4 Free Video Tools: CapCut, DaVinci Resolve, Shutter Encoder, VLC Media Player

4 Awesome Free Video Tools

This week on The Video and Livestreaming Show, Sam Proof and I will be talking about 4 awesome and free video tools that you might like to check out.

When it comes to software, 'free' can mean a number of different things:

• It could be a free trial, with a small offering of the overall feature set or a time restriction (or, especially for video tools, some sort of watermark).
• It could be free and open source (like OBS Studio).
• It could be a really nice developer who is just sharing the tool they created to scratch their own itch.

As always, let's take a moment to appreciate the wonderful developers out in the world who create and share epic things with us!

This week we'll be looking at CapCut, DaVinci Resolve, Shutter Encoder and VLC Media Player.

Why you might like to look at free tools

I joke sometimes that "free" is my favourite price point, but there are all kinds of reasons why you might like to check out these tools.

Perhaps you're a non-profit, educator, solopreneur, literally anyone with finite financial resources (which, frankly, is probably most of us).

Perhaps you'd like to try out different tools and workflows before making a financial commitment.

Perhaps you're working with students and other people who are working to a budget.

I'm a big fan of having a number of different tools in my toolbox to meet my content creation goals, and the great thing about free tools is that you don't have to feel bad if you haven't reached for one of them in a while because you know you're paying a monthly or yearly subscription.

CapCut

CapCut is video editor from Bytedance (the company behind TikTok). This is often our recommendation for people who are new to video editing because it's relatively straight-forward but it can still do a lot of things.

Bytedance are hoping that you will ultimately decide this product is so wonderful that you'll pay for it, but there's a reasonable amount you can do for free.

CapCut is available for Desktop, mobile (Android and iOS) and there's even a cloud based version that you can access from the browser.

Even as someone who doesn't use CapCut as their primary video editor, I often find myself taking a completed project into CapCut to burn physical captions into the video because I really like the options I have in terms of how they look and feel and act there.

One particularly wonderful feature of CapCut is that they have "Spaces." These are essentially different work spaces where you can share assets (videos etc.) and projects between different devices and different users. This can mean that perhaps you want to film your projects on your phone and then share them with the Desktop version of the software for ease-of-use.

CapCut documentation notes:

• Each user can create up to 3 spaces (including the Default space).
• Each space can invite up to 4 members.
• Each space has an initial capacity of 1 GB. By successfully inviting 1 member, the space will be upgraded to 2 GB for free. By successfully inviting 2 members, the space will be upgraded to 5 GB for free (free expansion is valid for 45 days only).

Sam uses CapCut for many of his projects so I'm eager to hear more about how he is using it on the show.

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is a real powerhouse when it comes to video creation. The fact that there is a free version of this software is kind of mind boggling.

There are 7 tabs at the bottom of the software:

• Media: For organising your media.
• Cut: Making cuts.
• Edit: Editing your video.
• Fusion: Creating Fusion compositions, which gives you the ability to animate things and adjust properties based on keyframe animation.
• Color: Colour grading.
• Fairlight: Audio.
• Deliver: Rendering your project.

Many of these tasks would traditionally be handled by separate pieces of software and there's something really elegant about having them here altogether.

That said, because of the power of this software, you probably need to check that your computer can handle it. (I couldn't find specific system requirement advice from Blackmagic though.) It's worth noting too that the download installer for this software is around 3 GB so make sure your Internet connection can wrangle that too.

As excited as I genuinely am by DaVinci Resolve, I haven't been using it for very long. And for the most part I've been living in the Fusion tab to create livestreaming assets for OBS Studio. This is probably not the place most people would start, but I have been really enjoying it. You can see some streams where I have created different assets below.

• Like and subscribe animation
• Animated banners
• Logo Stinger transition

This is what the logo stinger animation looks like in action.

There will be a bit of learning curve here, especially if you're doing anything more elaborate than simple cuts, but this is software that can do basically everything so you'll be well served by it.

Again, if you decide you love this software you can upgrade to the paid version which has some extra features. Additionally you can purchase some of Blackmagic's hardware options like their Speed Editor and the paid software is included.

Shutter Encoder

I tend to think of Shutter Encoder as video conversion tool, but in reality it has so many functions it's difficult to summarise them all (though let me try).

• You can make changes to an existing video (Cuts, replace audio, rewrap, conform, merge, extra, subtitling, video inserts).
• You can extract audio to various formats.
• You can convert video to a number of different codecs.
• You can extract frames as images and create animated GIFs.
• You can burn and rip DVDs and Blu-Rays.
• You can use their analysis tools (Loudness and true peak, Audio normalization, cut detection, black detection, media offline direction, VMAF which is apparently a metric Netflix invented).
• You can download web videos (though obviously respect other people's copyright).

(Oh, look, it's Worldwide Speaker Michelle J Raymond !)

Shutter Encoder is available for PC and Mac.

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a great program to watch and listen to media files through, but for content creators it contains some other benefits.

My favourite thing about VLC Media Player is that if you have OBS Studio installed, and then install VLC Media Player, you will actually get a brand new source option called "VLC Media Source."

This will let you create playlists of media that you can play within OBS Studio.

VLC Media Player also has a number of ripping and converting options too.

Join us live

I'm really excited for this one. I hope you'll join us.

Check out the event invites for the date and time in your local time zone. If it's not a convenient time, you can always watch the replay later.

• 4 Free Video Tools (Watch on YouTube)
• 4 Free Video Tools (Watch on LinkedIn?)

Have a great week

I hope you have a great week.

Please look after yourself.

Remember, if you're interested in video, livestreaming and content creation:

• Connect with me here on LinkedIn?.
• Subscribe to the Learn Livestreaming YouTube channel. (Currently sitting on 582 subscribers —THANK YOU! ??)
• Follow JohnLacey.com for even more content!

BONUS: Letting go of tech, tools and strategies that no longer serve us

Watch "Letting Go" on YouTube

Last week on the show, we spoke about letting go of tech, tools and strategies that no longer serve us.