Free Software for Video

Video Editing
Index to Subjects on this page.

Video editing apps are usually called 'Non-Linear Editors' = 'NLEs' as they don't use tape which would have been editied in a linear fashion. Some programs on this page are quite high-level for proper films that you will have heard of. Learning curves can be very steep but the effort is usually worthwhile. The professional 'Pro' software here needs serious hardware with a good processor, gaming graphics and heaps of RAM (Eg. Pugetsystems for Resolve hardware). Chillblast make excellent, if expensive, PCs for the serious editor and are likely to last a long time. Some apps are 'Fremium' (free-but-nobbled) and usually with limited video tracks or rendering possibilities. Professionals typically use node-based editing which might seem alien to most amateurs but it is not tricky once you understand what is going on.

Just as there are free 'VST' plug-ins for sound editing, there are also free Open Source video plug-ins ('OSX') for a wide range of NLEs, such as Magix Vegas and Resolve. I also suggest you install a few unusual fonts for the titling. I like the old Transport font (Medium and Heavy) used on UK road signs for projects requiring an older or authoritive feel. A suitable font for video helps set the context and can make it stand out, such as something Gothic for a scary film. The same goes for background music. Youtube has a lot of free and royalty-free music intended for Youtube content creators. You might like to search for free sound effects too but most of them are likely to be poor quality. See the links at the bottom of this page.

Back Top Before you Start
Your PC monitor should be correctly set up for brightness, contrast and neutral colouration. If it is out of kilter, so will be the end result of any video editing. If, for example, your monitor is a bit green and you adjust the on-screen material to look neutral, your results will have a tinge of magenta when you play them on, for example, a smart tv. The idea is to remove any colour bias so that greyscale tones are neutral and colours look correct, especially skin tones. Also, if you add too much contrast, the white and black areas of a video might suffer from 'white clipping and 'black crushing' with a loss of detail and poor tonal response. The professional tool to use is a colour-calibrator, like 'Color Monkey' or 'Spyder' to set up the monitor. It is placed on the face of the monitor and an app runs to correct the errors.

A quick fix might be a basic software tool like Calibrize (below), as better than nothing for non-critical work viewed on an okay monitor. Unless you have a top quality monitor, you might never get it right, and certainly the colour rendition on a typical budget laptop. Also, if you are buying a new monitor or laptop, make sure that it has good definition with HD as a minimum. Computer websites have useful reviews, such as Tom's Hardware Guide which has been around for ages. Also look at PC Active for its 'A-List' of recommendations.

Now to set up ypur monitor. The proper way is to get a device such as the Spyder5 Pro (about £120), which you place on the monitor screen and run the Spyder software downloaded from their website. It is not complicated and does a good job by applying a colour profile, which you can easily disable if you are not happy with it. You can use it as many times as you like on as many desktop monitors or laptops as you like.

If you have buckets of money (perhaps in thousands of pounds), you can purchase a professional monitor and have it set up properly. Some, such as an Eizo Color-Edge appear to be set up very well, straight out of the box. If you are checking your work on a domestic TV, make sure it is set to 'Cinema' mode (natural contrast, neutral colours and saturation); never 'Dynamic' or 'Vivid' which are really only for showroom purposes. How I lament the demise of the TV Test Card. Bring back the test card. Please.

Back Top Video Editing and Compositing
Key: W = Windows, M = Mac, L = Linux, , Am = Amateur, Pro = Professional. See also 'Blender' in the later section.

Black Magic - Needs a section all to itself. The all-in-on DaVInci Resolve is a real 'must-try,' if your PC has a high specification and high-end graphics capability. Having saved money on the editing, you can pay a bit more for the hardware.

Other NLEs:

Back Top Morphing, Animating and Other
Morphing will turn two pictures into a morphing video clip. Animating is often used for games.

Don't forget the sound side of your video creations. Most NLEs will let you use the same VST plug-ins that you might use in a wave editor to generate various effects. Better still if you save them all in the 'VST' same folder for easy access. See the Free Audio Software page.

Back Top Video Format Converters, Rippers and Players

Back Top Video Streaming
When people were asked to stay at home because of the Covid epidemic, streaming video became a popular way to maintain contact either singly or in groups and streaming took off. During lock-down, local groups did online quizzes and a Huntsman group had virtual pub crawls. What a great way to preserve the sense of community. Some streamig apps:

Streaming Hardware
The easiest method would be to use a laptop's built-in webcam and microphone but you won't get high quality from either. Not all laptops have a microphone input but you can get a cheap USB adapter which has a mic socket and headphone. You can improve the sound quality using a 'lavalier' (tie pin) microphone and improve the picture with creative lighting. Take some trouble over how the camera sees you and avoid having a window or bright light behind you. Better still is to plug better video and sound sources into a laptop's USB.

You can buy a cheap USB webcam or adapter to convert an HDMI source to USB as a webcam. Some later digital cameras and 'Video Assist' (aka 'Focus Assist') camera monitors will stream directly to USB. Probably any 'vlogging' camera will stream directly to USB.

Not cheap but the Blackmagic ATEM Mini is one of the top-selling video switchers with USB output, although some people have lip-sync problems. You can mix and match various HDMI video sources of mixed frame-rates and resolutions and switch them in as you like, typically using one or more good cameras (set up correctly) and a decent desk or lavalier microphone. The ATEM Mini Pro and higher versions cost more but also allow you to save to USB.

Back Top 'Cast to TV'
Play videos from your computer on your smart televison. To start, why not download Sherlock Holmes from Archive.org as a test? It will be a slow download so you do it now before reading on. On the archive.org webpage below the viewer, scroll the mouse down to 'MPEG4' or 'H.264' and right-click the associated down arrow to save it to your 'Videos' folder on the computer. As a test video, you might choose the one with the smallest file size. Basil Rathbone was always the best Holmes in the old films.

You will need:

Let's use an old 2017 LG smart tv as an example but other smart tvs will probably work the same way. If you press the 'Input' button, you should see a list of such as: Live TV, HDMI 1, HDMI 2, USB 1, and (hopefully) Screen Share. Make a mental note about which input was selected at the time as you will probably need to put it back like that later. For example, you might have a set top box plugged into HDMI 1, a BluRay player in HDMI 2 and a game box in HDMI 3, etc. (HDMI = High Deffinition Media Interface). If Screen Share is showed as an available option, select that and we can move on.

On the PC or laptop, on the start menu click on Settings and select 'Devices' or 'Bluetooth and Devices' and you will see a list of stuff which are or have been connected to the computer. As this is the first time, you might not see the television listed. In this example it would be something like '[LG] webOS TV' but if you can't see it, click 'Add Devices' and (on Windows 11) 'Everything Else' for it to find the television, which must of course be switched on.

We have lift-off! Now you will want to play your film but not in the usual way as you need to open your 'Videos' folder in the file explorer. Highlight the video file and right-click 'Cast to Device' and choose '[LG] webOS TV' as the device. Windows 11 has a clunky interface and you will need to click 'Show more options to get to the 'Cast to device' item. It's called 'progress.' A box will open up which is the old Windows Media Player that you had long forgotten about.

With the mouse, drop the file you want to play in the box and click the play arrow at the bottom. With luck, the film will run and Basil Rathbone will be on your television. You can drop several videos into the box and they will play one after the other.

When you have done, don't forget to click the Input button again on the television remote control and re-select what it was on before. Now you can look for other films on Archive.org to download. Please note that this method is built into Windows. Other operating systems might not have it. For instance, Zorin Linux can't do it natively but there might be a software app that will. If you have an old Google 'Chromecast' device plugged into a spare HDMI input on the tv, you can probably 'cast' to it from the Chrome web browser on the computer.

Back Top Downloading from Youtube, etc.
Youtube has such a good range of tutorial videos for just about any subject but, as it is part of the Google empire along with Whatsapp and Facebook, they want you 'share' but not actually save videos, as sharing content with other users is part of the business model to create more mouse clicks and generate advertising revenue. That is how they make their money.

This website does not condone copyright infringement and you can only download such as Youtube or Vimeo videos with prior permission, which you are unlikely to get. That probably applies to all of the online video sites too. There is one good case for downloading, when creators want to evaluate how video compression algorithms affect the picture quality of their own material. Then they could tweak the rendering settings of their editing program for best results. They might also like to use Handbrake to re-cross to a smaller file size without any noticeable loss of quality.

I would urge you avoid any stand-alone downloaders as there is a risk of viruses and other nasties, such your personal info passing on to scammers. Avoid anything that wants your email address to 'register.' There are stories of unpleasant scam and ransom emails if someone tries to download what they shouldn't.

The risk of breaking the rules is yours alone and I accept no liability if you do this. This is for interest only. The starting point might be to elevate the web browser security settings to maximum or 'strict' for best online safety. It might be a good idea to install a second web browser just for downloading then block all cookies and use maximum security settings for online safety and to avoid compromising any social media accounts in your main browser.

Online Downloaders
Suggested by ComputerActive magazine. There are others but these seem to be favourable and don't ask for user details or require registration. Although they are supposed to be for Youtube, they read as though they can capture from other video-share websites too.

The Windows Game Bar.
One method that always works uses the Windows Game Bar (more details in the 'Capture to Video' section below). Find the video on your video website and play it in full-screen mode (click the rectangle icon under the video playback) without any screen furniture like control icons. With the video playing, enable the Game Bar (Windows key + G) and click the red 'Record' button. You might miss a bit at the start and the website progress bar will intrude for a few seconds. Click the Stop button (or exit full-screen with the 'Esc' button) and the clip will finish and be stored in your Videos/Captures folder. Not wonderful but it works - for all web-based videos where you can go full-screen. Possibly useful if you only want a small clip from a larger video.

For Dailymotion, don't use the full-screen view as it litters the image with junk. Instead, click the pop-up video icon, mid-right in the small view. You can make the popped-out video go full-screen using an icon below the view, without the clutter. Play the video and use the game bar to record it, as described above. The Game Bar method is good but you will lose a moment or two right at the start because you can't initiate the Game Bar unless the video is playing, and you can't play it until the Play icon has first been clicked.

Back Top Save a Google Earth tour to Video Clip
Google Earth Pro is a wonderful and free app from that giant company, and invaluable if you are to make a car journey to an unfamiliar place. You can view the lie of the land from above then drop down to 'street view' to rehearse driving that route. Then, when you do it for real, it feels familiar and you will have an idea of where things will be on the ground.

For your home movie, you might like to add a video clip of the location. It adds some extra finesse to your film or slide show. here is how to use the tools built into Google Earth Pro. There is a tutorial video on Youtube which will help but these instructions might be enough:

The Process - Setting the 'Tour'
Open Google Earth Pro and find the desired destination using the search box. You can use a UK postcode or US zip code if you want. It will zoom in on the destination. Now zoomed in, a neat method is to set the destination as a 'map pin' in My Spaces menu. Just click the yellow map pin at the top of the menu to create it at that place and give it a name. Do it that way and the place name will be visible during the video as it zooms in.

Having established the destination, zoom out as far as you like using the mouse scroll wheel. It might be best to zoom out to include a whole country or even the globe. This will be the starting point of your tour and video. Looking at the side menu, unclick any of the features which add clutter to the picture but not the map pins. You now need to set up the journey (the zoom in) as a 'Tour' before you can make the video clip. The Tour is not the same as the actual video clip, just a stepping stone to getting to that point.

Click the camera icon on the top tool bar and a red recording button will appear for saving the tour. Click that and your destination name in the search box or the new map pin in the My Places menu. It will now zoom in on the location. Click the record button again to stop the tour recording. It will play it back. You will see a floppy disc item on the playback device, click it to save your new tour. This does not actually record a video, only what they call the tour, which can have multiple destinations.

The Process - Getting the video
To make the video clip of the tour, go to 'Tools' and choose 'Movie Maker' where the most recent tour will be visible in the top box, which is the one you have just set up. Now you need to set the video parameters (only usa settings available). One of the HD ones will do. You can try different ones later and see which ones work in your video or slide show.

The save path will default to the Windows Documents folder but it might be better to save the video somewhere else, desktop, data drive or memory stick. Perhaps save it to where your home movie media is stored. Click the 'Make Movie box' and away you go. It will run through the tour and save it as video. The render time might be a bit slow, so you will need to wait perhaps a minute.

Now go to the file location you had specified and play the clip to see if it is good. Not bad eh?

Back Top Capture to Video
This is to save a video copy of stuff happening on the screen, usually from playing computer games to show off to your mates or perhaps to make 'How-to' tutorials using clips of video being played. The capture process will also put a demand on the PC hardware which might nobble the game performance slightly with possibly a reduction in frames per second being captured. Here are three methods to try out.

1. Using VLC
VLC has a trick which is not very well known: video capture from a webcam, other device or screen if running a program. You need to try it first to see if the resulting quality is good enough, otherwise you might use OBS. Here are the steps for VLC:

Install the latest VLC Media Player.
Run VLC
Media Menu > Convert/Save,
Click the Capture Device tab,
Device Selections > Capture Mode > select Desktop,
Option > Enter a number in the Frame Rate box, Eg. 10,
Click the Convert/Save button,

On the next screen, you will need to select a setting from the Profile list. One of the MP4 options should do, but you might experiment with them for the best result.
Click Browse and decide where to save the file, and give it a name.

Don't click the Start button until you have set up the app that you wish to demonstrate. Make that full screen rather than a window. You need to do a dummy run first to see if the quality is good enough. Time to try it out.

Click Start and run the demo program, or perhaps just a few seconds of it. You can stop the capture with the VLC Stop button and it will take a moment to process it. Now play the newly-created video file and see if it is okay. If not, try a different MP4 profile. Done!

2. Using Windows Game Bar
You don't need to download anything to get a screen capture to video. Windows 10 and 11 have a feature to capture game-play to a video file. By default it will create a 'Captures' folder in the 'Video' windows library and save your video capture there.

You press (Windows Key) + G to get to the controls. Panels will appear on the desktop and you start the capture by clicking the red Record dot. Best to set the frame rate to such as 25 per second first unless the extra demand on the PC hardware slows things down too much but perhaps 12 fps might still be okay. In the program that you are capturing from, you will see an overlay box, top-right, which lets you end the capture and close the Game bar session. All the details are on this help page. Also search the Microsoft site for the snipper tool which comes built-in with Windows 10/11.

3. Using OBS
Open Broadcaster (OBS) - (Win, Mac and Linux). Not been tried by yours truly but OBS is a free app designed to capture screen activity in a professional way. It is highly-regarded by Youtube creatives.

Back Top Digital Cinema Format (DCP)
For the more serious content creators who would like their material to be projected in real cinemas, the sound and video files have to be processed in a special way to show it. A quick definition: DCP = A special format for projecting video in digital cinemas. The idea here is that amateur film-makers might wish to project their doings in the local flea-pit, perhaps in a film festival, and that is where DCP shines (literally). An easier process (but not as high quality) would be an HD Blu-Ray disc (progressive scan not interlaced scan), if the cinema can play it, but check up first. Don't use DVDs these days unless that is all you can do as they are not regarded as good enough quality for the big screen. It has low resolution, interlaced video.

The technical spec of DCP had been prepared by Digital Cinema Initiatives as a joint venture by major film studios and is now the standard used for film distribution. The actual 'films' are sent out to cinemas on hard disc drives or via encrypted internet. For commercial films, a decryption key is required for a particular time-span to unlock the files for projection, as arranged through the distributor.

OpenDCP and DCP-Omatic are free utilities to prepare 2k (24/48 fps) or 4k (24 fps) video/sound/text files into DCP format, which comprises MXF (Material Exchange Format) and XML files. This is the format used for projection in digital cinemas such as our own Penistone Paramount but it is likely that MP4 video submitted for the Film Festival can be used. Brian B says that it is a tricky procedure to process it to DCP but he thinks that he has mastered it. The soundtrack can be particularly tricky as it needs to be separated out for each sound channel (5.1?).

The process requires each video frame to be separated into a 16-bit TIFF picture, resulting in thousands of picture files. Another process converts sRGB colourspace to 'XYZ' colourspace, the cinema standard. The resulting files are encoded into JPEG2000 and exported as MXF files to save on an EXT2-formatted memory stick (a Linux file format but easy to do), ready for the cinema software to read and project it. As a matter of interest, it appears that DCP files are stored as 'Reels', as with physical films. So a full film might use three 'Reels' just like the old days. The alternative is to spend thousands of pounds and let the experts to do it. Resolve Studio has some DCP tools.

Wikipedia's DCP page has some pointers about what goes into DCP and lists some DCP tools. See this 2012 article 'How to Make a Digital Cinema Package on your own Computer'. Of course, you would like to see your results but the viewers are all commercial products. The trial version of 'EasyDCP' Player allows you to check your work, but only for 15 seconds. The OpenDCP Forum has some tutorials on DCP. See DCP-Info and suitable LUTs (Look-up Tables used in editing to make the colours look right). This article on 'How to make a DCP for Film Festival projection' might help.

Back Top TV - PVR Software
For receiving and recording TV off-air when using a TV dongle or internal TV card.

Back Top Video Tutorials and Freebies
Well, it's very easy to find good tutorials on Youtube using its search engine but before adding them, here are few useful hints aimed at professionals and amateur cinematographers.
And don't forget the Audio.

Index to Subjects on this page.

Back Top Out of Interest
Some interesting home-brew and video club videos.

Test Channel on Freeview Television (UK)?:
There was a test card available via the Red Button service on Freeview (Channel 250 on terrestrial television) but now it has gone. There is still a Service setting of sorts but it might not be very useful. Here is how to reach the Secret Menu.

Go to Ch 250 > Let the text load and press Yellow within 30 seconds > Drop down a channel and back up again to 250 > Let the text load again (it will look the same as before) > Now press Green (the word 'Secret' will appear at the top) > A menu comes up.

Back Top Home   Albert Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."