Wondershare Filmora Review

A Basic Filmora subscription costs $49.99 per yearwhile a Perpetual license goes for a one-time fee of $79.99. The Basic plan doesn't come with any AI creditsso you need to buy those separately if you plan to use any of the generative features I cover below. The Perpetual version comes with 1,000 AI credits. Both of these plans get you 1GB of online storage for project assets. For $69.99 per yearthe Advanced tier gets you 1,000 AI credits per month and 10GB of online storage. For subscribersWondershare adds new effect collections every month. For any planyou can pay for the Creative Assets add-onwhich includes premium effectsfiltersstock contenttemplatesand titles. It costs a hefty $19.99 per month or $79.99 per year.

Licensing the software requires creating an online accountand you activate and deactivate computers via the web. A license is good for one activation on each platform (AndroidiOSmacOSand Windows). Note that the Perpetual plan doesn't get you access to the mobile apps.

Filmora undercuts the market-leading Adobe Premiere Elements ($99.99 for a three-year license) if you don't want a subscription. CyberLink PowerDirector Ultimate is pricier at $139.99 for perpetual access or $69.99 per year. For the pro-level DaVinci Resolveyou can pay $295 once or use the surprisingly good free version. Adobe Premiere Pro will set you back $263.88 per year.

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Filmora runs on Windows 7 or later and macOS 10.15 or later. You need at least a 2GHz Intel i3 CPU8GB RAMand an Intel HD Graphics 5000 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 GPU. Support for Apple silicon processors is now native. Filmora takes up 1GB on my test PCwhich is about average for this type of software. Adobe Premiere Pro requires 3.3GBwhile Movavi Video Editor Plus needs only 285MB. Notehoweverthat Filmora downloads some content and features on-demand as you use them.

Version 14 of Filmora adds several new AI-powered video editing features. Here's the rundown:

• AI Color Palette. You can apply cinematic color treatments to your video while maintaining skin tones.

• AI Sound Effect. Describe the sound you wantand AI creates it for you.

• AI Translation Lip Sync. This is an enhancement to Filmora's AI translation feature. As the name suggestsit syncs the translation speech to the lip movements in the video.

• Audio to Video. Upload a podcast MP3and this tool creates an avatar-based video in several s.

• Image to Video. This lets you create moving video from a still imagethough it's also the kind of tool that stokes worries about deepfakes.

• Multicam Editing. This is more of a pro-level feature. The multicam technique adds interest to a video by switching between the simultaneous captures of multiple cameras and automatically syncing timing.

• Planar Tracking. Attach images to flat surfacesfor examplea photo on a TV screen in the video.

• Smart Background Music Generation. This creates a background music track based on your video's content.

• Smart Scene Cut. This tool analyzes actionfacesobjectsand speech in a clip to extract the most interesting parts. It lets you select people and objects on-screen that you want to focus on.

• Smart Short Clips. This feature automatically extracts and edits highlight reels from long video clips into multiple short clips. This directly targets creators of Instagram ReelsTikTokand YouTube Shorts videos.

• Video Enhancer and Denoise. Improve the quality of less-than-perfect footage with tools that are typical of photo software.

• Voice Enhancer. This reduces background noise and improves voice clarity.

Important features from previous versions include:

• AI Auto Masking. This tool recognizes people and objects so that you can change or blur the background (don't confuse this with Smart Maskingwhich includes motion-tracking).

• AI Copilot Editing. A chatbot suggests edits and performs them through natural-language commands (unrelated to Microsoft Copilot).

• AI Image Creator. Filmora creates a still-image scene based on your text input.

• Compound Clips. Join multiple clips and work with them as a unit.

• Text-Based Editing. You can edit video based on auto-generated text captions.

• Vocal Remover. Remove vocals from songs for a karaoke- video.

Filmora opens with a panel that lets you start a new project or open an ongoing one. It also highlights cool new featuresparticularly AI ones.

The Full Editor view resembles that of most video editing applications. It's a three-panel layout with source contentvideo previewand timeline sections. You can now switch the layout via a button in the top-right control groupwith choices for DefaultClassicOrganizeTimelineand Short Video. No matter which you choosethe program maintains a clean and simple design with intuitive icons. You can switch between black and light gray window bordersand the program respects your system's dark or light mode setting. The software lets you put the video preview into full-screen mode and adjust the relative sizes of the panels.

When you start a projectyou have a choice of CinemaInstagram (1x1)PortraitStandardand Widescreen aspect ratios. From File > Project Settingsyou can set a custom size and choose the frame rate.

Important source-switching buttons are always at the top left of the interface (in order): MediaStock MediaAudioTitlesTransitionsEffectsFiltersStickersand Templates. At the top right are buttons that lead to tutorialshelpyour accountthe Export feature (clearly set apart in blue-green)the app's message centerand downloadable content—audioeffectsphotosand videos—from Wondershare FilmStock.

You can easily shrink and expand the timeline with the Ctrl-mouse wheel or move back and forth with the Alt-mouse wheel. Alternativelyyou can fit the timeline to the panel or use buttons to zoom in or out. A search bar lets you search for anything in the source paneland you get clear Undo and Redo arrows. Toolbar buttons above the timeline (which you can reorder and remove to taste) offer options such as Audio Stretch (new)DeleteQuick Split modeRedoSplitUndoand much more. You can customize this toolbar with 20 possible toolsshown below.

The number of tracks looks limited at firstbut Filmora adds another track whenever you add another video clip below your main one so you can keep overlapping. As with the Connected Clips in Final Cut Prothese clips in new tracks move in sync with the main track above them. It's a great way to keep your effect overlays where you want them. PiP (picture-in-picture) works easilywith WYSIWYG resizing handles in the preview.

The program lets you use a magnetic timeline approachwhich you can turn off with a button over the timeline. Whenever you drag a clip onto the timelineit snaps right to the previous clipso there's never any empty space. Auto-Ripple is on by default to keep your movie gap-freebut you can turn this behavior offtoo. Trim from the start or end of a clipand the current position line shows scissorsletting you easily split the current clip.

The aforementioned Quick Split mode turns the vertical edit line into a dotted linewhich you can click anywhere to split the timeline. Filmora doesn't allow trimming in the source trayhoweverso professional editors might not feel at home. Also missing are advanced editing modes like slipslideand roll—but for amateursthat’s probably for the best.

A plus sign on each clip lets you easily add it to the timeline at the insertion point. In addition to the timeline viewa Storyboard view simply shows clip thumbnails with spots for transitions in between. Helpfullytracks on the timeline show audio waveforms. Right-clicking on a clip reveals an abundance of optionsincluding AI Vocal Removerauto beat-syncauto reframescene detectionand more.

The Instant Cutter tool is useful during clip import for high-resolution content. Its purpose is simple: Trim the ends of a clip before adding it to your source panel. Its Merge mode is more complexletting you drag multiple clips onto its window. All clips you add to Merge must be in the same resolution and frame ratebut I got an error even when trying to add multiple clips from the same shooting session.

Filmora offers a bunch of AI tools to ease the editing process. Some of the AI tools take a while to completeso you can hide their windowgo back to the main interfaceand keep tabs on the AI's progress in a drop-down from a button in the top window border.

AI Text-Based Editing

The AI Text-Based Editing tool opens a new window that shows blue track clips that represent parts of a clip with speech. Dragging the blue text clips around splits and moves the part of the video that contains the text. Premiere Pro has a similar feature. The Filmora tool has a handy button that removes any silent parts of the video. It also lets you search for spoken words so you can get to them directly and movetrimor delete the section. This tool wasn't perfect in testinghowevercutting off some speech.

AI Copilot Editing

This new tool is a chatbot that makes suggestions for your editing. It doesn't actually perform any actionsand it is more of a help resource. In most casesit provides a link to the relevant online help page andif you're luckywill present a button that takes you to the feature you need. Mostlythoughit functions more like a preprogrammed chatbot than a generative AI tool.

Smart Short Clips

This tool takes a long video clip with spoken words and generates several smaller ones suitable for short-form video platforms such as Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. I tried it with a long talking-head video I made about choosing tax software. The Smart Short Clips tool impressively detected topics within the video and created 10 short clips with related headings. Unfortunatelythe resulting videos consisted of just text titles and background music—they didn't retain any of my video or replace it with anything besides the text. You canhoweveredit the created content in the main editor and add B-roll clips to fill out the video.

Smart Scene Cut

With this toolyou start by importing a longish video clip and then draw boxes around objects or people of importance (you can choose up to 10). Thenyou press the Start buttonand the process runs for after about a minute. For my test clipFilmora preserved only the part with speechso it's not ideal for sports videos. The result shows thumbnails for Character ScenesCustom Objectsand Highlight Scenes. Only Characters appeared in my resultbut I could jump to each detected scene and add its subclip to the output. For this tool to be usefulyou need to experiment with it extensively.

Multicam Editing

Multicam editing is easier in Filmora than in many other video applications. Just select the angle clips you want to include (either in the source panel or in the timeline) and choose Create Multi-Camera Clip from the right-click context menu. It then places a compound clip on the timeline. For syncingyou have a choice in the dialog box between using audiothe first frameor the first marker. Audio is usually the best choice. You then switch the preview window to Multi-Camera viewwhich displays a smaller preview of the component clips along with the result. You can choose which clip's audio to use or combine them all. A drop-down menu to the left of the timeline lets you switch to showing the now-aligned component clips of the compound clipbut you can't use the angle-switching technique from this view. For thatyou must be in the Main Timeline viewwhich shows just the single multicam clip.

The features above are about helping you edit existing footagebut Filmora also includes ones that can create content from text or media prompts. Below are the highlights:

Image to Video

This tool is similar to others that use generative AI: You highlight an image in the timelinepress the Image to Video iconand then describe the action you want in a text box. The results were impressive. I took a shot of a coworker on the roof of PCMag's NYC office building and got him to fly up and away. It looked more like a huge magnet was pulling him awaybut I like that the limbs and position changed and moved rather than stayed static. The tool also has a stitch mode for combining multiple photos. With thisI had another coworker in one shot dance in a park. You can see the result above. The tool can also make people appear to fight or kissand pets to perform uncanny feats. One drawback is that it didn't accept all my photosfor examplethose in the HEIC format or that were especially large.

Audio to Video

Related to the previous tool is Audio to Video. With thisyou upload an audio fileusually a podcast or storyand select the language (from an impressive 42 choices). You can alternatively use a YouTube link if you sign into your YouTube account. In the setup dialog boxyou choose between Story and Historyan aspect ratio (usually 9:16 or 16:9)a durationa (such as AnimePhotographyor Oil Painting)and a Material Template (such as Colorful Memories and Magic Forest). You can optionally upload an image to base your character on or choose from a dozen templates for things like ancient history or magic forest. For my test audio filethe tool generated a video only for the second half of the audio file. The result is more of a slideshow than an actual video. The images are appropriate to the story and timed well with it. You can load the result into the Editorwhere you can see all the effectstitlesand transitions for said video and further manipulate them.

AI Image Generation

Filmora's AI image generator took longer to create a landscape that I described than most other generative AI image-creation tools I've used. But it did produce a pleasing enough image. It also did a good job of creating a Caribbean beach scene with sled dogs. As with all similar toolsyou have to describe everything you want in the scene precisely to get acceptable results.

Filmora has more than 100 transitionswhich it downloads as you choose them. The first time after installationnone showed up for me until I searched for them. Search suggestions let you get to fadeflashwarpzoomand more s easily. The generous selection breaks down into 12 categories along the left panelincluding Fade & DissolveFilmstock (Wondershare's online source of content)Speed BlurVerticalWarpand more. You can designate those you use often as Favorites for easy access. Filmora uses unusual schematic diagrams and images to show what the transitions dowhile most other programs simply show a sample A to B animation.

Adding transitions is simple. Drag one onto a seamand Filmora usually places it right where you want it between the first and second clips. You can also add transitions with the plus sign on the right side of a clip's thumbnail. Drag the transition’s timeline entry with the mouse to change where it occurs. You can also edit the amount of time a transition spans by dragging its edge. Double-clicking a transition opens a panel where you can decide whether the transition is prefixedpostfixedor overlapped to the clips.

As mentionedcreating PiP effects is easier than before. You can move and resize PiP windows right in the video preview by clicking on the appropriate timeline clip and dragging the crosshairs in the middle of the edges and corners. Chroma Key (aka green screen) worked very well and automatically for my test footagedespite my subject's frizzy hair; such hair can often be difficult to mask.

The Effects panel encompasses overlaysfiltersLUTsand third-party tools from Boris and NewBlue. Its Video Effects section includes categories for everything from AI Portrait to Shake to Night Life to Instagram-Like. These filters can add drama to your video just as they do to still photos. Distortions like mirror and water rippleas well as a set of light leak and film overlaysare also available. Nearly 30 LUT (lookup table) effects are usablemany of which take the name of the movies and shows whose colors they emulate—Harry PotterGame of Thronesand so on. Those who pay for the subscription version of Filmora get more effects and objectsincluding color filters and movie templates.

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Smart Cutout is similar to a feature found in Photoshop. It can autocratically remove the background to create a cutout effect. You get to it from the AI Matting Tools button above the timeline (which also has the chroma keying and AI Portrait tools). It opens a dedicated dialog box with a Smart Brush toolwhich you use to draw over the person or object you want to cut out. You needn't be exact—that's why it's Smart!

Thenclick the Smart Cutout buttonwhich runs through the videoessentially doing motion tracking with the object selected and the background removed. As is typical with these toolsyou can erase or invert the auto-generated mask. You can also adjust the brush's edge thicknessfeatherand size. The Advanced mode lets you control the tracking direction. In my testFilmora didn't perfectly select hairbut that's standard for these types of tools. If you overlay the cutout over a video backgroundthe result looks pretty good. I appreciate that you can go back and edit the mask and tracking after the fact.

Related is the new AI Smart Maskwhich places vertices around the video image to create a maskas shown below. But unlike the Smart Cutout featureAI Smart Mask produces static masks. If the subject movesthe mask no longer fits.

The Motion Tracking tool works simply and fairly well. There aren’t a whole lot of settings in itbut that’s a refreshing change from the overstuffed collections of options from many competitors. You draw a box around the object you want to trackhit Start Trackingand then choose what you want to follow the track—a file you provide or a selection of mosaic blurs. Filmora does a good job of tracking objects and people and even displays a message saying the object you’re tracking must be visible the entire time. It would be nice to be able to use text or graphicsas well.

New for motion tracking is Planar Trackingwhich lets you paste an image on a flat surfacewhere it stays regardless of the video frame movement. You outline a rectangle where you want the image affixedand after the track is completeyou then link a photo or video file. It worked impressively in testing.

The advanced Color options button above the timeline can open up either Color Correction or Color Match. The first has presets (such as VignetteWalking Deadand Warm) as well as adjustments like BrightnessContrastExposureSaturationand Vibrance—all while displaying a live histogram. The control is impressivethough you don’t get the color wheels that more advanced editors now have. Color Match was slightly counterintuitivebut I finally figured out that it would apply the Reference image’s color to the Current frame (along with its entire selected clip); the tool performed this operation convincingly.

The stabilization tool doesn't produce stretchy rubber band results like some similar tools. You can see how much of the edges of your content it will crop—the more severe the cropthe better the stabilization. Filmora's tool worksbut products like Final Cut ProMovaviPremiere Proand PowerDirector have more advanced and effective stabilization tools.

The Video Enhancer works only on clips of less than 3 minutes. It was quite impressiveimproving colorcontrastand sharpnessas in the image above. The Denoise feature works similarly to photo denoiserssmoothing or slightly blurring artifacts.

The Speed adjustment tool is simple and effective. I like that it has a Freeze Frame option. You simply tap its button above the timelinechoose SlowFastNormalor Reverseand then the fraction for slow and a percent for fast. The time change conveniently and clearly appears at the top of the clip in the timeline. You can even combine reverse with a speedup. The freeze frame simply adds a two-second still clip of the current frame.

When Keyframing appeared in an earlier versionyou could use it only with opacitypositionrotationand scale effects. Nowlike Pinnacle Studioit lets you time pretty much any effect or transformation with keyframes. It's easy to add keyframe markers from a timeline toolbar buttonand you can drag them around in the timeline after placing them. A new Keyframe panel shows all your keyframes in a line graphand you can move makers around heretoo.

You also get Adjustment Layersa very Photoshop-like concept. In video editingit means you can create a set of adjustments that apply to multiple clipsnot unlike the nodes in DaVinci Resolve.

The Smart Denoise tool could come in handy for very noisy shotsbut it tended to blur more than I prefer in testing. It does offer sliders to adjust Threshold (basically strength) and Radius (size of particles)but it's not at the level of photo denoisers.

Adding titles and text is a snap. Filmora includes more than 200 well-designed templatessome with cool animations. Even the highly designed title templates are editable right in the video preview window. If you want even more customizationthe Advanced Text Edit dialog lets you change the animationcolor filland font for your text. A new feature lets you reshape and animate your text titles using Bézier curves.

One frill missing is PowerDirector's and Premiere Elements' ability to use video to fill in your text characters. Stillyou can use a photowhich is pretty cool. In addition to textyou can choose from a good selection of objects and shapes to overlay onto your movie. Unfortunatelymany of the title s require an extra Creative Assets subscription (see pricing section above). That saidthe standard accounts still provide a generous selection of title s.

Wondershare greatly enhances the program's audio capabilities with AI Music Generator and AI noise reduction toolsalong with a music stretching feature. The Music library includes hundreds of background trackswhich you can augment with your own files or those from the Filmstock-only library. Be aware that you can't use some of these tracks for commercial purposes.

The latest audio AI tool is Generate AI Sound Effect. This lets you enter a text prompt describing what sound you want. It takes about a minute to generate three five-second clips. Trying this with a single sound yielded acceptable resultsas with my request for waves on the beach. When I describe overlapping sounds (fingernails scraping a chalkboard with a cat meowing in the background)only the first sound was audible in the result.

Filmora organizes music into categories like Young & Bright and Tender & Sentimental. There's also a good selection of sound effectsincluding beepsmonstersand wooshesas well as specific things like crow calls and iron shreds dropping.

The Smart Background Music Generator analyzes your video content and produces a soundtrack. This tool created an appropriate and pleasing background for a college basketball game video.

The AI Music Generator has you choose a Mood (HappySador Epic)a Theme (VlogsTravelor Romance)or a Genre (PopBeatsElectroor World). You also set the timetempo (with only LowNormaland High options available)and the number of sound clips you want. In testingit took 30 seconds to generate three two-minute clips. When it's doneyou tap the download arrowand then a plus-sign button adds it to the end of your open sequence. My test Epic clips sounded better than I expected and would be perfectly in place for a marketing or social video. Hollywood composershoweverneed not worry about their job security.

An audio mixer lets you adjust each track's volume and panning. Dragging the timeline's audio waveforms up and down makes it easy to duck audio. You get automatic audio ducking but not acoustic effects that simulate concert halls and other environments like those in PowerDirector.

The Silence Detection tool can identify parts of a clip without audio and cut them out to create sub-clips of areas with just audio. This is useful in situations where you want to remove dead parts from a presentation or speech.

The Denoise section gives you what you might expect: AI speech enhancementhumhissand wind removaland standard denoise and de-reverb tools. Unfortunatelythe wind removal option didn't do much with a test clip. The AI Speech Enhance feature worked wellthough it occasionally left a blip with strong background noise.

One of the cooler features is AI Translation. It can produce automatically translated voiceovers from 21 languages to 14 target languages. It did a remarkable (if not perfect) job in my testseven matching my voice timbre fairly well. Here's an example of the AI Translation making me appear to speak Hindi! New for this tool is the ability to sync the translation with the speaker's lips.

A final handy sound tool is the microphone button right below the video preview windowwhich lets you easily record a voiceover. You get 30 minutes of speech-to-text transcription for automatic captionswhich was accurate in a quick test. Going the other waythe program has a text-to-speech tool with 10 voice types for use with caption files. You get 5,000 characters with your program license.

Filmora likely has the output option you need. It supports AVIFLVHEVCMKVMOVMP4WMVand even an animated GIF choice. For outputsyou can choose quality settings of BestBetterand Good. Other output options include 4K and the efficient H.265 codec. There are also buttons for creating and uploading FacebookYouTubeand Vimeo moviesas well as DVD burning. You don'thoweverget DVD menu screens and chapters as you do with some other video editors. The program doesn't support 360 VR output or editing eitherwhich could be an issue if you want to make content for VR headsets.

Filmora generally feels snappy to start upload projectsand perform edits. But the software really shines in terms of render speeds. For testingI have each program join seven clips of various resolutions ranging from 720p all the way up to 8K. I then apply cross-dissolve transitions between them. I note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio at a bitrate of 15Mbps. The output movie is just over 5 minutes in length. I run this test on a Windows 11 PC with a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K16GB RAMan Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Tiand a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

Filmora turned in an impressive time of 34 secondsonly trailing CyberLink PowerDirector and DaVinci Resolve. Premiere Pro is just behind at 35 seconds. Several programs took significantly longerand most required at least twice as long. Note that you must save output settings as a preset. Otherwisethe program reverts to its defaults for outputs.

Filmora now has Android and iOS apps that include a remarkable number of editing features in a decent interface. Even hot new features like AI Smart Cutout are available in the appsalong with video editing standards like overlaystransitionsand trimming. You can purchase the mobile apps separately for $39.99 per year or $7.99 per monthbut subscribers to the desktop version can access them for freeas mentioned. One annoyance is that you can't use the apps at all without allowing them to send you notifications.

Filmora's privacy policy clearly states that the company doesn't share your data for any purposes other than the functioning of the software features and to comply with any government requests. Wondershare is based in Chinawhich might be a concern for some users since such companies in China must hand over data to the government upon request. We are not aware of any US government complaints against Wondershare along the lines of what's happened with other Chinese companies such as ByteDance (the TikTok owner)DJIHuaweiTencentTP-Linkand ZTE.

Wondershare Filmora has a refreshingly approachable interfacegives you more AI tools than many competitorsand provides all the standard cuttingenhancementfilterand text capabilities you need to create your video projects. It's also among the fastest we've tested at our rendering speed test. You should find plenty to like about Filmora despite the extra costs for some premium assetsbut PowerDirector and Premiere Pro remain our Editors' Choice winners thanks to their even more advanced capabilities.