Ask HN: Simple video editor for instructional videos | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Simple video editor for instructional videos

5 pointssamspenc10 comments

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but what does the HN community use as a simple and barebones but functional video editor for producing instructional videos. Free / open-source is preferable but I'm OK with a paid solution.

I don't need, for example, color correction or motion tracking, but need to be able to cut / splice video clips, replace and add audio, and add some simple text (with font control) and transitions. And hopefully not tax my CPU (and practically non-existent GPU) too much while working on it.

I've used DaVinci Resolve for personal projects and it's amazingly fully featured, but too much for a simple instructional video, but it really taxes my laptop CPU (and I don't want to get a gaming machine to run DaVinci more efficiently.)

On the other hand we have Windows' built-in video editor which is basically too simple to do anything productive in.

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If you're okay with a paid solution Camtasia is probably the gold standard for tutorial/instructional videos, especially screencasts.

https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html

For something free, I've had success with OpenShot and used it for show & tells at work on a work machine that I didn't have a licence to use anything more 'professional' with but be prepared to finnick about with it, but for your simple use case it should do the trick. You can use OBS (https://obsproject.com/) or ShareX (https://getsharex.com/) as free tools to capture the screen and/or your webcam.

https://www.openshot.org/

Thank you! Do Camtasia, OBS, etc allow simple video workflows like linear editing and splicing audio / video tracks? Or would I need to use these screen capture software along with something else for that functionality?

OBS doesn't really do editing, it's designed for live streaming/events (hence Open Broadcaster Software (OBS)) but also handles 'VOD' (video on-demand) recording. You can do cuts on the fly as you record by configuring different scenes and using hotkeys but there's no timeline feature or post-editing features.

Camtasia is basically a NLE (Non-linear (video) editor) which has a screen recorder/A/V external capture function bundled though and can be used for splicing audio/video, adding basic effects/transitions and titles etc.

I suggested OBS if using OpenShot (which is also a NLE) as it's good for capturing screen/external video (capture card/webcam etc.)/audio content which then can be post-edited using OpenShot.

Yes they allow for both of these things. “Clip at playhead” will allow you to cut the track and you can right click the track to separate video and audio instantly. Great tool

If you’re making screenshare style instructional videos, Camtasia and Screenflow are the two that come to mind. Camtasia is probably the more polished of the two. Make sure you get a good mic if you are recording yourself (Blue Yeti is a well known low/mid tier, Shure MV7 is a good high tier)

Camtasia is full of sh… bugs and stupid ui decisions, once you really start heavily using it.

Screenflow these days look like the only simple and robust editor with all crucial screencasts features.

(Ive been paying customer of both for a while, as a tutorial screencasts producer/youtuber)

Vidcutter seems simple https://github.com/ozmartian/vidcutter

Kdenlive is good enough for tour usage I think.

Canva is paid but will seriously simplify your video creation process and give you assets to spruce it up

veed.io - happy customer here.

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