Four free video editors bring out your inner filmmaker

If you want sound (and why wouldn't you?), you might need to double that number. Every video clip you import into this program is automatically split into two parts: video and audio. So you need to use two tracks in Wax's timeline to have synchronized sound with your video.

Wax includes a lot of transitional effects. And I do mean a lot — we're talking visuals like your video folding into the shape of a cube, spinning and unfolding into the footage of the next clip. Or morphing your image into a bouncing ball. Or into the shape of a house (yes, a house). This desktop video editor has the standard transitions as well (wipes, dissolves, fade-ins and fade-outs, etc.), but it's the wacky transitional animations that make it interesting.

One picture-quality issue vexed me: Most of the effects would "soften" the original sharpness of the video image. When I created a transition after a clip had run for six seconds, although this changeover ran for only three seconds, the image quality in both clips looked less sharp.

I tried to work around this by applying a transitional effect only to the specific points in time in the two clips where I wanted the changeover to happen. Pulling this feat off required adding even more tracks to the timeline (i.e., each of the two video clips in question required an additional copy of themselves).

My results were sometimes glitchy, with transitional effects animating erratically; admittedly, this could have been related to the fact that I didn't give the effect more than a few seconds to run. Some of the transitional effects ended with a quick but distracting flicker, became inexplicably "stuck" in the midst of animating or failed to work at all.

In the end, I spent several hours cutting together the third chapter of my golf-ball-whacking drama. Most of that time was spent trying to successfully apply transitional effects.

You can render your final video in Adobe's SWF, the MPEG-1 or the XviD format. I managed to get Wax to successfully create files that worked in these formats. But the extensive options for these compression formats are laid out in a very non-user-friendly manner — as formats within the settings menus — and will probably be bewildering if you're not already knowledgeable about the intricacies of video compression formats.

The bottom line

If you already use a professional video editor for Windows, Wax could be used as a separate tool for applying unique animated transitions to your video. For everybody else, it's not suitable for casual editing because of its complexity — and how often do you want to use an effect where your video morphs into a spinning cube?

Windows Live Movie Maker

This is the latest version of Windows Movie Maker, which previously came preinstalled with Windows XP and Vista. Windows Live Movie Maker can now be downloaded for use with Windows 7 and Vista (XP users will have to stick with the older version). Windows Live Movie Maker is part of the Windows Live Suite, which, if it's not already on your Windows computer, you can download from the Microsoft site.

The most obvious difference between Windows Live Movie Maker and its predecessor is that, for some reason, Microsoft elected to drop the use of a timeline to arrange the order of your video clips. The older version has a user interface resembling that of a professional video editor — a timeline runs along the bottom, with a playback window previewing your footage on the right.

Window Live Movie Maker goes another direction. Instead of using a timeline, it arranges your clips on the right side of the screen as a series of thumbnails, and the playback window is set to the left. The playing order of your clips runs from left to right, and from top to bottom. You can rearrange the sequence of your clips by dragging and dropping their thumbnails.

To edit a clip (i.e., set its start and end points), you double-click on its thumbnail, and the appropriate editing functions under the Edit tab in the toolbar that runs along the top of the interface will be automatically selected by the program so that you know which you can use. (You can also split apart a selected clip, which will create two separate thumbnails.)

Windows Live Movie Maker has effects to improve or alter the image quality of your footage, such as filters that convert your clip into various shades of black and white. There are even some motion effects, including those that make your video throb in a wavy manner as if it were a 1960s psychedelic film.

You're instantly shown in the playback window what these effects will look like. This preview isn't a static image but full-motion video running for a few seconds, which is extremely convenient. Effects are applied to a video clip by clicking on its thumbnail and choosing the Visual Effects tab on the toolbar at the top of the user interface.

A changeover animated effect from one clip to another is applied just as easily. Click on the video clip you want to transition to, and pick your desired transition (diagonal, dissolve, wipe, etc.) from the Animations tab on the toolbar. Windows Live Movie Maker will automatically join the two clips together with the transition.

To add text to your video, you use the text-applying tool to place a bar below your sequence of video clip thumbnails. Then, in the playback window, you type in and edit your text. Effects for your text (such as scrolling or fading in) can be selected from the Text Tools tab, and you're immediately shown a preview of your text in action.

Your completed video can be saved only in Microsoft's WMV format, in sizes ranging from 320-by-240 resolution to the largest high-definition format of 1920 by 720. The neatest feature is that Windows Live Movie Maker lets you output directly to YouTube: Enter your username and password, and your finished video will be uploaded to that site. This is how I uploaded Part 4 of my friends' golf-ball-whacking day to YouTube, and the process went smoothly.

The bottom line
To be honest, I miss the timeline from the original Windows Movie Maker. But if you can get used to this (which might be easier if you don't already have a preference for editing video on a timeline), then this editor's strength lies in its easy-to-apply effects, transitions and text. The ability to upload directly to your YouTube account is another plus.

Conclusions
The ideal free video editor for Windows would be a conglomeration of the ones featured in this roundup: the user interface (the timeline and two-video track layout) of JayCut, the image-enhancing tools of Avidemux, the varied selection of transitional and animated effects of Wax, and the instant previewing of video effects of Windows Live Movie Maker.

In the end, I would say Windows Live Movie Maker did the best job. I cut together Part 4 of my friends' golfing day with it in less than 2 hours, comparably less than I had to spend with the other three free editors. But it's too bad that Windows Live Movie Maker lacks a timeline and that Windows XP users can't use it. (They can, however, access the older Windows Movie Maker.)

Editing video can be more of a challenge than shooting footage, but this challenge should be on the creative side — not with the editor itself.

Howard Wen is a frequent contributor to Computerworld.