Simple easy to use video editing software

[RickTaylor]

Hello,

I'm a math instructor. I want to create instructional videos by screen recording GoodNotes 5 on an iPad with a pencil and uploading them to an M1 MacBook Pro.

I'm looking for video editing software that will make it as easy as possible to edit these videos. I'm not doing anything complex, just cutting out parts of videos where I make mistakes and splicing in corrections. I don't mind paying for software I use, but I don't need advanced editing software with features I'll never use.

Any recommendations? A friend of mind mentioned Camtasia.

 

[rm5]

iMovie is a good one that's built into most Macs, but you can also download it if it didn't already come on your MacBook Pro.

 

[dandeco]

iMovie is a good one that's built into most Macs, but you can also download it if it didn't already come on your MacBook Pro.

I second that. iMovie is great for first-time video editors on the Mac OS. As you work your way up in editing techniques, iMovie even includes features you'll appreciate like good-quality color-correction and stabilization, rubberband-style audio editing, and more.

 

[R S K]

Simple: iMovie, yes. And if you should ever outgrow it, you can move up / over to Final Cut Pro with a single click without losing anything.

 

[StoneJack]

I did my first music video on iMovie and since then moved to FCP. Now I also use Apple Motion, Pixelmator Pro and hope to use Capcut for combined effects. iMovie is a great beginner friendly app, which is way powerful.

 

[R S K]

Using Motion in the context of anything other than Final Cut Pro is entirely counterproductive. And CapCut is certainly no comparison to Final Cut Pro, either. No idea how you can go from FCP to CapCut, as opposed to the other way around.

 

[StoneJack]

Using Motion in the context of anything other than Final Cut Pro is entirely counterproductive. And CapCut is certainly no comparison to Final Cut Pro, either. No idea how you can go from FCP to CapCut, as opposed to the other way around.

The Motion is used for animation effects.
FCP for editing.
I use Capcut for some special effects for which FCP doesn't have built in plugins or I don't have plugins. I found that for some social network oriented effects it is just much easier to process that piece of video in Capcut and then import back to FCP for final editing if needed. So Capcut is used for 3-5 seconds of video effects because it got a plethora of customizable and sometimes cool effects not easily found in FCP. At the end, they all are tools.
For beginners I would recommend iMovie first.

 

[R S K]

The Motion is used for animation effects.
FCP for editing.

How insightful!

Lest you forget (or don't even know to begin with) that Motion is what 99.9% of every title, effect, generator, and transition you have and use in Final Cut Pro is made from. So yeah… sorry, it's not quite that simple.

And the fact that other apps have other effects and options isn't much of a revelation either. If using them and going through the convoluted song and dance of importing, exporting, importing, exporting, saving, importing, etc., is worth it to you, great. All the power to ya. 👍🏼