Hi all,

Does anyone know of any simple free video editing software? For what it's needed for, Windows Movie Maker would be perfect, save for the fact that you can't layer graphics over your footage(?).

I know someone who has a load of hand drawn titles that they want to drop over a clipshow.

Any ideas?

Microsoft Expression Encoder has a demo version which limits you to several minutes of video.

I once used it to make several 5 minute clips, and then sewed them together.

I think it has an overlay option, but I'm not sure, I haven't used it in a long while.

There's the video editing module in Blender (you need to look for tutorials online):
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Sequencer/Usage

There's also Shotcut, an underrated editor by the MLT framework group:
http://www.shotcut.org/bin/view/Shotcut/WebHome

I often use AVISynth to do the editing and VirtualDub to encode the avs files into AVI/etc.

If you're not a programmer, you'll probably find this workflow abhorrent -- AVI Synth has no GUI, instead you tell it what to do (such as "load AVI, load PNG, overlay the PNG onto the AVI") by writing small scripts in a simple text language.

I use Kdenlive on Ubuntu.

VideoPad has a lot of advanced features, including layering graphics, its a bit of work finding the free version though.

I was just looking this up myself, and I think the best way to go is Blender. I found a decent video on getting it set up.

Remember, Blender is also a 3D modeling tool, with special effects like cloth, and particles (fire, water, etc.) So these things could be used to make video effects as well.

I wonder if someone created a fork for Blender, geared towards video editing.