Movavi combines best-in-class video editing tools with an easy-to-use and pleasing user interface. It was first introduced to the consumer market in 2004, and since then, Movavi has become famous as one of the best video editing Software for beginners and hobbyists. You can create attractive and engaging YouTube, Marketing, and Product videos with impressive transitions, titles, graphics, soundtracks, and more.
In this article, we will take a close look at the nifty features of Movavi, including Motion Tracking, Chroma Key, PiP, Text Presets, Audio Synching, Quick Rendering, Transitions, and more video enhancement effects.
So buckle up and read till the end because this is an in-depth Movavi Video Editor review with its effectiveness and performance grading.
Users are raving about Movavi Video Editor’s ease of use and gentle learning curve. So if you are the one who is just getting into video editing, this is the best software for you to begin with.
Before we dive into the details, let me tell you why you should read this review and invest in feature-rich and professional-level video editing software like Movavi.
Editor’s Summary
- Overall Rating – 4.3/5 Stars
- Price – $49.95/year or $69.95 for the lifetime license
- Free Trial – Yes. You can Try it Here
- Basic Editing, Effects, and Libraries – The program lets you quickly slice and join video clips with greater control. It is packed with a powerful set of effects with text, audio, and video templates
- Ease of use and learning – Movavi aims at amateur video editors with its user-friendly interface and easy-to-use built-in templates
- Performance – Movavi will rarely disappoint you while applying powerful effects, rendering, and startup with sudden crashes and unexpected shutdowns. It dominates most of the popular video editors when it comes to rendering speed.
- Support – They have impressive in-app guides and a knowledge base. Also, you will find useful video tutorials by experts on Youtube.
Movavi aims at simplifying the video editing workflow for beginners by eliminating the needless complexity of professional-grade video editors. The user interface is standard and very similar to Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. It is one of the best affordable video editor of 2022.
There are plenty of free and paid video editors available in the market. But at the early stage of a video editing career, one doesn’t need the sophistication of an advanced video editor that has a steep learning curve. On the other hand, the free software lacks the essential tools and format support required for creating stunning videos.
So choosing software like Movavi makes perfect sense because it is cheap and easy to use with plenty of professional-grade features.
IMHO, you should at least give it a try before making any decision because you won’t find any other program with a huge selection of templates, libraries, and auto modes at such a price tag.
What has impressed us so far?
Intuitive user interface coupled with professional-grade features like Chroma Key, PiP, Motion Tracking, and more at a price affordable to every serious video editing geek.
In contrast to Adobe Premiere Pro, the way it displays each transition and effect preview is worth mentioning.
Text presets allow YouTubers and content creators to quickly select a stunning text animation and tweak it within the shortest time.
What could we love to see in the latest update?
Adding Multicam Editing will take this video editor to the next level.
The built-in screen capturing tool asks us to pay an additional amount ($30 for a complete video suite) to use it but we think that such a basic feature should be available for FREE.
Finally, the H.265 Video Codec support is missing. Movavi should consider this because H.265 is becoming the new standard for video compression.
What’s new in Movavi Video Editor 2023?
Movavi releases a massive update once or twice a year for their video editor. There are small and significant improvements related to functionality as well as performance.
In Movavi Video Editor 2023 release, users were surprised with the following upgrades,
#1 AI-powered Background Removal – One can instantly remove backgrounds even with no green screens
#2 Noise Removal – Remove noise from your audio with an AI-driven audio denoiser. Whether it’s wind or other uncool sounds, you can get rid of all of them with one click.
#3 Share to TikTok – Previously, direct sharing options were limited to YouTube, Vimeo, and Google Drive, but now they have added TikTok to this list.
#4 YouTube Effects – Get access to exclusive packs of video effects and spice-up your YouTube videos at no additional cost.
Movavi Pricing
You need to pay $49.95 per year to use Movavi Video Editor. The superfan of Movavi can purchase it for a lifetime at just $69.95 with unlimited updates in the future. The impressive pricing is the main driving factor behind the massive success of Movavi Video Editor.
Filmora by Wondershare is the biggest rival of the Movavi Video Editor. In fact, each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. It costs $49.99 per year, which is almost the same.
In contrast to other professional-grade video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro which costs $20.99/month and $239.98/year, beginners can save a huge amount of money with Movavi.
Windows and Mac Compatibility
You can run Movavi Video Editor on both Windows and Mac. The performance is smooth and similar on both of them.
If you haven’t downloaded the Movavi yet then consider downloading it (7-day FREE Trial) and follow me along while I take you through the interface, navigation, presets, effects, and transitions in this article. Movavi is a light program that will take up to 300MB of your hard drive space.
Windows (version 7 to 11) – Click Here
Mac (version 10.13.6 and later) – Click Here
However, in the end, if you will feel unlucky to download Movavi then you can remove it instantly without any hesitation.
Interface
Now let’s talk about the most important aspect of video editing: the user interface.
Movavi is popular for its ease of use and simplicity. The dashboard resembles Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro to put Movavi in the league of professional video editing. One can easily locate the filters, effects, audio tools, transitions, graphics, and more within no time, thanks to Movavi’s intuitive control panel.
After installation, an in-app guide will take you through the important elements of the program.
You will find that the dashboard is divided into three sections: Control Panel, Preview Window, and Timeline Track. You can easily adjust the relative size of these sections. Now, let’s discuss them in detail.
1. Control panel
The true power of Movavi can be explored in this section. It is the main area on the dashboard from where you can import files, apply filters, and transitions, adjust colors, select text presets, access motion tracking, and more.
The Control panel consists of eight little icons in the left sidebar: Import, Audio, Titles, Transitions, Effects, Elements, Effects Store, and More Tools.
The “More Tools” button includes access to Color Adjustments, Audio Tools, Stabilization, Slow Motion, Crop and Rotate, Stickers, Chroma Key, Pan, and Zoom.
Movavi allows an instant preview of transitions, effects, and text presets before you actually use them. IMHO, it is the best way for users to decipher the effects, transitions, text presets, and more. Such preview is not possible with industry-leading video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro, you need to first apply it to the clip and then preview changes on the raw video. In other words, Movavi is going to save a lot of time and increase your creativity right from the beginning with such preview functionality.
Starting a project
Movavi supports almost all popular and trending file formats. File formats are evolving at a faster pace but Movavi’s team seems to be working hard in this regard. Because it allows you to import nearly all types of videos, audio, and images.
While creating a new project you can select the video resolution right from 320p to 4096×2160 pixels which is higher than 4K resolution.
Importing files is a breeze, you can import video clips one by one or multiple video clips at once or even an entire folder at a time.
One thing to note here is the lack of an Internal Library or Media Management Capability. It feels a little messy when you start working with plenty of video clips simultaneously. Professional-grade video editors on the other hand let you sort and organize files directly from the dashboard after importing.
2. Preview Window
You will see all your changes including effects, transitions, and text animations on your raw video clip from this section before exporting the final video.
The preview window comes with several basic buttons including, start, stop, volume control, etc. for additional control over preview playback.
3. Timeline Track (Video Track)
It runs along the entire bottom of the dashboard. The timeline track is divided into audio, video, text, and overlay tracks to give you more flexibility while editing videos.
The timeline track is the area where you will be working most of the time. If you have already used any video editing software then you know what I am talking about.
You can add an infinite number of video, sound, and text tracks to Movavi. The unlimited number of tracks allows Movavi to dominate the most popular iMovie Video Editor which can handle only two video tracks.
One can directly drag-n-drop the video or sound clip to the timeline track and start working on it.
The top of the timeline is loaded with quick access to several frequently used tools including, Crop, Rotate, Color Adjustments, Video, and Audio Recording.
We are getting very used to the star icon that appears on the clips in the timeline after applying the effects, stabilization, speed changes, and more. It gives you instant control over the respective configurations.
Movavi didn’t disappoint me with lag or sudden crashes while I was playing around with a considerable number of HD and 4K video clips. This is a remarkable improvement by Movavi over the last few years.
Basic Editing, Effects, and Color Correction
Movavi is good at spicing up your raw videos with beautiful effects and powerful color enhancements. Though there are very few choices available compared to the giants, it will still get the work done.
It is straightforward to crop, rotate and flip your raw video. These simple tools are not as powerful and feature-rich as in the case of professional-grade video editors. For example, pre-trimming of clips is not allowed in Movavi.
You can edit the keyframes and tell the program exactly where to begin and stop the applied effect.
Moreover, the team is constantly improving its video effects library. All effects and templates are available for free. You don’t have to leave the software to download an excellent video template by Google-ing it..
Applying effects is easy, head over to the control panel and click on the effects. Use the search bar to find the particular effect of your choice. You will have a range of effects at your disposal, select one of them and drag it to the desired clip on the timeline.
You can apply effects to multiple clips in one shot, by right-clicking on the effect and choosing “Apply to All Clips.”
Add freshness and enhance the quality of your video either by using presets or manually adjusting the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Highlights, Shadows, Hue, Temperature, and Tint.
Recently realized LUTs upgrade takes the editing to the next level. A decent selection of LUTs (Lookup Tables) from color adjustment options can drastically enhance the quality of the video with Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, and Vintage looks.
This video editor offers an impressive set of transitions that are quite useful to spice up your videos.
Chroma Key
Chroma Key is one of the most used features by video editors of all kinds. It allows you to change the background of the raw video.
Consider you are recording a tutorial video from the comfort of your home, but you don’t want to highlight the living room right behind you. With a chroma key, it is possible to use the office, classroom, or any other professional-looking background in your video. All you need is a Green Screen and Movavi.
Using Green Screens to speed up the video production and take the video quality to the highest level is common nowadays.
If you have a raw video with Green Screen then you can simply select the color with the dropper tool and replace the entire screen with a stunning background of your choice. Moreover, the dropper allows you to pick up any color and replace it. You can adjust the tolerance, opacity, and noise of the selected background color.
SIDENOTE: You cannot select multiple background colors at once. At least for now this functionality is limited to giants like Corel VideoStudio.
In the recent 2023 update, Movavi introduced AI-based background removal and claims that it is powerful enough to remove backgrounds without a green screen. We have tested it with our review video consisting of a nice-looking light orange background. It works pretty well.
PiP
PiP stands for the picture in picture. It is particularly useful in the case of tutorials, how-to guides, news videos, and more.
It is nothing but overlapping video clips in the timeline track.
Using PiP in Movavi is a breeze. All you need is to drag your secondary video to the timeline and overlap it with the primary video followed by rescaling it to desired aspect ratio. You can use shapes like round and circular to give it a professional look.
Motion Tracking
Motion Tracking capability is one of the new techs in the video editing industry. Almost all of the popular brands include this functionality in their program.
You can mark the object to add some blur or black shape over it and then through the rest of the video the shape of the blur will stick to the marked object. Isn’t that cool?
Movavi does a decent job when it comes to Motion Tracking with additional control over the opacity and feathering of the masked object.
The recent update allows AI-driven motion tracking which has taken Movavi capabilities to the highest limits. It seamlessly tracks the masked object with enhanced accuracy.
Audio Library and Editing
Video editors come with built-in audio editing capabilities. Movavi comes with automatic as well as manual audio fixing. You can use autocorrect to remove the background noise from the video. But please do not compare Movavi’s audio correcting and enhancing capability with the versatility of a dedicated audio editor like Audacity.
Movavi offers impressive sound effects that you can use as a background soundtrack. You can play around with more by downloading them through the Movavi Store which packs a huge number of audio tracks.
With a separate audio timeline track, you can conveniently adjust (lower or raise) the clip volume at the desired instant. The beat detection allows you to mark the beat points and add effects to them. Further, you can improve the sound quality with a decent equalizer, normalization tool, and various audio distortion effects.
Movavi comes with the power of audio synchronization. The creators who record their audio separately can match it with video clip sound using a few clicks. This will avoid wasting time manually matching the separately recorded audio with the main movie clips.
Text Animations
A professional video is incomplete without nice-looking text animations.
Movavi has a wealth of built-in text presets that are attractive and easy to use. Navigate to the left sidebar and select titles. It will open up a treasure of nice-looking text animations that are more than enough for an amateur video editor.
Once you click on any preset that attracts you most, Movavi will display a preview of the text animation in the preview window then you can take your final decision and drag it to the timeline.
You have full control over these text animations like replacing the text, adjusting timings and length, changing the colors, and more.
Saying it again, presets are more than enough!
More Editing Features
Apart from the above main features of Mavavi, there are a few things that need to be highlighted.
Stabilization – If your video is recorded using the newest drone, action, or 360 cameras then there is a high probability of shakiness. You can get rid of this using the Stabilization feature that offers great control over the Accuracy and Shaking parameters of the video. It works like a charm, your videos will be smooth and clear like never before.
Stickers – Movavi stickers help you add smileys, arrows, and more to your video. You can animate these stickers, scale them as per your requirement, change the colors, and more. Plenty of stickers are available in Movavi stickers library.
Slow Motion – Adding slow motion to your videos is a breeze. You can either slow down or accelerate the speed of your video clip from 10% to 1000% with a few clicks. The same can be applied to your audio clips as well.
Slideshow Wizard – Do you want to share a slideshow video of recent trip pictures with your friends and family? Movavi has a special provision for you. You can jump into the slideshow wizard and then import any number of photos. The built-in slideshow templates with a set of different transitions, title styles, and background music will get the job done for you. One can change the transitions, and edit titles and background music as per their choice before exporting the final project.
Intro Mode – Are you a YouTuber or someone who creates lots of Product and Branding videos? There is an impressive and time-saving feature for you in Movavi. It allows you to create intro preset sequences, transitions, text animations, and graphics that you can use at the start and end of every video. Such a feature has a range of use cases so make sure to take full advantage of it.
Screen Capturing – Movavi includes a robust screen recording tool. But it is a part of Movavi’s video suite which means that you need to shell out some extra cash to leverage this feature. If you are someone who truly relies on screen recording for your videos then you can rethink spending some extra cash on Movavi’s video suite license.
Video Recording – You can record videos right from the Movavi Video Editor dashboard using a webcam or camcorder.
Montage Wizard – Though in all honesty, with a fancy name, this feature allows instant movie creation using built-in templates like Family and Travel. The templates include corresponding soundtracks to add the perfect mood as per the theme of the template. All you need to do is import the media and select the preferred template. You can change the template effects, transitions, and text animations and soundtracks.
Exporting and Sharing
One can easily start exporting his/her masterpiece video using a big blue button that is seen below the preview window. The exporting interface of Movavi is easy to deal with and not loaded with lots of unnecessary technical details compared to Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro which may cause choice paralysis to amateurs.
Movavi uses project settings as default settings for exporting the final video. You can expect a similar output but with improved quality. The program allows you to choose the video quality as Good, High, and Highest before starting the export.
Most of the popular formats are supported by Movavi. You can export videos in MP4, MOV, MKV, GIF, WebM, and more. If you wish to import audio only then you will have the options including, WAV, AAC, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WMA, and more.
The integration with YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, and Google Drive allows users to share their final video to these platforms directly from Movavi. TikTok was recently added to this list. You can expect more options in the future.
I tried uploading my final video to YouTube. I was impressed by the seamless signing process and easy-to-use sharing interface that allowed me to add title, description, categories, and tags along with the privacy and resolution settings.
Rendering Speed
You might have heard that video editing is one of the heaviest tasks that any PC or Laptop has to perform. Lag and sudden crashes are inevitable but thanks to the latest software updates and also the processors, RAM, and Graphics Cards because the frequency of such instances has been drastically reduced.
Movavi has its place in the list of top 5 video editors when it comes to rendering speed. To render the videos at a respectable speed, Movavi uses hardware acceleration and proxies for higher-resolution content.
It is capable of rendering videos in 4K resolution.
Refer to the following statistics by PCMag that show the rendering speed for the most popular video editors.
SIDENOTE: Rendering speed is highly dependent on the system configurations as well. Higher the configurations , faster the rendering speed.
In our test, with both Windows and Mac, we found that Movavi rendered 4:38 minutes of the video within 1 minute and 03 seconds. Our video project had a mix of HD and 4K clips along with a couple of transitions and effects.
My Windows system has an Intel Core i7 CPU with 16GB RAM and Nvidia 4GB Graphics Card. On other hand, I am using an Apple MacBook Air which has an M1-based processor.
Support
Movavi Video Editor is easy to understand and use. They offer an extensive and in-depth knowledge base and user manuals for the users.
Their in-app guides will help a lot after the installation.
Though Movavi isn’t having a huge fan base like Adobe Premiere Pro yet you will find a range of helpful YouTube videos and tutorials by the experts.
Movavi aims at simplifying the video editing workflow through its intuitive user interface, audio library, video effects, text presets, etc. which in turn implies that you are in good hands as a beginner.
Overall, It is an easy-to-learn software with lots of support from the creators, video editing community, and YouTubers. You do not have to worry about encountering a problem and not getting it resolved within the next couple of hours.
Rating
Performance – 4.8/5
We didn’t notice any lag or unexpected shutdowns during the use. The startup time, stability, and rendering speed are remarkable. The UI of Movavi is easy to navigate with minimal elements spread across the dashboard. The pre-defined templates allow faster implementation of creative ideas to raw video clips. The only thing that we could appreciate more is Multicam editing support.
Price – 4.9/5
As mentioned earlier, Movavi is the best affordable video editing software of 2022. The thing that keeps us from a 5/5 star rating for Movavi Pricing is the paid (additional amount) access to the screen recording tool. It is a quite useful tool for few video creators. I feel that this basic functionality should be a part of Movavi Video Editor’s 1-year and Lifetime License plan.
Learning Curve – 5/5
There is nothing that will take more than 15-20 minutes to understand if you are looking at video editing seriously. Moreover, the official product support, knowledge base, in-app guides, and also YouTube videos by the Movavi Video Editor community are enough for getting started and mastering this program. We took only 2-3 days to launch a stunning product video with this program. Thereafter, the rest is the story we have explained through this review.
Effectiveness – 5/5
The Movavi Video Editor is focusing on beginners and amateur geeks with its super-easy interface, presets, and libraries. Apart from basic tools like Crop, Rotate, Flip, and more, it comes with flawless Chroma Key, Motion Tracking, and PiP-like professional-grade capabilities. Without any doubt, you can quickly and easily create YouTube, TikTok, and Product videos. If truth be told, it saves time and effort. The pre-defined effects and libraries are really useful, almost all of them. If you want to create short and engaging marketing videos then Movavi is one of the best choices out there.
Best Alternative to Movavi Video Editor
For the sake of this article, we will only talk about the software that are available at the same price and offers the same functionality.
There are software that dominates Movavi with their features but they will break your bank. Consider Pinnacle Studio Ultimate as an example, it costs $90-$130, or TechSmith’s Camtasia with the price of $299 for full version
#1 – Filmora
When it comes to editing tools and performance, Movavi and Filmora go hand in hand. It is compatible with Windows as well as Mac OS. Read our full review of Filmora to learn more about this software.
#2 – iMovie
It is FREE software provided by Apple for Mac users. iMovie is simple to use and made for instant video creation. In contrast to Movavi, it lets you work with only two video tracks which is quite frustrating while working on a large project.
Once you reach all the limits of iMovie, the program asks you to upgrade to Final Cut Pro which is quite expensive.
Conclusion
Honestly, Movavi is the best deal if you are just starting and looking at video editing seriously. The price of the program is unbeatable considering the power it throws in your hands. It works seamlessly without any lag. You don’t have to worry about sudden crashes until and unless you are having a solid laptop or PC at your disposal.
Movavi has very few competitors at this price point, but you can consider Filmora if you are looking for a change.
We tested this software for almost two months and edited more than 10 short and long professional videos. I feel that it is worth giving a try. You can download it for FREE and use it for the next 7-days at no price. This time period is enough to learn and launch your first video (considering that your raw video and audio clips are ready with you) and test the compatibility of this powerful yet budget and beginner-friendly video editor.
FAQ
Q. Is it the best Video Editor?
If you are a beginner or hobbyist who is just getting into video editing, then definitely Movavi is the best video editor for you. However, the final answer depends upon your experience as a video editor. In other words, if you are a mid-level video editor with intermediate knowledge then we would suggest Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro take your skills to the next level.
Q. Is Movavi safe to use?
The program has been used by 30 million users since its launch in 2004. It has attracted a huge fan base over time and gained customer trust with excellent service.
As long as privacy is the concern, keep your eyes open while installing this program on your laptop or PC. Because once the installation is complete, the final pop-up will have the checkbox to share the usage statistics with the Movavi team. You can untick this box, launch the program, and feel relaxed.
Finally, Movavi is totally safe to use.
Q. Can I remove the Movavi watermark?
If you are using a trial version of the program then the answer is “No”.
To get rid of the watermark, you need to purchase Movavi Video Editor Plus for just $30 per year. The paid version is packed full of effects, presets, audio, and video libraries.
Q. Is Movavi Video Editor free to use?
Yes. The program comes with a 7-days FREE trial. It doesn’t ask you to provide any Credit card details while downloading this program. You can simply click download then install the program and start using it right away.
Also, for paid users, Movavi offers a 30-days money-back guarantee. So if you feel that it doesn’t meet your requirements after a while you can claim a refund.
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