Wondershare is an emerging software manufacturer that focuses on offering affordable alternatives to mainstream software. The company has various software suites available, but today we will be checking out the Filmora video editing suite. With the emergence of vlogging and video sharing as a job, people who want to try and provide high quality video content to their viewers are oftentimes searching for entry-level software that will let them start off their Youtube business for a lesser investment and with an easy-to-use video editing software. Filmora caters to beginners and advanced users at the same time, with the free video editing suite capable of basic editing and the full license software offering hundreds of editing tools and galleries that users will be able to incorporate in their videos.

Video editing is no longer the difficult and time-consuming task it was just a couple of years ago. The market is saturated with video editing and converting software that cater to the millions of content creators who are trying to make a living on Youtube, Twitch, Periscope, Vine, Vimeo and more. Social media and good quality content are important aspects to keep in mind when starting a Youtube business for example, but software and editing skills are also very important. Although you could just upload your videos as they are without editing, if you’re good, but most times, a bit of editing will be needed to make your content engaging.

Video makers can use software like Filmora to make their content and videos more eye-catching, Subscribers and consumers on various video sharing platforms tend to appreciate nicely edited videos more than high-quality content, and while that’s a shame, there is truth in it. Video editing software helps creators add effects and animations to their videos, so that the vlogs that they make don’t get boring, the tutorials that they create offer extra information and the gaming videos that they upload sync up perfectly. Adobe’s Premiere, Sony’s Vegas Pro and various other video editing software offer high-end video editing experiences, but at a considerable premium. Those of us who are just beginning to understand the inner workings of content creators and want to get in on the fun might not have the funds to start off with such software, and in the end, beginners don’t really make use of the tools these advanced video editors have to offer.

Wondershare saw the gap between free entry-level video editing software such as Windows Movie Maker and premium advanced editing software such as Sony Vegas Pro. Filmora wants to be right in the middle of the spectrum, being able to cater to beginners and advanced users at the same time. The tools and features of the free video editing version of Filmora will help beginners understand the basics of video editing thanks to the intutive menus and tutorials that are built-in. Advanced editors will also get a good experience out of the licensed Filmora software, too, because it adds a user interface that is similar to what they are used to from other programs like Adobe Premiere Pro, but keeps the UI easy to use and intuitive, so that even beginners can learn how it works pretty easily.

Wondershare approached me to make a review about Filmora and I seized the opportunity because I’m what Filmora is: in the middle. While I do have a bit of experience with movie making, thanks to the short stories I wrote, directed, filmed and edited in high school, I never learned how to fully exploit all the features of advanced software. That was because tutorials were scarce and the programs that I had tried were complicated, with non-intuitive work-flow. When I heard about Filmora, I thought: let’s see how far I can get with this software and if I can do a basic video in under an hour. That would be an achievement for me, so this review is from the perspective of a beginner in video editing. Let’s get down to it.

You can download Filmora for a trial or you can get a license, which costs only $30 for a year, $50 for a life-time license and $120 if you want a business license, which will let up to 5 different users access the full suite. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty cheap option, compared to Adobe’s or Sony’s alternatives. The latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro price is $25 per month for an individual user, Adobe offers its apps in bundles for those that use multiple apps from their portfolio, and that’s priced more affordably. But the problem is that beginner content creators will also have to invest time and money into learning how to effectively use the software. That’s not the case with Filmora, which if you use it properly, will take you through the most important steps of creating a good video.

Filmora review – Easy Mode

Once you start up Filmora, which you can do so on a Windows machine or a Mac machine (there are different licenses for each, so pay attention when downloading or buying), you are greeted by a minimalist splash screen that shows you your options. You can choose to create a new movie or open a recent project, you can choose the aspect ratio that you want to be working in and you can choose whether you want to use Easy Mode or Full Feature Mode, the latter being the more standard application that works similarly to Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas Pro.

There is not much else you can do on the splash screen, but you can access information about the software. First, we are going to look at the Easy Mode within Filmora so that we can explain why the software is geared towards beginner video editors. Easy Mode is an intuitive interface that feels like AI. Basically, it does your job, as all you need to do in Easy Mode is select the video you want to edit, add the photos you want to include in a video slideshow, pick a theme from the ones offered by Wondershare, pick the music and Filmora will do the rest for you. It will import, edit and export your video without much interference from you. Moreover, rendering times are really fast in this mode, which is expected since there’s not a lot of actual editing going on.

Beginner video editing software should focus on the UI more than its features, and that’s what Filmora’s Easy Mode is doing. Once you select Easy Mode from the Filmora splash screen, you are taken to a window that is similar to the old-timey installer wizard from Windows in the sense that it works in a similar way, and it’s good. Apart from the slight glitch that prompts for you to update only once you choose an editing mode, the interface is unobstructed and easy to understand.

The Filmora wizard will ask you to add a video file, to select a theme, add music and then share the video that you’ve created. Unfortunately, Filmora only has about 6 themes that you can choose from in Easy Mode, including travel, old days (which is something Instagram users will find familiar), sport, simple, happy and love. These themes add visual effects and animations to your video, to make it look like a professional take. Now the videos that you create in Easy Mode have the downside of being very static. While I wouldn’t recommend Easy Mode for content creators who make a living out of their videos, the editing mode is still suitable for those who want to make a quick video update to their channel, publish a travel diary for their friends and family, create a quick school project that doesn’t require a lot of time and will still look professional or for simple vlogging. Since you can’t do a lot of editing in Easy Mode, expect the results to be a bit bland.

Easy Mode in Filmora is more of a time-saving mode than an easy-to-use mode, because it cuts down on the time you would normally require to edit such a video to less than half. The video embedded in this post was made in under 10 minutes, and that timeframe included the rendering time. That makes the software ideal for those who want to get their videos uploaded to their site, channel, platform as quickly as possible. For example video samples, travel diaries, product introductions and things like that filmed in one take are easy to refine with Easy Mode. It might not be suitable for every type of content, because it adds its own animations and transitions depending on the theme you picked. For a quick video about your recent visit to Disneyland, it does the job rather well.

Easy Mode lets you add the music from the Filmora library, but you can also add your own music to the video, if you want to. The music Filmora has is, as expected, not that interesting, but it’s royalty free music, which means you can use it without worry. What you might notice in the wizard, however, is the fact that Filmora doesn’t store the themes and music on your device, which means you need an internet connection to use Easy Mode with, if you’re using it for the first time. Once the library is downloaded, it will stay there until your next reboot. Since everyone and their mom has internet access nowadays, this is more of a feature than a problem, in my opinion,

Once you select the music, theme and upload your video file to Filmora, the wizard will guide you through to the preview. This is when the video is rendered, so depending on the length and quality of the video you have chosen, it will take some time. I would estimate that for MPG files, rendering time is about 1 minute for 1 minute of footage. What’s annoying at this point that you can’t see the full length of the video you uploaded in minutes or seconds and the preview that Filmora generates doesn’t say how long the finished video lasts. At the same time, Filmora adds animations, film reels, titles, transitions and effects to the video and cuts parts of it. This is an interesting process and the results are pretty amazing 95% of the time.

For example, the first time I used Filmora and started testing Easy Mode, I uploaded some random footage of me and my boyfriend, cats and our apartment, taken as a means of testing a new smartphone camera. Now this was random footage with bad camera angles, bad shot compositions, blurry images, bad lighting and constant moving around. If I would have started up Full Feature mode in Filmora and taken the clip to try and make it into something entertaining, it would have taken me, as a beginner, at least three hours of cropping, adjusting, speeding up, slow-mo, effects, animations and a headache. Filmora did it in five minutes and the result was footage that focused on cats, with laughs from us and an extra filmreel with miniclips on the bottom of the video showing a few seconds of laughing in each. Pretty darn good for an automated feature.

Filmora’s Easy Mode is definitely one of the perks of the software and while there are missing things like a video timer, effect identifier and things like that, it does what it advertises: it creates beautiful, fun videos that look like they were edited by a pro. The fact that you can notice it’s an automated theme remains, but it’s less obvious than I would have expected. I generally liked what Filmora’s Easy Mode did when I uploaded footage about people, but it didn’t do so well with footage focused on objects like an unboxing video. It did produce a pretty nice video, but it wasn’t as streamlined as the ones I get with amusement part footage, museum footage, vlog footage or generally footage that had people in it. For the most part, Easy Mode is pretty neat to use if you want to cut down on your editing time.

Once Filmora is done with rendering, you can write and add your own titles where the theme allows and then you can select how you want to save the video. In this window, you can finally find out how long your finished video is and how much space it will occupy. From this screen, you can either choose one of the presets or access the Settings panel and choose your own quality, encoder, audio,  resolution, bit rate, sample rate and frame rate settings. Presets are categorised into device types (iPad, TV, smartphone, Galaxy S5 for some reason), format types (avi, mpg, mp4, etc) or allow you to upload directly to Youtube, Facebook and Vimeo. This is a welcome feature, because it saves you the time of having to open your browser, go to Youtube and start the uploading process yourself.

If you choose to upload directly to a social network, you will have to log into your account and provide authorization. The process takes less than a minute and it’s yet another time saver that Filmora incorporates. Although the devices section is a bit off, you can still access all the basic settings that you would need. Filmora supports almost all video formats, so camcorder, smartphone, camera, tablet, webcam and even smart watch footage can be used with the program.

Filmora review – Full Feature Mode

Full Feature Mode is where things get interesting and more complicated. This is the Wondershare version of a premium editing software that can come up with cinematic results and offers the user all the tools they need to make a semi-professional movie. Filmora’s Full Feature Mode is still targeted at beginners, and that is reflected heavily by the user interface. Instead of being greeted by a complicated panel with hundreds of buttons, functions, timelines, reels and tools, Filmora offers you an interface that could be mistaken for a mobile editing program. Mobile editing has made huge progress and the Filmora video editor takes a few elements from mobile app books, too.The interface has less buttons, making the features that beginners usually need more prominent and accessible.

While professional video editing software is usually less beginner-friendly than most of us would like it to be, Filmora is just a bit over-simplified. While that might be a bit obstructing when you get the hang of using the software, in the initial usage period it’s not a problem. Most of us stay at beginner levels in video editing and even if we do it for a living, good content is not determined by what video editor or video editing tools you use. Unless you’re in the movie business, in which case you’re not supposed to be here. For a first-time user, the Feature Mode in the desktop app is intuitive and they will most likely get accustomed to it pretty fast.

As such, Full Feature Mode adds a lot of manual control over the effects, animations, clips, audio, elements and much more. The interface has a simple design, with the most used features and galleries readily accessible. You can use a multitude of elements, badges, animations, effects, transitions directly from the Filmora galleries contained within the app, but you can also download new ones from the Wondershare site, for free. Wondershare updates the Filmora effects library constantly, so it’s worth checking out. Most of the new effects will be sent out to users via updates, but if those tend to take them, downloading them yourself is always an option.

Effects, transitions, animations, badges, filters, overlays and split screen tools can be customized to fit your content. The library of elements that Filmora offers its users is pretty extensive, although you can imagine it’s not as big as the age-old Premiere and Vegas libraries. Nonetheless, the app has enough media available for beginners and even more advanced users. You can customize the effects, like the duration of transitions, their positions, the size, color and position of badges and much more, making editing videos a breeze.

The tools that you use and the way in which you can use them are pretty standard.Filmora and its full feature mode use a platform that is similar to Movie Maker, placing all the tools into neat galleries and categories that you can sift through easily. The timeline is grouped into various effect types, video lines, audio lines, text lines, etc with easily recognizable icons helping the user. The video preview with effects on can be a bit misleading sometimes, because there are problems with sound sync if clips are moved around and effects are added. Note that these will not carry on to the final video project and Filmora notifies all users of this slight problem that resource management of the app comes across on occasion.

One of the things I appreciate in Filmora’s Full Feature Mode is that it’s oriented towards today’s content creators. You can easily do voiceovers if you’re doing a make-up tutorial or a gameplay with an easy voice recording tool that even gives you queues and keeps the video playing in the background. You should mute the video if there’s music or sounds in it, so that the voice recorder doesn’t record them, too. It would be like double trouble. I hope Wondershare add a notification for this one in the future, because people can forget that mics today aren’t that modern yet.

At the same time, Filmora makes it easy to create split-screen video with various video to video ratios that you can choose from. This is a convenient feature to have vloggers, gamers and DIY fans, among others, because you can easily supplement the main idea of the shot with a demonstration of its content. For example, if you’re talking about that amazing character in Fallout 4 that you saw in a leaked video, you can easily do a spit-screen when you mention the game and insert the footage you have as a subclip for a few seconds – or more. You decide. It’s neat, easy to do and it’s in your face. You don’t have to search for plugins or download them, because it’s one of the default features within Filmora.

Filmore is filled with small features like this. Although you have them in most video editors, the approach of the user interface is appealing and unique, which makes Filmora one of the best picks for beginners. Given the fact that it is cheap to use, it’s definitely a good investment. Performance and end result play into this, but Filmora pretty much nails everything. I found that even though I approached this review as a beginner who thought they won’t get through it, I ended up liking the experience and gaining confidence in my own skills.

Filmora full feature mode adds the ability to choose between story mode and timeline mode, so you can choose the layout that you find most convenient for usage patterns. I would suggest trying the timeline mode first, because it is easier to identify between elements, their properties, duration and impact on the video. Story mode is convenient for when editing a short animation or movie, for example, where you have the takes from the video and the audio and just need to sync them up and make them seamless — for easier tasks.

If you find yourself without inspiration or confused about how things work in Filmora full feature mode, the app lets you access a wide variety of video tutorials, provided that you have internet access because they are hosted online. Nonetheless, you can find Halloween video tutorials as well as tutorials on how to use effects or different tools in Filmora. The resources library of the app is constantly growing as more and more people come on board, so we expect there to be thousands of videos available in no time. Since it’s a beginner-oriented app, Filmora can produce short and easy tutorials which can cut down on the time you need to get accustomed to the software, compared to the complicated and long Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas Pro tutorials. While that might not be something advanced users are looking for, beginners might find them as useful as I did.

Of course, there are things missing from Filmora. Although it does come with advanced features such as green screen superimposing and quite the selection of customizable overlays, it’s not a professional software with which you can make movies with. Nonetheless, you can make a pretty neat commercial or even a nicely directed and animated web show. It’s a very good video editor with all the tools a beginner would need. There is a lot of customizability, but there could be more. Filmora overall is a versatile program that is easy-to-use and is not a resource-hungry app to run. It works fast and it still lets you do other things while you’re editing, without your laptop overheating or getting sluggish. I watched Youtube tutorials (within Filmora and in Chrome as well), did some basic photo editing and had an Edge tab open, displaying a live feed. With all that, Filmora kept going without an issue and without impacting rendering and uploading times.

I think that while Filmora might not be the software for advanced users, it comes close to being one. With it being an affordable, beginner-friendly software, I think it does quite well. I hope that Wondershare considers releasing a mobile version of Filmora, because that would be superb. With the Story mode interface already in place and with the easy layout, Filmora would be great to use on mobile. It’s great to use on the desktop, too, given its reliable resource management. Approaching Filmora as a beginner was a great experience and I did return to the software after the review. I find myself going for Filmora much more often than Sony Vegas, and that says something. Since I am a beginner myself, I think shelling out $25 each month for Adobe Premiere is an investment to be made after a few years with Filmora. Although I’m sure there are comparable editing apps out there, Filmora managed to impress me thanks to its interface and power management.

When I expected my laptop to give in and die on me, it didn’t – Filmora saved my video and uploaded it to where I wanted it to, without my laptop dying. Adobe Premiere and Vegas, with their advanced tools, made editing difficult because they would make my laptop overheat. While that’s more of a hardware problem than a software problem, we can assume that most beginners don’t go into video editing with top-notch hardware at their disposal. It’s more likely that Mary, who uses an outdated PC just to help people out on WikiHow decided she should start making graffiti tutorials. Filmora could be a good choice.

If you’re interested in Filmora, you can try it out to see whether it’s a good fit for you. The free trial and the paid version are exactly the same in functionality and features, but the trial version does leave a watermark on your videos. I think Filmora should be tried out by any beginner looking for video editing software, because it’s one of the best and most easy-to-use ones out there. I recommend using the trial for a couple of different videos so that you see what the results are for yourself. You can do short versions of your plans, skipping the “talking parts” as it were, and see if you like the editing experience. You might find yourself wondering how to get rid of that watermark. I genuinely liked my experience with Filmora and found that it had everything I needed for the videos I wanted to make: unboxings, reviews, ootds and grwms for tumblr, vlogs, let’s plays and similar content a social media enthusiast kinda sorta wants to do all the time. You can download the free trial from Wondershare’s dedicated site.