Editing Software for Vloggers and YouTubers

If you're creating a video blog -- a "vlog" -- your requirements for software editing are probably pretty basic.  For the most part, what you need to do is cut out bad takes and bad moments. You would use the same kind of cuts-only editing if you're doing mash-ups of clips captured from television. For a music video or comedy sketch, you might want to add some special effects. If you want to get fancy, you can add titles or credits and a transition or two. Output resolution is probably no more than 640x480, tops.  

Windows users have at least two choices of free software that will serve these purposes very well. The first, Windows Movie Maker, comes with the operating system in one of two versions -- MovieMaker 2.1 for Windows XP users, and MovieMaker 6.0 for Vista users.  (Don't ask me what happened to all those version numbers in between.)  The second is Pinnacle VideoSpin -- a nifty little editor that is a stripped down version of the more capable Pinnacle Studio.

Movie Maker exists in different editions, depending on the version of Windows you're running, but functionally they're very similar.  What it does, which is basic editing, titling, effects, and transitions, it does reasonably well.  Its output is well-represented on YouTube and other similar sites.  As an extension of the Windows operating system, it is able to capitalize on other Windows programs and services such as DVD creation.

VideoSpin is a stripped-down 'tease' of Pinnacle Studio, and they don't let you forget it.  As you start the program, and intermittently as you use it, VideoSpin provides little advertisements ('"nags") to induce you to buy its more capable big brother.  The upside of this is that if you use VideoSpin, like it, and want to take advantage of what you have learned in a more powerful program, you have an upgrade path, whereas  Movie Maker is what it is.  That said, both programs use similar approaches in their user interface, and offer similar capabilities.

You may find yourself using both programs, and there is nothing to stop you from doing that.  VideoSpin has no facilities for capturing video from your camera, but it will happily use the video captured with Movie Maker.  Nor can you burn a DVD from within VideoSpin, but there is nothing preventing you from using Windows DVD Maker for that step -- which is, in fact, the program that Movie Maker calls to accomplish that task.  And you might find yourself using VideoSpin  for some of its nifty titling capabilities or its unique transitions.  

The accompanying chart offers a feature-by-feature comparison.