When it comes to video editing, the first thing that we all think that it requires costly software and heavy duty hardware. But contrary to the popular belief video editing can done on any regular PC using a free video editor called Machete Lite. It is a video editor that lets you trim, cut, crop, delete, join and extract video files. It supports the AVI and WMV video containers and can make use of any installed video codecs like DivX or XVid etc.
Using the Machete Lite video editor is very simple. You have to open a video in it to begin with. The Lite edition supports only AVI and WMV files. When the video file is opened, it shows the information about the video (whether it is AVI or WMV, the codecs used, and playback duration) in a small blue box near the bottom edge.
You can play the video file like you usually do in a video player by clicking on the play button. You can also step through the video frames by clicking on the forward key/backward key icons or by using the left/right arrow keys on your keyboard. You can save the current frame as an image by clicking on the camera icon in the toolbar. The picture is saved in the BMP format. You can use the markers to mark the start and end of the selection for a portion of the video.
After you have marked the selection for a portion of the video, you can save it into a file by clicking on the save button near the bottom edge of the window. A delete button in the same place allows you to delete the marked selection from the video. You can also cut or copy the selected portion and use it to paste in some other location of the video timeline. It also allows you to insert another video file at the beginning of a marked selection. After you are done with the video editing operations, you can save the file by clicking on the save button in the toolbar.
Machete Video Editor Lite has a very simple and intuitive interface using which you can edit your video files within a few minutes even if you have never used a video editor software before. If you want to edit video files other than the AVI and WMV, then you can get the paid version of the Machete editor which supports many more video formats like MP4, MKV, FLV, MOV etc.
You can download Machete Video Editor Lite from http://machetesoft.com/