Best Video Editing Software in 2026?

I've been using DaVinci Resolve for editing animated music videos, and it's worked really well for me. I like having the editing, audio, and export tools in one place without needing a subscription.

For short-form content, I usually create the main video first and then prepare a vertical version for social platforms. Having a consistent workflow has been more useful than constantly switching editors.

I’m also really curious if anybody has been working between ChatGPT and a software solution and which one seems to interact easiest with ChatGPT for providing instruction and making edits along the way.

I heard they released a bunch of the Higgsfield AI scripts or tools or whatever you call them and curious if that has been usable for anybody at all, and do you still have to actually have an account or can you just get the scripts and use them within your ChatGPT?

We had this conversation a while back and I want to know what has changed? Are these still the best solutions in 2026?

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Depends a lot on what you post, but for social the real time sink is rarely the cutting itself. It's captions, reframing for vertical and making several versions of one video. We built Shorz AI for exactly that part. It's an AI video editing agent for Mac and Windows where you type what you want, it edits the video with subtitles and zooms, and it can publish straight to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the rest. If something's off you just type the fix and get a new version. Biased obviously since I work on it..

In this thread, u/mybigroundhead asked for beginner-friendly tools to edit reels with less manual work. The most useful recommendations were:

• u/bengunners recommended CapCut Desktop for transcript editing, silence removal and auto-captions; Descript for talking-head videos and podcast clips; and OpusClip for finding short clips in longer videos. AI-selected clips still need a review.
• u/TRESemmeProUK recommended Canva for easy reel editing, though they mentioned occasional glitches.
• u/MrPureinstinct suggested learning DaVinci Resolve, but noted that its free version didn’t include automatic captions.
• u/Silvergal_ suggested keeping it simple: iPhone footage, CapCut for trims and captions, Canva for covers, and a repeatable 20–30 second format with clean audio.
• u/Difficult_Yam8239 recommended keeping captions inside the platform’s safe areas, checking the export on a phone and saving a reusable caption style.

The most practical tip from u/bengunners: test each editor on the same five-minute video and compare draft speed, caption corrections and whether it cuts mid-thought.