to have the different oscilloscopes visible, with an edited video in the background. I think it'll be more interesting for my YouTube channel.

Davinci Resolve free version is great! I moved onto that from Sony Vegas Studio 13 2 years back, and it's more than enough for my useage and has better features, even on the free version!

ffmpeg so you can write 1 script, feed it any audio file and have it spit out a very simple video

Maybe not what you're looking for but "shotcut" is a nice free one that I've had good results with on my craptop and with linux. Very vegas-like but no doubt a lot less deep

yeah you gotta learn ffmpeg-fu but you could probably get some inspiration from https://github.com/langel/botb-instavid

To big lumby:
Kdenlive

can go die for all I care, every freaking time I exported using that thing it added frame repeats after some clips or at the end of videos.
Davinci Resolve (Free)

is what I currently use and am learning.

openshot were excellent for my needs, i used it between 2008 and 2014, and it is very similar to what adobe premiere were in the late 90s
and "editing" videos using command line, ffmpeg is great
there is also avidemux and lightworks

i'm a long time vegas pro user and i would not recommend this software to anyone unless you want to make youtube poops the old school way lol. 10 versions later and crashes, compositor bugs and poor format handling are still commonplace (i basically need to transcode everything with ffmpeg before i can reliably use it in vegas), plus it has weird idiosyncrasies that you need to avoid (e.g. awful resampling that completely smudges your videos).

i use ffmpeg a lot but it's not a substitute for a good NLE. for trimming, transcoding and other repeatable tasks its very good.

resolve looks the most promising of free options but, personally, 1) old habits die hard and 2) the ui has very poor contrast and there's no light theme, which i find difficult to work with and will be a complete dealbreaker for others.

there is also virtualdub (i think i didnt try it on wine yet)

Felt rude to not update and say that thanks to this thread, I've been using kdenlive, which has proved to suit my current needs nicely! Want to thank everyone who made suggestions and let me weigh up options. :))) You're all very bodacious. 🕊️🕊️

Kdenlive on Windows has gotten REALLY good in the past few years. Back in 2019/20 it would crash constantly, but is now more stable and more feature-packed than any of its competitors

the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dIqJDy78TI