These programs offer the greatest creative possibilities but they're fairly complex. The industry-standard programs are Adobe's Premiere Pro (opens in new tab), Final Cut Pro) (opens in new tab) (for Apple only) and DaVinci Resolve (opens in new tab). However, professional video editors, or even serious enthusiasts, will normally use paid-for video editing software, which can be expensive (look out for Creative Cloud discounts to help. They usually have limitations in the form of added watermarks, limits on the length of your clips, but they can be a good way to get started with video editing.

If you want to do anything more advanced – and to make your videos look better than average – you’re going to have to get your hands on the best video editing software. There are lots of free video editing tools available and some of them are quite capable. However, in both of these cases, we’re talking about very basic tweaks. And even social media platforms and tools like TikTok and Instagram Reels have their own basic editing tools that you can use to tweak your content before you post it (see our how to edit videos for TikTok for a guide). Many cameras and smartphones now have internal software that will allow you to make at least basic edits to your footage on the device without having to use any other programs or apps. Video editing is thankfully a very accessible process these days, and there's a huge range of tools available to do the job.

Premiere Pro is a popular choice with video editors (Image credit: Adobe)

Easy video editor for beginners free