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Macintosh video editing software

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Let's look at Macintosh video editing software. Or more precisely let's look at the free software that you can use to edit video on your Mac.

I have a Mac - a Macbook actually - and I love it. There is a huge amount of debate on the internet about which is better, Mac's or PC's. I'm not going there with that debate. However, I will say that one of the better 'prosumer' video editing packages out there is accepted as being Final Cut Pro. This is a Mac based software.

I, however, do all my editing on my desktop PC. That's all I'm saying on that topic!

But let's get back to your Mac and Macintosh video editing. What's available?

iMovie

You're Mac comes packaged with iLife which includes iMovie, Apple's free editing tool.

As Apple say on their website:

iMovie ’08 makes viewing and working with video as intuitive as enjoying your photos. A built-in library automatically organizes your video, so all the clips you’ve captured and movies you’ve created are just a click away. With its revolutionary interface, iMovie makes it quick and easy to browse your library and create new movies. And iMovie is built for sharing. In just a few steps, you can add movies to your website, publish them on YouTube, and create versions for iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

My opinion As a basic video editing tool this is very handy. It is functional, has it's own library for organising clips and is easy to use, having a very siple 'drag and drop' interface. The power in this tool is the ability to export your finished movie to tools such as iTunes, Youtube or Quicktime to name but three. This alone makes it worth it's weight in gold (but not it's cost price as it comes bundled for free!) The export functions allow choice in defining your picture size including export to High Definition video, and - in the case of an export to Quicktime - choosing your codec, frame rate and maximum bit depth. It support codecs such as H.265, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50 and MPEG4 For more on Codecs see our codec page

Other than that, there are no issues with using iMovie. I suspect that there are limits with it's ability to handle large files or anything longer than a fairly short final movie (say, 10 minutes or so), but other functionality will more than make up for that.

Overall I rate this as an excellent tool for Mac users who want to create short, family based, good quality movies.
Click here to go to the iLife home page
(Note that iMovie is free if supplied with a Mac, but it comes as part of the iLife package which can be purchased separately, hence there is no download page)

HyperAv
Another Mac based editing tool is HyperAV.
Click here to see information about HyperAV.

Go from macintosh video editing back to the free video software page