The instructional videos are a must-watch if you’re a complete novice. It is, however, tricky to load up and start using if you’ve got no experience of similar applications. In this way, you can make things as complex as you like, removing modules you’re not using when they get in the way. It’s all there though - click any of the buttons along the top of the interface and they’ll add modules to your workspace. The basic Shotcut Video Editor user interface is a bit sparse by the standards of other non-linear video editors, which like to throw the kitchen sink at you in terms of windows, menus and options. That said, if you want to edit 4K natively you'll need a good 16GB of RAM so you might want to check out our best laptops or home computers if you need an upgrade. Another big draw is that is drains very little from your machine, so even works on older setups.

Despite being free and not company owned this has made it onto our best video editing software. Shotcut Video Editor is open source, meaning it gets updates based on the actual needs of those using it. In fact, it's tough to justify paying for a video editor when you're not a professional with a program like this available.

Shotcut developers