Best free and easy to use video editor?

cormie

Hi,
I'm looking for a free/opensource video editor that will just do very basic video editing (cutting a section off a clip I have, adding a bit of text at the start of a movie, maybe adding a different audio file over the movie, putting a watermark over the entire movie etc).

I've tried virtualdub, far too complicated and hadn't a clue what I was doing. I tried avidemux and it's not working with the files my camera has (h.264) - I get two errors when I try open the file "H.264 detected - if the file is using b frames as reference it can lead to a crash or stuttering. Avidemux can use another mode which is safe but YOU WILL LOSE FRAME ACCURACY. Do you want to use that mode" whether I choose yes or no, I then get another error "No audio decoder found for this file Save (A+V) will generate bad AVI. Save audio will work". Again, this is a complicated program and I haven't been able to produce an edited file from it.

I also downloaded handbrake but that appears to be a decoder only.

Is there anything just really simple that can do basic edits like I mention above and that will have a simple almost step by step guide with easy to understand icons and options?

Any feedback appreciated

frozenfrozen

Watch tonnes of youtube videos, it's better in the long run as you'll actually learn how to do something new instead of just using the easiest option. Windows movie maker sounds pretty perfect for what you want to do. All very basic timeline based editing. And to replace audio virtualdub will be your best bet as it's literally just a case of opening the video and then choosing a different source of audio then pressing save as.

cormie

Thanks for that, have downloaded windows movie maker and it seems to be able to do what I want unfortunately it came with windows photo gallery and dvd maker and there doesn't seem to be a way to uninstall either