Movie Makers for Kids: 10 Best Video Editing Apps to Get Your Kiddos Started
Since the existence of the money-making machine YouTube, everybody has been wanting to create videos. That’s why knowing how to edit videos is an advantage these days. Want your kids to have this skill? You could let them practice with movie makers for kids.
Who knows? After a month or two of editing on these apps, they might start creating their own YouTube channel.
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Movie makers for kids: 10 best video editing apps
The programs we listed below range from kid-centric programs to apps with user-friendly interfaces. So, kids wouldn’t have a hard time learning how to edit videos on these apps.
Animotica
Windows 10 | Free to download
If your kid is already using a laptop or notebook, they could start editing on Animotica. It’s a free video editing app made for Windows 10.
Animotica has a convenient interface that allows easy drag-and-drop actions. This, in turn, makes it one of the best movie makers for kids.
You can add photos, videos, GIFs, a solid color clip, or even a new photo/video using your camera on the program. You can also add transitions between those clips, and then layer them with a song or a voiceover.
Some special video effects are also present—video stabilization, motion effects, background blur, and more. To practice, your kid can also piece together photos using the slideshow feature.
PowToon
Web-based platform | Free and monthly/yearly paid plans
Don’t be fooled by the “toon” on their name—Powtoon is a video editing tool for professionals. Interestingly, its professional function and design make it one of our recommended movie makers for kids.
Powtoon has a clean and easy-to-understand interface. Kids can easily adapt to dragging and dropping clips and adding objects. They can add royalty-free soundtracks and produce up to 3-minute videos. It also has internal storage.
What is more interesting in Powtoon is that you can export the videos as PowerPoint presentations or PDF. You can also change the videos’ aspect ratios and sizes.
The only con you might not like is the Powtoon watermark—but if you’re planning to use Powtoon for practice, then we guess it wouldn’t hurt.
Shadow Puppet Edu
iOS | Free
Shadow Puppet Edu is an iOS app for teachers and K–8 students. This is one of the most awarded movie makers for kids, being called the Best Edtech of 2014 and 2014 Best App. And it’s not hard to see why they received those accolades.
Kids can present or create stories using Shadow Puppet Edu. For the video’s content, such as maps, they can use the app to search for materials from the Library of Congress, NASA, and the Met Museum. On the other hand, they can choose to upload up to 100 photos in the videos and render 30-minute long videos.
As for customizing the video, they can add text in different fonts, put royalty-free music, or narrate the story. One of the app’s unique perks is that kids can draw on the video as they are recording it. They can also get inspired by the 30+ activity ideas that come with the app.
Kids aged starting from five years old can make movies on this app.
Animoto
Web-based, Mac & PC | Free and Paid Plans
While Animoto is a video editing tool for professionals, it could also be kid-friendly due to its uncomplicated interface and array of templates. For example, take a look at this father’s day video template:
Animoto’s free plan has dozens of that template. They also have storyboard templates, which your kids could easily customize. If they want to start from scratch, they can play with a lot of elements using their font library, royalty-free music and photos, and 300+ color swatches.
Overall, the app has a very DIY vibe. Add that to an accommodating, simple interface, which makes Animoto one of our recommended movie makers for kids.
Toontastic 3D
iOS App Store | Google Play Store
Toontastic is an app by Google that helps youngsters aged 6–12 years old animate their stories. This app allows kids to produce their very own animated shorts, explainer videos, cooking shows, and more.
On Toontastic, kids can design their characters, and even add their faces to them. They can make the characters sing or dance, they can voice them, and add background music to the video.
For each one-minute scene, kids will also take a minute to edit it. They can also add six scenes for each cartoon. It’s also available for offline use.
This is one of the best movie makers for kids who just can’t help but be creative.
Magisto
Web, iOS, and Android | Free and paid plans
Magisto an online video editor and smartphone app by Vimeo. It is one of the more popular editing apps, but will it be suitable for your kids or students? Absolutely.
Magisto is known for its user-friendly interface, making intimidated newbies eager to learn. But don’t mistake that simplicity for lack of features.
Magisto has a myriad of templates for any occasion, which your kid can easily customize and play with. They can also upload footage and photos, select an editing style, and Magisto will process it using its AI technology.
Overall, it’s a good program for beginners in video editing. They could easily navigate the program and use it to learn the very basics of editing a video. That’s why it’s one of our favorite movie makers for kids.
VideoScribe
Web-based platform | Free and paid plans
VideoScribe is another professional video editing program that your kids could give a try. Like the others on this list, you won’t have to go through many hoops to create videos on this app.
Why do we recommend for kids to try it? Well, the free version is already jam-packed with notable but easy-to-learn features. It has quick-start templates, royalty-free music, and over 6000 photos. You could even import your fonts and assets, which VideoScribe will draw.
The only glaring flaw is the watermark, but it wouldn’t matter if you’re only using this for practice, right?
Movavi
At first, Movavi will look intimidating to a beginner, but don’t be fooled.
Like the others on this list, Movavi doesn’t fall short in having an intuitive interface, which you will confirm once you use it. The editing tools’ icons are easy to spot on the left side, and a preview on the right doesn’t dwarf the other elements on the program.
It has an array of easy to use, gorgeous templates, ready for your kid to play with around. This makes it one of the best movie makers for kids.
What else? You can add filters, captions, and titles on videos. You can animate things on it, crop or rate clips, and add pre-designed introductions to them. There are also backgrounds, music, and sound effects. However, these are all in the free version.
More built-in materials are available in their paid version, the Movavi Video Editor 2020 Plus.
Filmora9 by Wondershare is a free-to-download app. Wondershare also has pro versions, but the free version alone already has what it takes to teach kids about the ropes of editing.
On the app, your kids can experiment all they want with the free visual effects, compositing tools, and even sound editing features. If your kid is musically inclined, he can fine-tune his recordings or videos using the background noise removal, audio equalizer, and keyframe audio editing.
There are heaps of fun, creative effects like motion elements, filters, and transitions. You can also add tweaks to your video clips like panning, zooming, and tilt-shit. You can also use up to 100 media tracks on Filmora.
Overall, Filmora is one of the one-to-beat movie makers for kids on this list.
Pencil 2D
Web-based platform | Free and open-source
Pencil 2D is a free software product for young animators. It’s especially useful for beginners in animation.
With Pencil 2D, you can create simple but fun animated videos. It has a highly intuitive and minimalist design, which can help your kids focus on learning the basics.
It’s also easy to switch between raster and vector workflows on Pencil 2D. Here’s a preview of the different work you could do with Pencil 2D:
Conclusion
Not only will using these movie-makers teach your kids the technical skills needed for a content-centric career path. Video editing will also help them learn organizational skills, creative storytelling, and patience.
Don’t hesitate to try installing one of the movie makers for kids on this list. Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Related questions
What is a kid-friendly movie editing software?
We recommend Animotica, Magisto, or Animoto. Each of these programs is good practice grounds for kids who have little to no experience in video editing.
What’s a good Windows movie maker?
Animotica and Magisto are good movie maker apps for Windows users.
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