As a freelance videographer you can spend just as much time filming as you do editing. Which means knowing your camera and knowing your editing platform well comes with great value for how your end product turns out. Great footage and a bad edit makes for a lower tier product whereas decent footage but a great edit can really elevate your end product look clean and professional. These days there are so many different platforms to choose from that for beginners I can see how it is hard to choose, especially when you start talking about pricing, features, etc. So let's do a quick deep dive into a few editing platforms and talk about what you should be looking for when deciding on which one to learn and master. First let's start with a super basic editing platform, the free ones. You can genuinely go out and use whatever free software you want to edit videos with. Some have a lot of features but leave you with an annoying watermark that you can’t remove without purchase or some have maybe more basic features but at least there is not a watermark and you are free to use it however you wish. A few that I have personally used are Filmora and Capcut. The first editing program I ever used was Filmora and back then it was very basic but it did work and I learned a lot while using it. Now they have a more feature heavy editing software and have come a long way since I first used it back in 2020. The next one is Capcut, which in my eyes is heavily focused for social media video use but is still a solid option especially if you decide to purchase the pro version later on. I usually suggest for people to use Capcut these days when getting started. It has a few quirks but it's easy and can be taught to anyone. Plus it was originally an app that later came out with a desktop version, I prefer editing on a desktop but it is really clutch to have a usable editing program on your phone from time to time.
Next we have the total opposite in terms of price but it is a more acceptable program in the industry, Adobe Premiere Pro. One of the biggest issues with this program is just the price. Is it expensive? No, but it's a subscription plan which adds up over time and will run you for your money in the long run. Although I believe you can spend the same or a little more for the whole Adobe creative suite which will include things like Photoshop and Lightroom which is great for industry professionals who will use Adobe products all the time but your “Average Joe” or “Side Hustle Andy” I would not suggest this for them as it just isn’t worth it in the long run. Looking past the money problem, it is a perfect industry acceptable editing platform. It has all the bells and whistles, a clean operating system, more professional features with working with higher quality footage and just a strong foundation for being a little more complicated than our previous options but much more reliable and quality driven. If you are just using it to edit your kid’s birthday video every year then I would look past this one but if you are someone who is dedicated to learning the craft and building up your skills in the industry then you should definitely invest into it.
Finally we have the happy medium between the free software and the monthly subscription mammoth that is Adobe. The quiet kid in the room, Davinci Resolve. Resolve is a more and more talked about editing program these days and although earlier I suggested that you should invest into Adobe, you really should invest in learning Resolve for editing but get Adobe for things like Lightroom and Photoshop. This editing program has slowly risen the ranks over the past two years and now is used mainly for its color science on most high end productions. Black Magic, the company behind Resolve, is an industry leading innovator not just in cameras but also across the board for things like livestreaming and software development. It also has a one time purchase fee of $295 at the time of writing. I don’t see that price changing much either as it has been the same for quite some time now. That to say, yes it is a commitment up front but one year of Adobe subscriptions will put pretty close if not more than that and again that $295 is a one time fee, which tends to be unheard of in this industry these days unless you are buying actual gear. They also have a free version where you can learn it and get used to it before buying. All in all, it is a great software with visionaries behind it and a drive to be the best that you don’t see in any of the other options here.
I hope this insight was helpful to those looking at getting into editing or just looking at what's out there now. There are so many more options than I listed out there as well and you can choose pretty much any of them especially if you are just starting out. Just poke around and see whats out there. Best of luck!