VSDC Free Video Editor 4.0

VSDC Free Video Editor is actually a suite of applications intended for video editing. Thus, besides the main program, there is also a video capture tool, a screen recorder, a video downloader and a disc burner.

VSDC Free Video Editor is definitely not as easy to use as many other so-called “video editors” that are limited to such features as cutting, joining and applying a few transition effects. Instead, this is compensated by a lot of sophistication and versatility, and, once you’ve passed the initial stage of learning to use it, you’d probably start creating your own high-quality videos with no difficulty.

The overall workflow of the editing process consists of several stages.First, import of different types of data (video, images, audio) from files, the screen or camera. Then, the imported items are available from the Resources window and can be dragged to the timeline. At this point, they also become 'objects' and can be managed from the Objects Explorer panel. For a better organization of your work, the tool allows dividing a project into scenes, scenes into sprites, and sprites into objects, which may also have several layers. This hierarchical system lets you work just on a given part of the project without affecting the rest. Moreover, you’d probably be glad to know that the editor has plenty of video, audio and transition effects.

In terms of compatibility, the application is also very versatile, as it supports importing practically any type of media files. Similarly, there is a wide range of video formats to export to. Likewise, there are various presets specifically adjusted to avoid problems when playing on given devices. However, this doesn't mean that experienced users cannot create their own customized output profiles.

In general, VSDC Free Video Editor goes against the common belief that free software tools are not as good as paid ones. Fortunately, there’s only one thing about this tool that I didn't like: it was kind of confusing when I first used the video capture feature because the created video wasn’t automatically imported as a resource in the main project like I expected. Nevertheless, this was easily solved by importing the corresponding file myself.