In 2020, live-streaming video games on Twitch and YouTube reached their all-time high. The streaming platforms average about 12.5 billion viewers daily.
And until recently, video game content has continued to rise on various video-sharing platforms, like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Nowadays, many live-streamers have found a way to expand their reach by taking clips of their gameplays, editing them, and posting them on video-sharing platforms.
By doing so, they have found a way to generate more audiences and become prominent figures online.
People outside the live-streaming industry—like casual gamers who want to share their gameplay online or editors—are hired to create videos for live-streamers.
And they also have jumped into this trend, making the right video editing software vital.
There’s more to games than just entertainment, after all. Here, we take a look at what makes them unique and worthwhile.
Game editors often require video editing tools to produce promotional materials for their games, such as trailers, gameplay footage, and developer diaries.
These gaming videos display the game's characteristics, generate excitement and anticipation, and entice potential players.
The video editing tools allow game editors to produce professional-looking marketing videos without expensive equipment or specialized knowledge.
They can cut and merge footage, apply visual effects, and sync audio and video.
Moreover, video editing tools are helpful to game editors in creating tutorials or walkthroughs for their games, providing players with a visual guide on how to play and excel in the game.
These videos can also feature particular game elements, like character customization or level design.
Video editing has become an integral part of the gaming industry, allowing gamers to showcase their skills, create engaging content, and entertain their audience.
To cater to the specific needs of gamers, an ultimate gaming video editing software should possess essential features that enhance the editing process and produce high-quality videos.
Here are our book's top ten essential features that make the ultimate gaming video editing software.
The ability to record gameplay footage directly within the editing software eliminates the need for additional screen recording software. This feature enables gamers to capture their gameplay in real-time, ensuring seamless integration between gameplay recording and editing.
Gaming videos often require trimming or splitting to remove unwanted parts, highlight specific moments, or merge different clips. The software should offer intuitive tools for easily splitting, trimming, and merging video segments to create a cohesive and engaging final product.
Adjusting the video speed is crucial for creating dynamic gaming montages or emphasizing specific moments. The ultimate gaming video editing software should provide options to increase or decrease the video speed, enabling gamers to create slow-motion or fast-paced sequences effortlessly.
The ability to crop, rotate, and resize video frames is essential for optimizing the video's composition. Gamers can remove unwanted elements, correct orientation, and resize the video to fit various platforms, such as YouTube or social media channels.
Audio plays a crucial role in gaming videos, whether it's commentary, in-game sound effects, or background music. The software should offer advanced audio editing capabilities, such as adjusting volume levels, adding voiceovers, removing background noise, or applying audio effects, to ensure clear and immersive sound.
Visual effects and filters add depth and style to gaming videos. The ultimate gaming video editing software should provide a wide range of effects and filters, including color grading, chroma keying, transitions, and overlays, allowing gamers to create captivating and visually appealing videos.
The PIP effect allows gamers to showcase themselves or additional content simultaneously with the gameplay footage. This feature is handy for reaction videos, tutorials, or adding face cam footage. The software should offer a user-friendly PIP feature with customizable options for size, position, and transparency.
Gamers often use text, GIFs, and image overlays to add context, humor, or branding elements to their videos. The ultimate gaming video editing software should provide a comprehensive library of customizable text fonts, animations, and a wide range of overlays, enabling gamers to create visually appealing and engaging content.
A user-friendly and intuitive video timeline is crucial for efficient editing. The software should offer a timeline interface with drag-and-drop functionality, precise control over clip placement, and easy access to key editing features, simplifying the editing process and enhancing workflow.
To cater to the diverse needs of gamers, the software should support a wide range of video formats and resolutions. It should provide options for exporting videos in popular formats like MP4, MOV, or AVI and support high-definition resolutions to ensure compatibility with various platforms and devices.
Video game compilations and clips have become a chance to learn from other gamers or simply to enjoy the game outside of playing it.
There are many gaming video editing software out there that you can use if you’re interested in compiling your gaming experience.
Here’s a list of the best gaming video editing software, programs, and tools to help jumpstart your interest in video game content creation.
Key Features
InVideo is one of the most accessible video editing software for gaming. It has simple but cool features and tools that even a newbie can easily navigate.
The software offers a user-friendly interface with over 5000 pre-made templates that you can easily tweak and edit to suit your style.
Key Features
Final Cut Pro is a sophisticated video editing software for gaming. It features diverse and unique effects, including the Ken Burns effect, which allows users to image pan and zoom into videos.
This gaming video editing software provides a powerful experience for advanced editors with its 4K HDR support, motion graphics features, and advanced color correction.
However, Final Cut Pro only runs on macOS and has no Windows version available.
Key Features
Adobe Premiere Pro is a popular software among professional video editors and producers. It is a powerful and universal tool recognized as an industry standard in video editing software.
The video editing software’s professional-grade features include 360 VR editing, hardware decoding for AMD GPUs and NVIDIA, scene edit detection, and more.
These tools can take the users’ editing experience to an elevated process, which might be too overwhelming for beginners.
Key Features
Consider iMovie as a friendlier version of Final Cut Pro, perfect for beginners and newbie editors. It’s also a free video editor, but for Apple users only.
This Apple native video editor allows you to edit your gaming clips on the go with its cross-device support feature, meaning you can continue the work you left off on your laptop and open it on your iPhone or iPad.
iMovie's diverse toolset and seamless features can significantly enhance your gaming video, making it ready for online sharing.
One of its most notable features is the ability to remove sound or add voice-over narrations to videos.
Key Features
Filmora is an established, universal video editor known for its ability to handle high-resolution footage using robust features.
With over 100 transitions, 12 effect categories, and a green screen feature, Filmora is easily one of the best gaming video editing software.
Key Features
Movavi offers professional-level gaming video editing through a clean and user-friendly UI.
It delivers compelling features and a toolkit that allows you to add transitions, record voice-overs, split, and trim clips, and add filters, among other things.
Key Features
HitFilm Express provides a game video editing experience for beginners and professional video content creators.
This free software packs many incredible features that are quick to learn and understand.
Key Features
OpenShot is a professional video editing software with a toolkit that allows users to design and create engaging gaming videos without any complication.
Its basic features include:
OpenShot supports multiple platforms, including macOS, Chrome OS, Linux, and Windows.
Key Features
Shotcut is a video editor with broad video format support and impressive sound-mixing capabilities.
It has an intuitive interface and supports 4K videos easily, making it a good option for video editing gameplay and clips.
The video editing software also provides tutorials, tips, and guides to help new users navigate the UI.
Key Features
Lightworks offers professional-level editing features, operating on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
It provides a wide range of tools for gameplay editing, including background changing, trimming and merging capabilities, proxy editing, and more.
Furthermore, the Lightroom interface allows you to split projects into workspaces it calls “rooms,” allowing you to focus on multiple parts of your editing process.
Its free version has limited exporting options but manages to get the job done.
Key Features
Blender’s main feature is 3D creation, but it can also edit and mix audio. Its sequence editor has numerous tools, including waveform visualization and video masking.
The multifaceted editing program’s UI and toolkit allow you to edit gameplay with the standard video processing options, including slicing, transitions, and effects.
Key Features
PinnacleN Studio offers pro-level game video editing capabilities with numerous tools and features that enhance gameplay clips.
It has color grading and video masking, along with multi-cam footage editing.
The video editing program provides a traditional toolset in a customizable UI to display your preferred tools. Among its commonly used features are video templates, transitions, and effects.
Key Features
DaVinci Resolve is a professional video editing tool comparable to Adobe Premiere Pro.
It includes editing features like speed modification, transition effects, split and merge tools, animations, and more.
The program mainly targets professional editors, so it will take some time before beginners can get the hang of it.
But it does become a rewarding experience once you finally produce your first fully-edited gameplay video with DaVinci Resolve.
Key Features
Videopad has various video editing features, offering support for different video formats.
The program’s tools are good enough to aid you in producing pro gaming video clips with a simple drag-and-drop UI.
Its basic features include:
Key Features
VSDC Video Editor is a program that mainly targets professional video editors.
It offers robust and advanced features like 4K support, a picture-in-picture display, and chroma keying.
Overall, VSDC has numerous effects that can enhance your gaming clips visually and audibly.
Editing gameplay videos is crucial in creating compelling content that engages and captivates viewers. It is important to employ effective editing techniques to enhance the quality and impact of your gameplay videos. Here are the top five tips to make your gameplay videos more engaging:
To streamline the editing process and ensure optimal video quality, having the right settings for gameplay recording is essential. Consider the resolution, frame rate, and bitrate settings when capturing gameplay footage.
Using high-quality settings will result in sharper, smoother videos that are easier to edit. Additionally, consider recording in a lossless format, such as an uncompressed or high-bitrate file, to retain maximum visual fidelity during editing.
Audio plays a crucial role in gameplay videos, as it enhances the overall gaming experience for viewers. Ensure that your audio recordings are clear and balanced. Invest in a good quality microphone to capture your commentary or voiceovers without background noise or distortion.
You can also pay attention to in-game audio levels to avoid overpowering or underwhelming sound effects. Well-balanced and immersive audio will greatly enhance the viewer's engagement with your gameplay videos.
Transitions and effects can significantly enhance your gameplay videos' visual appeal and engagement. To create a cohesive narrative, utilize smooth and seamless transitions between different scenes or gameplay segments.
Experiment with various effects, such as motion blur, light leaks, or particle effects, to add dynamic visual elements that amplify the intensity and excitement of the gameplay. However, it's important to balance and avoid overusing effects, as it can distract viewers from the core content.
Color correction and grading can dramatically enhance the visual impact of your gameplay videos. Experiment with color adjustments to achieve a specific mood or atmosphere that complements the gameplay.
Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and color temperature to create a consistent and visually pleasing look throughout your video. Additionally, you can employ color grading techniques to add cinematic flair or stylize your footage, making it stand out from the crowd.
One of the key aspects of editing gameplay videos is the art of trimming and editing down your footage. Start by removing unnecessary or repetitive gameplay sequences to maintain a fast-paced and engaging video.
Focus on showcasing the most exciting moments, key achievements, or interesting gameplay strategies. Additionally, use editing techniques such as speeding up or slowing down certain sections to add variety and maintain viewer interest.
Remember—tight editing will result in concise and impactful gameplay videos that leave a lasting impression.
The ultimate gaming video editing software should empower gamers to unleash their creativity, showcase their gaming prowess, and elevate their video editing.
Paying attention to gameplay recording settings, prioritizing audio quality, utilizing transitions and effects effectively, adjusting colors for visual impact, and editing and trimming your videos will help you create engaging and professional gameplay videos that captivate and entertain your audience.
Remember to experiment and develop your own editing style to stand out and differentiate your content in the gaming community. With this extensive list of gaming video editing software and tools, there’s much to consider before you find one well-suited for your needs. The best video editing software for games is only the best if it has all the features to make your gameplay clips fit for online sharing.
Each of these programs varies in UI and editing priorities. Feel free to test out, learn, and take the time to understand the video editing process of each program until you find the right one.
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