iMovie Alternatives?

[Brew Swayne]

Looking for a good alternative to iMovie. I'm not doing professional videos or anything, so something like Final Cut Pro is overkill and definitely over budget. I'm basically looking for something that falls somewhere between iMovie and FCP and preferably under $100 USD. Any recommendations are appreciated.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Take a look at Affinity Photo. It seems to get praise here on the forum. They also have regular sales. I often see their products 50% off. I have never used Affinity.

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[ian87w]

Maybe a better question would be what kind of video editing features you’re looking for that is not available on iMovie.

At $300, Final Cut Pro X is actually a great deal for a lifetime license. If you’re on a budget, check davinci resolve, which is Free! Do note that it might require a learning curve to use these programs. So I still think it’s better to ask yourself what you want to do that you actually cannot do on iMovie.

 

[Brew Swayne]

Maybe a better question would be what kind of video editing features you’re looking for that is not available on iMovie.

At $300, Final Cut Pro X is actually a great deal for a lifetime license. If you’re on a budget, check davinci resolve, which is Free! Do note that it might require a learning curve to use these programs. So I still think it’s better to ask yourself what you want to do that you actually cannot do on iMovie.

The biggest feature I'm looking for is the ability to add text and/or subtitles without having to use titles. If iMovie offered that, I'd probably be perfectly content with it, tbh.

I've seen davinci highly recommended in a few different articles, and since it's free I'll probably give it a try anyway, but I still wanted to get some actual user feedback before installing anything.

 

[casperes1996]

Take a look at Affinity Photo. It seems to get praise here on the forum. They also have regular sales. I often see their products 50% off. I have never used Affinity.

Best Photo Editing Software | Black Friday 50% Off

The first-choice photo editor of millions of photographers, artists, and other professionals around the world - 50% off

affinity.serif.com

Uhmmmm.... Affinity is great, but it's not really a video editor

 

[casperes1996]

The biggest feature I'm looking for is the ability to add text and/or subtitles without having to use titles. If iMovie offered that, I'd probably be perfectly content with it, tbh.

I've seen davinci highly recommended in a few different articles, and since it's free I'll probably give it a try anyway, but I still wanted to get some actual user feedback before installing anything.

DaVinci is fantastic. But to my knowledge, actually none of the major NLEs (video editing software) are great about subtitling without plugins anyway. Final Cut did semi-recently get an update that improved it quite substantially, but the best experience is still with dedicated programs or plugins for it. In higher end production subtitles are also usually not "burnt in" to the video file itself, but delivered as "sidecar files" so the player can enable/disable them or even change language.

Regardless yeah, DaVinci is fantastic, and unlike iMovie (I think?) you can use plugins for the free version as well so if you find a good subtitling plug in for it that'll work too

 

[AZhappyjack]

Adobe Premier Elements is the 'consumer' version of Premier... typically around $50...

 

[dandeco]

Adobe Premier Elements is the 'consumer' version of Premier... typically around $50...

Yep, and another popular consumer video editing program that comes in a Mac version is Cyberlink PowerDirector. It does have a subscription of $69 a year, but it still offers far more features and flexibility than iMovie does, and there are many plugins available that you can download for no additional cost when on the subscription plan!

 

[DisraeliGears]

If your open to a bit of an oddball alternative, LumaFusion (native iPad App) has served me very well and I’ve heard compatibility is good on M1s. $30 for lifetime license.

 

[The_Interloper]

Shotcut is great. It's free, open source, and supports a huge number of hardware-accelerated codecs.

 

[ian87w]

The biggest feature I'm looking for is the ability to add text and/or subtitles without having to use titles. If iMovie offered that, I'd probably be perfectly content with it, tbh.

I've seen davinci highly recommended in a few different articles, and since it's free I'll probably give it a try anyway, but I still wanted to get some actual user feedback before installing anything.

For subtitles, do you mean adding title/artistic text on video, or subtitle of the dialog (closed caption, fansub)?

If it's the later, it's better to use subtitling software like aegisub. You can export them to .srt and mux it with your video using tools like mp4tools.