What’s the Best Video Editing Software to Learn Right Now?

Are you getting into video editing? Is it a still a foreign concept to you? Maybe you’re coming at it sideways from something like asset management, marketing, or crew work…. the question always comes up really freaking fast:

What’s the best NLE(non linear editor) to learn on?

This came up recently in a conversation about editing GoPro footage and Panasonic GH4 clips, and I thought it made a great real-world situation to break things down.

Start With the Tools That Actually Teach You Something

If you want to learn how editing works, and not just slide clips around on the screen with Capcut (dead to me) or Edits, (not bad for a phone) then DaVinci Resolve (by Blackmagic) is incredibly hard to beat.

It’s free.
It’s powerful. My go to for best-I-can-make color correction.
And there’s a massive, active support ecosystem online.

Resolve forces you to understand media injest, timelines, codecs, color, audio, and workflow in a way that translates cleanly to any environment down the track. You’re not learning a toy. You’re learning a professional system from day one. And it might be all you end up needing.

For someone cutting just about any source, from phone stuff, prosumer stuff, or even RED raw….. it’s more than enough horsepower and a very solid place to build fundamentals.

Adobe Premiere: The Industry Language

If your goal is employment, Premiere still matters.

Adobe Premiere Pro remains an industry standard in agencies, marketing teams, production houses, and in-house creative departments. Learning it doesn’t just teach you editing, it plugs you directly into the broader Adobe ecosystem. Motion graphics, stills, sound, layout… it all talks to each other.

That matters at the high end.

Knowing Premiere can open doors simply because you already speak the language most teams are using.

The Ones We’d Skip (And Why)

There are other options, but they come with tradeoffs that aren’t always obvious when you’re starting out.

Avid is extremely powerful, but it’s locked down, rigid, and still specialized. Unless you’re aiming straight at long-form broadcast or union post pipelines, it’s often more friction than value early on.

Final Cut Pro has improved a lot over the years, but the industry never really recovered from Apple pulling the rug out in 2011. It’s better now, but adoption never fully came back, and portability of skills still matters.

If you’re trying to future-proof yourself, and start learning right this instant, those paths are narrower.

Editing Isn’t a Dead End Skill

One of the more interesting parts of this conversation was the connection to DAM work.

Editing, organizing footage, managing media, understanding metadata, workflows, and delivery pipelines… all of that overlaps heavily with digital asset management. Learning an NLE isn’t just about cutting videos. It’s about understanding how media behaves inside real information systems.

If you can help on set, prep for a shoot, drive a car, go shopping, organize a hard drive, follow simple ingest protocals, and cut a little…. you’re building adjacent skills whether you realize it or not. Skills that make you valuable to a company like this one right here.

Oh and AI can do it! You job will be taken and its another useless skill. DEAD WRONG. AI is TERRIBLE at editing. So bad. Laughable. But AI is helping editors save time in the process. More on that in another post.

The Simple Recommendation

If you’ve already downloaded DaVinci Resolve, you’re in a good spot. Now start making stuff, don’t worry about big ideas (yet), just execute and try to tell a simple 3 act story.

Learn the basics.
Cut real footage.
Get feedback.
Repeat.

Once you understand why things work, jumping between tools becomes much easier. Software changes. Fundamentals don’t.

That’s the part worth investing in.

If you’re curious how these tools fit into real production workflows, or how professional teams actually move from camera to final delivery, that’s the stuff we live and breathe at NeonGhost. The gear matters less than the thinking behind it and that’s where good editors are made.