Freeware video editing with support for photos and green screen

Question

I'm looking for video editing software for windows 10 that supports

1. building a slide show from photos

2. inserting videos using green screen as trasparent on top of underlying photos or videos

3. FullHD 1920x1080 support

4. support of H.264 export codec

5. multiple audio and video lanes

6. support for titles

7. since I have a machine with 96 GB RAM, I want the software to make use of it.

For 1), a specific requirement is to have portrait mode 9:16 images scroll for a 16:9 destination format, so that no black bars are in the final video.

I am coming from old versions of Magix Video Deluxe, so I'm already a bit familiar with video editing. The UI needn't be very simple. I feel quite well switching to a more professional workflow.

Since I'm doing all that as a hobbyist and I want to be able to recommend the software to anyone else, including students and youngsters , I don't want to spend money, thus gratis.

I have already tried Blender, but even they have improved the usability in 2.8, it's just doing too much if you're only looking for video editing. All the 3D stuff is too much for this task.

I've also tried Lightworks once, but sadly, I didn't understand their concept. Also, I don't know whether they still have a free version.

I have seen the question Freeware video editing software on this site, but it does not describe the features.

I have also seen Easy to learn video editor for Windows, but as I said, I do not need it to be very simple.

I have tried OBS, but it fails on point 1) and 5). OBS will partially help me by creating videos which I then edit in the next step.

Answer 1

Davinci Resolve suits my needs.

It's gratis. They offer a free version called "Resolve" and a commercial version called "Resolve Studio" for 299 USD:

It works on Windows and I tried Windows 10 in particular:

It is possible to build scrolling of 9:16 photos in 16:9 format. It's not especially easy, but ok for me. The key is:

1. By default, the photo will have black bars
2. Zoom in with a factor of ~3.2, which is (16:9)^2. The problem now is: it does not scroll
3. Go to the first frame where the photo appears. Set Position X to a value where you want to start scrolling and set a keyframe
4. Go to the last position. Again, set a position to scroll to and add a keyframe

Green screen is also possible and was a bit hard to find. It's found in the "Color" task, which is step 4 of the workflow. Key things:

1. Use the pipette tool to pick green colors (+) or non-green colors (-).
2. Add an alpha output channel (the blue one in the image below)
3. Add a power window, otherwise everything outside the green screen will be black

FullHD and H.264 does not seem to be an issue nowadays, although hardware encoding is only supported in the commercial version.

It supports multiple audio and video tracks. I didn't read about a limit. Here's a screenshot of a 5-channel video:

Resolve has support for titles. There are probably more titles in the commercial version. But there are also titles available with the free version and provided by the community for download.

I can't really tell about RAM support. At least it's a 64 Bit application and it does use more than 4 GB of RAM. I haven't tried on a very large project.