Everyone, at some point in their life, has daydreamed about making a movie. Whether it's purely for fun, a summer project, a hobby, or something more serious, one of the key tools you'll need to succeed will be a video editing program. Seems simple enough to find, right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, there are a ton of options out there for you to choose from, and if you don't have budget concerns, there are some great (but pricey) professional tools ready-made.


But, all those choices can be overwhelming ... especially if you're new to the field and you don't really know what you're looking for. Add some budget (and licensing) concerns to your list, and things just got even more difficult.

So to make things a bit easier, I've put together a list of programs worth checking out. These are all open source (bye-bye licensing issues), free of cost (so long budget problems), and ready for you to download and get to work.

Kdenlive

Kdenlive (which stands for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor) prides itself on being versatile and flexible, which are ideal qualities if you're either just starting out or you're more in the semi-professional camp. It's always annoying when you run across something a piece of software can't do, and because of what Kdenlive is built on, that's not a problem you'll likely encounter here.

According to it's Features page, Kdenlive supports a full range of camcorders and cameras (ranging from low-res cameras to professional camcorders), it lets you have an unlimited number of audio and video tracks (which are all organized in layers), and it includes all sorts of editing tools, keyboard shortcuts, effects, and rendering options.

You can also import several different types of video (mpeg2, mp4, h264, lossless, and ogg) and audio (mp2, mp3, ac3) files and it exports to DV, mpeg2, AVCHD, h264, and non-destructive formats.

Released under a GPL license, Kdenlive is available for Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X. You can download it directly from the official site free of charge.

OpenShot

OpenShot is a great choice if you're looking for a simple, easy-to-use option. Plus, there's at least one extra bonus, and that's an active user base, which can be really helpful if you need a little extra help.

As for features, OpenShot has a lot of them. According to the official website, it has "support for many video, audio, and image formats," lets you have unlimited tracks and layers, offers 3D animated titles, scrolling credits, frame stepping, digital zooming, custom masks, and dozens of effects [including a "Ken Burns effect (artistic panning over an image.)]"

Released under a GPL license, OpenShot can be downloaded for free ... but it's only available for Linux.

PiTiVi

If you're an Ubuntu user, PiTiVi might sound vaguely familiar -- it was part of the Ubuntu ISO until 2011. But, just because is was removed from the ISO doesn't mean that development on the project ended! The video editor is, in fact, quite alive.

One of PiTiVi's claims to fames is that, according to the official site, "As long as it is supported by the GStreamer Multimedia Framework, PiTiVi will handle any format you throw at it." That could be remarkably helpful depending on the type of project you're working on, and along with a focus on an easy-to-use interface, it's a very solid choice for your next movie project. And, not to be outdone by either Kdenlive or OpenShot, PiTiVi includes several basic editing capabilities (general, audio, and video), allows unlimited video and audio layers, keyboard controls, custom aspect ratios, scrubbing, and for the geekiest among us, a commandline mode.

Released under a LGPL license, PiTiVi runs on Linux, with pre-built packages currently in the repositories for Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.

Now, go and grab a couple of friends, some "free" audio files from Jamendo, and get cracking!