Which video editing software should I use for Youtube videos?

Question

I'm interested in making YouTube videos. I’m new to the whole video editing process. I would like to know which video editing software provides music, cloning, animations, special effects, transitions, text editing and other cool stuff. (For filming, I have intentions to use a digital camera, my iphone 5 and a webcam). I want to ensure that my video quality is decent and not fuzzy or pixelated.

As far as my computer operating system, I have two laptops (Windows 7 & 8). Basically, I need video editing software that provides excellent video quality and contains the features above. My question is what affordable video editing software provides excellent video quality.

Answer 1

Although not the easiest to use, Lightworks is a open source video cross platform editor that has been used by many hollywood movies. I have used the free version for years and it works no problem. The only limit of the free version is that it can only output to 720P and mp4 format but I have not had any problems and most people can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 anyways. If you want a full featured editor this would be my suggestion. It also has many tutorials on YouTube (if you need more than the official documentation and videos.

http://www.lwks.com/

Answer 2

If you actually plan to follow through with getting into video editing then I would fork out a few bucks to get Adobe After Effects, currently it costs $20/month. It is relatively cheap and there are thousands of amazing (and free) AE tutorials on YouTube.

Answer 3

A free option is:

Blender

which has a VSE (Video Sequence Editor) built in. It's quite powerful and it can do everything you're asking for although I think it's a little lacking in the ease of use department.

Another question to ask yourself is if you want to spend your investment of time learning software on an industry standard tool. Adobe Premiere is certainly more widely used for video editing and a pretty good choice I think. It's more user friendly than blender at this point in the game. At this time, there is a free 30-day trial and it cost $30/month after that although you can get $20/month if you commit to a year.