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23 Comments

What are the easiest, cheapest tools to create YT videos?

Hi there!

So I got a few ideas for videos and I always wanted to try out Youtube, could you guys recommend a few cheap (or possibly free) tools to record (screen record), edit videos?

I would only record my screen, create a few nice animations, put on a nice music for the background and speak about a few things.

I would really appriciate any advice and experience!

  1. 3

    If you have a mac book. You can use iMovie to edit your videos. It's extremely easy and free for mac users. Has many features. There is a small learning curve. I don't do much besides removing sounds. Adding my own music. shortening bunch of videos. Adding intros/extros

    This is what I'm able to do with iMovie. https://www.youtube.com/c/golfwithjohn

    1. 2

      Hi your videos are pretty nice, I wonder how you made a ball's trail?

      1. 1

        Thanks for checking it out. I use ShotTracerPro. You can get the regular version on your phone but it's hard to get continuous tracking. I use the desktop version

    2. 2

      I have a windows laptop, but thank you for the suggestion. :)

  2. 3

    For screen capture, OBS Studio (https://obsproject.com/, free and open source) is the go to tool for YouTubers, I think. It's got a learning curve but it's not so steep and you'll find tons of YouTube tutorials on how to use it.

    For editing, I really love Davinci Resolve (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/) Their free version can do 95% of what anyone would ever need. It is a pretty comprehensive tool so it can seem daunting at first but there are a bunch of YouTube tutorials to get you started and if you've done any video editing before, their editing tools would come very easily.

    All the best!

    1. 1

      DaVinci, as it turned out, requires a pretty powerful computer. I tried it and it refused to run on my computer (that I don't consider weak at all).

      1. 1

        Are you trying to run v17? That's still in beta so you could try the more stable v16. Make sure you have all the MS runtimes installed.

        An alternative to Davinci is Hitfilm Express (https://fxhome.com/hitfilm-express) I don't have a lot of experience with it. The one time I tried it, it was too cumbersome.

        1. 3

          Thanks a lot, I will check them! I'm pretty interesting in video editors because I'm building an online video editor, haha :)

    2. 1

      Thank you for the detailed answer, everything I needed!
      I checked out obs and da vinci, I'm gonna use those definitely.

      Thanks again and have a great day!

  3. 2

    It is not free, but the best balance I've ever seen is Camtasia. Great tools for recording the screen, camera, mic, and integrated edition. It can also record key strokes to display later on screen, etc. It has few tools to add simple animations, captions, etc. plus some third-party developed templates. I was personally impressed by how streamlined the process was, from recording to publishing.

    If you want a more DIY approach, with free tools, OBS Studio is good for recording the screen. I found it to be slightly unreliable on HiDPI screen on Linux (very low framerates), never tried it on Windows. For editing the video, you can check DaVinci Resolve, but it is a beast of a program for a plain screencast. Lightworks is simpler than DaVinci and also has a free version. I haven't tried the others like OpenShot, but they may be good.

    If you want to do screen recording-based videos, Camtasia is a tool especially developed for that, but it is not free. The other tools are used for other objectives, which means you'll have to work around their approach. Da Vinci, for example, allows you to do very fancy transitions and effects (just search examples on YouTube), but that's probably way beyond what you need.

    I would suggest you start with the free tools, see how things go, and one day give a paid program a try. Then you'll be able to see whether the time you gain offsets the price.

    1. 1

      Thank you for the detailed answer!
      Yes, for now I will stick with OBS and da vinci, those seem to be the defaults for my kind of stuff. :)

      1. 1

        Don't forget to share once you publish something!

  4. 2

    Here's another shameless plug - https://cinematicstudio.app - it's still free while in beta (Windows only). Do note that once launch, I will certainly not be a cheap app. However, we can make a deal, in exchange for feedback. Drop me an email if interested :)

    1. 2

      Wow pretty big project! Good luck!

      I decided to go with OBS and da vinci to try out this video thing, but if Da vinci seems to be too complex, I will look into your product!

      1. 1

        Thanks :)
        About OBS - for screen recording, I would say it's half decent (for my needs, it sucks big time, but that's another story :D). About DaVinci - it's a complex tool, but definitely a good one ;)
        If you look into my app, I'd love to hear what you think!

  5. 2

    My go to product is Loom,

  6. 2

    I'm biased, but the easiest way to get animations and intro videos is IntroCave (https://introcave.com -- my site!).

    OBS is pretty fantastic for screen recording -- you can get very similar output to what you'd see with Loom. I've tried a few of the paid (or bundled-with-gaming-laptop) competitors, but keep going back to OBS. It's worth investing in a good camera/light setup if you're going to record yourself at your desk.

    I use Premiere for editing, but it's not free. If I didn't already have the creative suite, I'd probably buy DaVinci Resolve. There are a number of web-based video editors out there, but I'm not a huge fan of uploading all my video just to have to redownload the finished product.

    1. 1

      Thank you!
      Oh wow, congrats on the website, I checked it and maybe I just didn't find the Pricing page, is it free or some kind of subscription?
      I will look into it later, I checked some high quality gamer intro (Call Of Duty came to my mind haha).

      I'm looking for a really short and minimalistic intro, I will explore your site :)

      Thanks again! This website and the template creation must have taken ages to build, right?

      1. 2

        Pricing page is here: https://introcave.com/pricing -- I've tested putting it more in-your-face, but a lot more people bounce before creating a preview video.

        I purchased the site a few years back, but yeah. The templates are mostly off-the-shelf content, but it does take awhile to set one up for automated rendering, make videos/screenshots, and get it live on the site.

      2. 1

        Oh, actually now I found your interview here, nice job buying this website.

        I have to say: honestly this is one of the most valuable interviews I found.
        I loved the insights and the data you shared.
        It's funny because I don't plan to buy an existing business anytime soon, but I still was really entertained.

        I know that is an older post, but thanks for sharing.

        1. 1

          Thanks! I just tried to share the kind of stuff I wanted to know myself.

  7. 1

    I started out with Camtasia, but switched to ScreenFlow (Mac only) for screencasts. I found it a bit quicker and more stable. It's super easy to use and the times I have had a crash it always recovered my video/edits. Easy to add music and simple effects/filters as well.

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