Macs and video editing have long been up a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Professionals were editing in Avid back in the late 1980s, and iMovie debuted in 1999 alongside the FireWire-enabled iMac DV. Today’s Macs are much more powerful than their ancestors, and that means even free apps are capable of doing some amazing things with video. It’s surprising how much you can do without spending any money: in some cases the only difference between free apps and their extremely expensive siblings is a handful of features only pro editors will need. That’s a smart business strategy; the tinkerers of today could be the pros of tomorrow. There’s one video editor we’re disappointed not to include: (VLMC).

It's based on the VLC video editor – one of our must-have apps – but it’s still in alpha, which means it’s not reliable enough or finished enough for prime time just yet. • Check out the: free and paid 1. Free editors don’t get better than this. Lightworks puts professional video editing tools within the reach of all Mac owners, regardless of budget might look a bit frightening if you’re not used to high-end editors. And that’s about the only negative thing we can say about it, because Lightworks is one of the most powerful free video editors you can download. The same technology that’s been used in proper films like Pulp Fiction and 28 Days Later is completely free for home use. Lightworks can be as light or as complex as you want: it’s as happy trimming a single clip to size as it is adding real-time effects, correcting colours or adding voiceovers.

The Mac is still the best device for serious photo editing, so you need some serious photo editing apps to make an impact. The built-in Photos app on Mac offers several useful photo editing tools. You can crop, adjust lighting and color, set the white balance, add filters, remove unwanted blemishes, and a few more things.

It’ll happily output in a format and resolution suitable for YouTube and Vimeo, but the highest quality options – 4K, 3D, Blu-Ray – and massive list of supported file formats are only for paying customers. TechRadar readers can get 40% off a monthly license using the voucher code TECHRADAR_LW_PRO_MONTH_2017. Apple’s own movie app is easy to master and ideal for simple video editing Apple's own video editor used to be free with new Macs and chargeable for everybody else, but these days it’s completely free for anyone who wants it (provided they have OS X 10.11.2 or later). It’s fairly simple to learn and packs a lot of useful features including audio editing and colour correction, and since last year it’s supported 4K video too.

Don’t expect blisteringly fast 4K performance on a low-end Mac though, as it’s very demanding. IMovie isn't Final Cut Pro and it doesn’t pretend to be: it’s designed for home and small business users who want to make or edit videos and who don’t need complex, expensive apps, and it’s great for beginners. Another professional video editor that's free to install on your Mac Here’s another app you’ll find in professional toolkits. Is a US$299 (£299, AU$499) app designed for post-production and packed with tools for adjusting, editing and correcting both audio and video. The free version,, is almost identical, with some limits you probably won’t notice.

Its 4K tops out at UHD 3,840 x 2,160, whereas the paid product goes up to 4,096 x 2,160. Filters for film grain, lens flare and lens blur aren’t available to free users without watermarking; you don’t get the extensive collaboration and workflow tools of the Studio version, and the really complex audio and video filtering is greyed out. That sounds like a lot of omissions, but it really isn’t. DaVinci Resolve delivers a serious set of pro tools for free. Windows media player for os x. Perform quick edits and take total control over video and audio encoding is a handy app for simple editing tasks, so if you’re looking for something you can use to make quick edits and cuts this may well be the free video editor for you.