Have two or more videos to edit together but don’t want to spend hundreds on professional software? Here are some free and easy-to-use options
Thanks to new smartphones equipped with increasingly powerful photo-video cameras today you can easily shoot great quality videos of your moments to remember. But also videos to upload to your YouTube channel, if you are a YouTuber or aspire to be one. Or, why not, you can make a funny video just for the purpose of sharing it on Facebook or other social networks.
But if you want to make a more complex video you’ll probably need two video sources, to change the shot. Or you may need to shoot two separate videos, in two different locations. Or several separate videos: three, four or even more. But there’s a technical problem: how can you merge two videos into one if you don’t have a professional video editing program like Adobe Premiere for PC or MAC? Luckily, there’s a lot of free software for Windows and macOS computers, as well as handy apps for merging videos directly from your smartphone. But there’s also a third option: don’t download any software and merge videos via an online service.
How to Merge Two Videos on PC and Mac
Using a free program for PC or Mac has long been the only viable choice for merging videos. A choice that has the disadvantage of taking up space on your computer’s disk, but offers you a lot more potential than just joining two files. Among the best free programs is Avidemux: it is open source and works on Windows, Linux and even Mac. A good alternative, but only for Windows, is Movavi Video Editor. A third option is Free Video Joiner.
How to join two videos on your smartphone
To join videos via your smartphone you can use apps like VidTrim (Android) and iMovie (iOS). With these apps, you’ll have the convenience of joining multiple video clips without even downloading them to your PC or Mac or having to upload them online. But you’ll have to make some sacrifices: the interface is good but limited by the screen size of your cell phone, as well as the speed of image rendering depends a lot on the processor of your smartphone.
How to merge two videos online
Merging two videos online has the advantage of not having to download and install any software on your computer or smartphone, and the disadvantage of having to wait a while (sometimes a long while…) for the heavy video files to be uploaded to the servers of the service you’ve chosen. The best sites to merge videos online are ACConvert and Video Toolbox, which are both free. Through these sites you can both merge multiple videos into one and apply a minimum of editing and effects before saving the file and downloading it.