I am literally sick and fucking tired of video editors locking features behind paywalls. It’s like “Oh, you found a feature that you actually NEED to use? Well, fuck you, pay 20 dollars a month to use that one feature you need!”. The free versions ALWAYS have less goddamn features then the paid versions to the point where they actually become borderline fucking unusable. A free plan is always a cop-out to get people to pay for overpriced bullshit with the excuse of “Feature addition!”. It’s fucking stupid. Every goddamn video editor out there is paid, every one of them. Basic free plans always have the basic and fucking barebones features that qualifies it as “video editing software”, and the actual useful features that you might need access to are always locked behind fucking expensive subscription plans that are overpriced as shit. Come on, the original Movie Maker had a ton of more fucking features and was FREE as it came pre-installed with Windows. Guess what? WeVideo? Fucking useless for anyone on its free plan. A huge-ass watermark that takes up way too much of the screen, video length restrictions, low-ass quality with not even ANY of the HD Export options being available for free users (basic 720p and even FULL 1080p), and a ton of other restrictions. You’d have better luck finding a goddamn heads up penny than you are finding a truly free video editor without ANY of the bullshit paid tiers with features locked in it. It’s gotten to the point where ANY fucking time I go on a website for a video editor and see a “Pricing” page on it, it’s an instant and IMMEDIATE blacklist and I will fucking avoid it like the goddamn plague. I literally will go look for something else. Paywalling features doesn’t ‘attract’ new customers. Quite the goddamn opposite. It instead DETERS them and instantly drives them away from your product or service. Over 10 years ago it was so easy to find a free video editor that suited your needs, all features were included in installation without any features being locked. And now, everything requires some form of goddamn payment to access them. Even the few things still labeled as “free”. But I am sure people are gonna come in saying “Oh, but they need to pay for server costs and hosting”, to which I will respond with “NO ONE is going to be paying for a service that makes certain features paid and TAKES AWAY features from users stuck on their free plan”. It’s like every goddamn open source video editor is SOMEHOW making more goddamn money than the paid shit… gee, I WONDER FUCKING WHY! People are literally donating to the people making these to keep the program running while with the premium shit you have to pay to “ACCESS CERTAIN FEATURES”. There’s a fine line between necessity to survive and greed, and it’s FULLY clear to me which fucking side the premium crap uses. Guess what? Davinci Resolve has EVERY feature included on its free tier. No bullshit. No stupid paywalling. No excuses. Everything is accessible, and if you want extra features (keyword: EXTRA), you can pay for Studio which is a one-time payment of $295, and then the ENTIRE software is yours with no stupid subscription plans or extra payments required. Like, I just wanna be able to EDIT MY GODDAMN VIDEOS and yet EVERY GODDAMN VIDEO EDITOR OUT THERE IS FUCKING PAID WITH FEATURES LOCKED BEHIND PAYWALLS! I’m not giving any of my fucking time or money to video editors where you have to pay to access all of the features. And yet, somehow, the prices of EVERY single video editor out there are going up in price while wages don’t keep up. STOP. RAISING. PRICES. We need the programs to cost LESS, not MORE! Oh, and yeah, since every goddamn video editor out there with a “free plan” that is missing basically 90% of the full program’s features you can bet your fucking ASS that people are pirating them. Especially when they are THIS fucking outrageously expensive. This is the EXACT fucking reason why piracy is still running rampant, and instead of making things cheaper, they make things MORE expensive, which only drives up the number of pirates even more. And guess what? Pirates? They get everything for free yet the legitimate customer is fucked over because they have to PAY to use these features while pirates can enjoy them without paying a SINGLE fucking cent. Louis Rossman put it perfectly: “Any time you create a system where the pirate is rewarded yet the legitimate customer gets screwed, the legitimate customer decides they’re gonna pirate and they will never give you money again”, which ties directly into Gabe Newell’s famous quote where he said that it’s not a pricing issue, but rather a service issue. Why the fuck do you think Davinci Resolve is making more goddamn money than those “free” video editors with features locked behind paywalls? Nearly everything is free out of the box and you don’t need a subscription plan to use them. And if you make the paid options better than the free options, then oh wow, you’re ALL of a sudden making more money. Gee, I wonder why. I’m not giving video editors that lock basically everything behind paid plans ANY of my money. My time is fucking valuable and I have far better things to worry about. So, they will see NO revenue from me. At all. Yeah, I’m not paying $20 a fucking MONTH for Sony Vegas. That shit is WAY TOO overpriced. My only other option is a “Free Trial” that WILL expire, and so, I kindly will say “fuck off” to Vegas as I will never be using it. And guess what? I won’t pay over $200 for Davinci Resolve, either. But guess what? Davinci is free with most features, Vegas is not, it’s a fucking free trial for the full product that will expire after the free trial lapses. Resolve is EASILY the better deal! I can use EVERYTHING for free. Boom! Easy recommend. I’m fucking tired of the goddamn excuses these companies give. You can ABSOLUTELY make people pay for your product without stripping features away and making them exclusive to paid tiers. But, you choose greed over consumers and I have FINALLY hit my fucking breaking point with this bullshit. It’s either you make more features free for the less fortunate, or you can watch as your fucking numbers go down to the point where NO ONE’S using your shitty-ass product.
I’m fucking tired of this shit and I want it to STOP!
It should only be a subscription if there is a legitimate cloud service being utilized. Otherwise, it should just be “pay for 1 copy.”
Luckily on desktop there’s Kdenlive for light to moderate stuff and DaVinci Resolve for moderate to heavy stuff.
On phones, they all suck and demand subscriptions at an appreciable fraction of actual professional video editing software for a crappy feature set, all with the inconvenience of having very little screen real estate for editing options.
Kdenlive, Openshot, Shotcut, Cinelerra - plenty of free open source projects available for Linux, Windows and Mac.
Might be better for your health and well being.
Open source may suck but it will never be freemium ❣️❣️❣️
Blender.org? Doesn’t come with lots of built in effects but can do it all?
Yeah blender is super powerful. In the time it took to type this rant you could learn the basic controls and then some.
I don’t think DaVinci at 300 bucks for a lifetime license is a bad deal. I actually think it’s kind of incredible value. But as you’ve said, the free version is fantastic for anyone that doesn’t need any of their AI or collaboration stuff and who doesn’t need broadcast exports. And I think locking that last one behind a paywall is pretty fair considering people working in broadcast probably have the 300 bucks to spare.
Just came in here to rep Resolve because I appreciate what they’re doing so far. Despite all that, it could change at any time.
And as others have mentioned, there are open source video editors that you can use if you want something truly free.
Plus some of the hardware includes a license too. I picked up the speed editor for not much more than the license on its own after deciding on Resolve, which is value city. I power through rough edits faster than I ever could in premiere or Vegas on mouse + keyboard.
I’ve tried so hard to avoid it. It’s really not possible. The thing that really pissed me off is that I had one app come out with a Three teir sceam, I already had the ‘pro’ account, now I can’t use parts of the software unless I buy ANOTHER sub. It’s really making me think about waking away, and I’m already pretty sure I’m canceling it before the next payment, as this program will 100% lock you out the second you end a sub no matter how much time you had left on the sub. Which I don’t even know how that’s not wire fruad at that point.
Get free open source software - Kdenlive, Openshot, Shotcut etc. If you end up liking a project you can even donate a small portion of what youre paying now. Or not. Nothing gets locked behind a pay wall.
Video editor? Have you tried hitfilms express?