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• Pros

  Inexpensive; free version available. Supports 4K editing and output. Decent PiP, chroma-key, and transparency tools. Lots of file format support. Small install size.

• Cons

  Awkward interface. Can't play preview in the timeline editor. No multi-cam, motion tracking, or 3D support. No Help feature. Occasionally unstable in testing.

• Bottom Line

  If you really don't want to pay much for video editing software, VSDC Video Editor can do a decent amount with your clips, but top products are far easier to use, more stable, and more powerful.

If you just want simple video stitching and trimming, you may not want to spend close to $100 for an enthusiast-level application like CyberLink's PowerDirector. Unfortunately, if you choose a low-cost option such as VSDC Video Editor Pro (which costs just $19.99), you may get frustrated when using it. Although it does have some fairly advanced video editing tools, VSDC is one of the least user-friendly applications I've tested in a while.

• $99.99
• $129.99
• $99.99
• $129.99
• $79.99
• $299.99

Pricing and Starting Up

VSDC Video Editor is available at two levels: Free and the $19.99 Pro edition—still far cheaper than most capable video editing software, and the version I reviewed. The paid version adds support for more media types, more advanced settings, hardware acceleration, sub-pixel resolution, and audio waveform editing. It also adds premium support and extra masking and chroma-keying capabilities.

The program runs on Windows XP SP3 through Windows 10 (though no one should be running old, unsupported operating systems!). The installer weighs in at 36 MB—svelte, compared with most video editors, which often top the scales at over a gigabyte. After installation, the program takes up 122 MB on the hard drive. My PC did generate an error message and a reboot, but after that everything worked as expected.

When you first run the application, a welcome panel explains that editing a video project is a simple three-step process of opening a new project, editing, and exporting. The panel links to help websites for each of these steps, rather than showing you how to do them within the program, which would be more helpful.

Interface

As you might expect from such an inexpensive program, VSDC's interface lacks the polish of, say, CyberLink PowerDirector. For one, it didn't accommodate my 4K monitor, instead showing some very tiny interface elements. The center of the program's startup interface shows five square buttons under the Start Project Now group and eight round ones under Get to Know Top Features.

Startup choices include Blank Project, Slideshow, Import Content, Video Capture, and Screen Capture. Features include effects such as color correction and filters, 4K editing, blending, masking, chroma-keying, waveforms, 3D charts, and combining multimedia.

Annoyingly, the program uses Windows Media Player to preview projects; it pops up when you try to view a preview. You can skip to but not scrub to different positions in the editor—that's a huge drawback. It's strange that you can move to points in the video, but not actually play it in the editing window. And unlike almost every video editor, it doesn't let you stop and start playback with the spacebar. Equally annoying is that, as you preview, the insertion point on the timeline doesn't keep sync with what you're watching. There is a separate Cutting and Splitting window that somewhat makes up for this limitation, however, by letting you preview a clip while cutting regions. But even that is awkward to use, making even basic trimming more difficult than in any editor I've used.

Making the interface even more cluttered, along the immediate left side and top of the preview window are Photoshop-like toolbars for things like adding and aligning shapes and text. Missing among all this is a Help feature.

You see any Projects you've created in a left-side panel, with their included Scenes. Instead of the modes you find in most video-editing apps, which take you through the standard progression of source organization, editing, and output tasks, VSDC has tabs along the top in more of an Office app layout. As in an Office app, most of these simply change ribbon tool options, but the Export option changes the main interface for output configuration.

Basic Video Editing

If you choose Import Content from the starting screen, you can only add one file at a time—a limitation I haven't seen in a long time in any video editor. But once you're in a project, you can add multiple files at once. You can't add multiple video clips directly to the timeline, but only through the File sequence wizard, which inserts transitions. These are added to the timeline as a single Sprite, which initially shows up as one track on the timeline, but double-clicking this expands to the full number of component tracks.

Drag-and-drop support is very limited, and not possible within the timeline, though you can drag clips onto the video preview window. I could slide clips back and forth within their tracks, but not move them from track to track. To do this, you need to use arrows on the toolbar above the video preview.

When you create a new project, you can specify the author, resolution, frame rate, and audio format. Next, you see the File's sequence wizard window, which lists transitions for your movie's clips. Only the Perspective set seemed to be 3D, and for some reason the most common transition type—fade—is buried deep in the list. In the same window, you can add multiple clips. But when I did this, the transitions weren't applied in the main timeline.

The auto-contrast, auto-levels, and auto-gamma options didn't improve my image. Nothing like the new dehaze tool in Adobe Premiere Elements, which works well. For manual adjustment, you tap the ellipsis […] next to a setting in a right-side panel. When you do this, a full-screen-width adjustment line appears, which you can add keyframes to gradually increase or decrease the level. Yes, it works, but it takes some sleuthing to figure out.

Fancy Video Effects

Cropping, rotating, transparency, and creating picture-in-picture video effects are quite easy in VSDC. You simply drag the borders where you want for cropping and PiP, and a rotate button makes quick work of turning your video over. But you can't animate PiP, aside from simply moving the image across the screen as time progresses. With PowerDirector, you can use keyframes to move a PiP around and resize gradually.

VSDC's Instagram style filters and old-film styles are also welcome effects, as is the workable chroma-keying. The latter did let me remove a green background, but the results weren't as impressive as with other software like Corel VideoStudio or CyberLink PowerDirector.

A few advanced video techniques that you won't find support for in VSDC include multi-cam, 360 VR, 3D, and motion tracking. In its favor, VSDC accepts and lets you edit 4K video content without any complaints. It does let you create shape masks, which you can even use to pixelate areas in the video and follow motion paths, but the program doesn't automate it or even make it easy.

The text tool is actually WYSIWYG, letting you type over the screen image. A good selection of fonts and colors are at your disposal, but you don't get the more advanced text options found in other software, such as 3D, rotation, and transparent cutout text.

The software also includes a separate Converter tool that offers a large selection of output options for popular devices and online uses, including FLV, MKV, and SWF.

Audio

You can add a soundtrack and apply several audio effects such as fade, chorus, delays, and low-pass filters. There's even a pitch change effect. I got into trouble, however, when I tried adding more than one effect to the audio, and sometimes I just heard silence. You can show audio waveforms on the timeline, but those are not adjustable.

Performance

I tested VSDC's rendering time by creating a movie consisting of four clips of mixed types (some 1080p, some SD, some 4K) with a standard set of transitions and rendered it to 1080p30 MPEG-4 at 15Mbps, H.264 High Profile. Audio was MPEG AAC Audio: 192 Kbps. I tested on the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IC running 64-bit Windows 10 Home and sporting a 4K display, 16GB RAM, a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700T CPU, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M discrete graphics card.

The test movie (that played for just under 5 minutes) took 5:05 for VSDC Video Editor to render. That compares with 1 minute and 56 seconds for Pinnacle Studio, 2:34 for PowerDirector, 4 minutes and 20 seconds for Corel VideoStudio, and 5:18 for Adobe Premiere Elements. So VSDC isn't the worst at rendering speed, but it's definitely not a leader. I should also note that the program stopped responding several times during testing and had to be restarted. Not something you want in the middle of building a digital movie.

Sharing and Output

The number of output file options is impressive. VSDC even supports the relatively new H.265 codec, and an illustrated dropdown lets you choose popular devices to target with your output. Motion JPEG and animated GIFs are also options, but Blu-ray and even AVCHD are not options. There's a DVD-burning tool, but you get no help with creating menus or chapters.

You Get What You Pay For

If you really don't want to pay for a more-established video-editing program and can get used to its frustrating and often counterintuitive interface, VSDC Video Editor can do some interesting things with your digital media—if you're very patient. Features that worked well include picture-in-picture, transparency, and the effect filters. But the app was unstable in my testing, and far too many features lag too far behind what more-expensive software offers for me to call this a good choice, even given how cheap it is. For both more ease of use and power, check out our Editors' Choice video editing software, Corel VideoStudio and CyberLink PowerDirector on the PC and Final Cut Pro X on the Mac.

VSDC Video Editor Pro

Bottom Line: If you really don't want to pay much for video editing software, VSDC Video Editor can do a decent amount with your clips, but top products are far easier to use, more stable, and more powerful.

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