We’ve heard of men behind the scenes for years. Now women are becoming less afraid to try their hand editing. We are giving our top 5 resources for any stage you are in as an editor.

Premiere Pro     Price Point 19.99/mo

(You can no longer purchase Premiere Pro outright; you must buy a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud)

All programs have timelines, media bins and a multitude of tools that enable you to perform advanced alterations, adjustments and outright transformations of raw video, audio and image files. If you are graduating from the consumer level there is no better professional editor to start on.

One of the new features in Premiere Pro synchronizes audio and video automatically creating a new unified media clip in your bin that has the audio and video aligned.

Final cut Pro       Price Point 299.99

*Only available for the most recent versions of Apple’s OS X operating system

This editing software is good for both new and veteran editors.

If you are working on a complex project like a music video or a feature, you’re going to have a lot of media elements to work with. Final Cut makes the process of organizing all of your media as easy as possible with what Apple calls smart collections.

This feature enables you to use custom keyword to automatically sort your footage.

Media Composer 8         Price Point $359.88

Media Composer is a complicated application that will stump the unskilled editor. This application is a beat both to understand and to operate correctly. It can take years of training and experience before any individual editor can realize the full potential of the program. If you are an amateur editor this isn’t your cup of tea.

However, if you want to train to be a professional video editor then this is the application to do it on.

Lightworks 11.5                Price Point 299.88

It is missing some features such as the ability to create closed captions. However it’s the only program professional video editing software that is available on all major operating systems. The application itself is quite light weight. A full installation only requires 200 MB of storage space. This is a small fraction of the storage requirements of the top tier applications. Meaning you can install and run this application on even the most inexpensive of laptops.

Cyber Link          Price Point 49.99

This program helps beginners learn the basics of video editing without sacrificing the needs of more advanced users. However, there is no Mac version of this software Apple users would be well served by having an alternative to iMovie.

This editing software offers three main ways to create your video projects. You can use the Full Feature Editor, which is the familiar timeline, or storyboard. But in case you’re not ready to handle all the responsibility on your own there’s also a simplified editor that automatically creates a video for you in just minutes. Additionally, you can use the Express Project module that allows you to fill in preprogrammed templates with your own content, which teaches you how to use the Full Feature Editor.

Shivawn Hill, is a writer, wander, and visual storyteller at heart. She’s currently in production with her short documentary film, Lifting Crowns. She believes that one day soon she’ll form the ultimate group of storytellers who will travel the world to share the stories of creative peculiar people. Come and hang out with her on Instagram