Top 10 iMovie Alternatives for Mac/Windows PC

It gets easier and easier to create your own films: record your video with high-quality video cameras and edit it in your iMovie. Done! Your personal film is finished. iMovie is undoubtedly the most popular video editing software on Mac. This program is far better than a basic video editor needs to be, but does leave Windows users at a bit of a loss: Is there any free, entry-level PC editing software as good as iMovie? The short answer is Yes. Below 10 iMovie alternatives give you the power you need to create high-quality videos for sharing with friends and family from your both Windows and Mac machine.

Top 10 iMovie Equivalent on PC and Mac

# 1: Sony Vegas Pro (Windows & Mac)

Sony Vegas Pro offers support for everything a professional video editor requires. You can import media from multiple devices (including HD video), use more than 300 filters and special effects, and use specific tools to work with text layers and subtitles. The app also lets you easily optimize the image quality of your content with various tools.

Pros

- Covers all professional needs

- Thoroughly documented

- Tons of audio and video effects and filters

- Great for producing professional audio and sound

Cons

- Complex to begin with

- Modular workflow compared to Premiere and Final Cut

# 2: Final Cut Pro X (Mac)

Apple's professional and prosumer-level video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, treads a fine line between consumers who want more power for their video-editing projects than iMovie offers and professionals who create content for movies and TV. It does a remarkable job of bridging these two worlds, and though pros may complain about its nontraditional trackless timeline and amateurs may scratch their heads over some of its wealth of sophisticated options, it's a magnificent tool for both.

Pros

- Rewritten from the bottom up

- Slicker, simpler Cocoa interface

- Designed for 64-bit Macs

- New Magnet Timeline

- Full screen mode in Lion

- Very fast

Cons

- Interface may have been oversimplified for professional tastes

# 3: Adobe Premiere Pro (Windows & Mac)

Adobe is acclaimed worldwide for its impressive software tools, many of which have become true industry standards in different fields and Adobe Premiere Pro is one of it's flagship products. Along with Final Cut Pro, Premiere is one of the best video editing packages on the market. Note that Adobe Premiere is now part of Creative Cloud (CC) which means it is only available on a monthly subscription basis rather than a one-off license.

Pros

- Fully compatible with other Adobe tools

- Supports exporting to Blu-Ray

- Work natively with a huge number of video formats

- Creative Cloud updates issued instantly

- Sync projects across computers

Cons

- Very complex for beginners

- Only available on Creative Cloud subscription model

# 4: VideoPad Video Editor (Windows & Mac)

VideoPad by NCH Software is a basic video editing program that has many of the tools and features we looked for in our review, though it does lack some important ones. It has the familiar timeline/storyboard workflow, which means you can view your project linearly or by each individual object regardless of how long it runs. You can switch back and forth between these two views with all your edits intact, which is great for beginner or novice users, because it allows them to construct the basic building blocks in storyboard mode.

Pros

- Very easy to use

- Works with many multimedia formats

- Includes a few video effects

Cons

- Too simple for more advanced users

- Only three transition effects

# 5: Avidemux (Windows & Mac)

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities. Avidemux is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows under the GNU GPL license. The program was written from scratch by Mean, but code from other people and projects has been used as well.

Pros

- Lightweight and simple

- Handles several different formats

Cons

- May drop frames in certain formats

- Interface is dated

# 6: Windows Movie Maker (Windows)

Windows Movie Maker (2016) is a easy-to-use & powerful video creating/editing software application, designed for latest Windows 10. Windows Movie Maker contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be modified using XML code. Windows Movie Maker also can apply basic effects to audio tracks such as fade in or fade out. The audio tracks can then be exported in the form of a sound file instead of a video file.

Pros

- Hardware acceleration

- Easy sharing to social networks

- Video stabilization

Cons

- More advanced users should look elsewhere

# 7: Lightworks (Windows & Mac)

Lightworks is the name of EditShare's non-linear editing software. It has won awards because it is both sophisticated and it can handle formats all the way from 4K to SD and HD formats. The company that created Lightworks has been in business for 25 years and their professional movie editing software is very highly rated online.

Pros

- Options that allow you to tailor your video how you wish

- A very powerful video editing tool

- An award-winning piece of software

Cons

- Learning how to use it takes a lot of time and effort

- The free version is far too limited

- Much too expensive for amateurs

# 8: Wondershare Video Editor (Windows & Mac)

Wondershare Video Editor is a very simple video editing suite with a surprisingly intuitive and well-designed interface and plenty of additional effects. It also has a great media library feature that lets you easily import clips into your timeline. Some of the effects and text overlays are somewhat cheap-looking and amateurish, but for the most part they're just fine even for more experienced editors looking for a cheap solution.

Pros

- Timeline-based video editing provides precise control over every element.

- Easy to use

- Add text templates, filter effects, PIP and transitions you like to favorites.

Cons

- Effects and Text options look cheap

# 9: Free Video Editor (Windows)

Free Video Editor is intended for editing video files and creating videos of any complexity involving various visual and audio effects. The program offers rich functionality and yet has a simple and intuitive interface, allowing you to create videos with a bare minimum of efforts.

Pros

- Simple interface.

- Filters and effects to spice up your footage.

- Cut trim crop rotate and more.

Cons

- Lacking the fine tools and conversion abilities of paid software.

# 10: Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate (Windows & Mac) - Recommended!!

Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate (Mac version is called Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac) is an all-in-one media solution that can edit video, convert video, rip Blu-ray/DVD and Edit Blu-ray/DVD. As a video converter, Blu-ray Ripper and DVD Ripper, it can backup and copy Blu-ray/DVD to hard drive and transcode video to another format even convert video to audio. For VR Headsets and 3D TVs, it can rip 3D Blu-ray to 3D SBS MP4 and convert 2D to 3D. As a video editor, you can trim video footage, crop unwanted area, split video to several clips according to length, size and number, merge fragments to a single one file, rotate video, deinterlacing video, add external srt/ass/ssa subtitles, add text/image/video watermark, remove/mute audio from video, replace/swap audio in video, fade audio, rename video, make video effect: Simple Gauss Blur, Simple Laplacian Sharpen, Gray, Flip Color, Invert, Aged Film, adjust video brightness/contrast/satuation, adjust video aspect ratio.

Pros

- Very easy to use

- Support for multimedia formats, including 4K, HD, H.265/HEVC, BD, DVD.

- Exports lots of formats: FLV, MP4, MKV, MOV, ProRes, WMV, etc.

- Highly professional video editing solution

- Decrypt commercial Blu-ray and DVD

- NVIDIA CUDA & AMD APP Acceleration

- Low price.

Cons

- Can't download video from online directly.

- Can't upload export video to YouTube directly.

What's Next? Price: $52$65