WeVideo

I teach two high school classes based in digital editing of film/video. "Short Films" where we study different types/styles of film making, then create our own versions of that type, as well as "Media Production" where we create weekly news programs for the school. We have a "Film production" lab, with 15 Mac computers, and for the last 6 years have used Final Cut to do the editing for those classes. Due to Covid, and the already impossibly small size of that room, we had to find an alternative for the classes to use on their ChromeBook "computers". Did some poking around, and did the free version of WeVideo for a week before deciding it was WELL worth it to spend nearly a third of my department (Visual Art) on getting the fancier version.
Still surprised at some of the things this program is able to do, especially for $300 for 30 liscences for an entire year.

So $#*!ing laggy I hate wevideo always does random things I don't want it to do, impossible to import and find clips so unorganized and such a bad site I $#*!ing hate it > :(

WeVideo is just a pain. Can we just ban WeVideo? I hate hate HATE WeVideo. I'm trying to get a specific image and it just keeps on giving me nothing. JUST... WEVIDEO SUCKS!

Pros:
- I guess it's easy to use if you don't want to download anything else?
Cons:
- They cram your video full with WeVideo branding, including a large watermark, and an unremovable link and phone number at the end of every video
- It is extremely limited, as are most online editors, but WeVideo is special in that it limits the amount of time you can spend editing to 3 hours total, throughout ALL OF YOUR VIDEOS. That's right, the timer is universal. Another limitation is that you must pay for a subscription to add text to your video or to use the green screen technology so many people claim that WeVideo does well
- The UI is extremely unpleasent
- It pressures you constantly to buy the full version
- There is no reason to use it. Online editors are simply not as powerful as offline editors and open source editors are ALWAYS FREE

Annoying its so laggy and bad. It just crashes every single time i try to import media and is slow to do anything

I don't recommend it. It kicked us out and it is really laggy and slow. Slow to enter. It is easy to use though. The search thing doesn't work either

DO NOT GET. It is horrible. I did it for a schoole project and i added voiceovers and i matched them to the exact spot. Like only 10 seconds later it just moves the video to A COMPLETELY RANDOM PLACE. Also, they add random voicovers THAT I DIDN'T EVEN ADD! Also the purchase thing is scamming. It says that it's free but its just scamming your money

Ok so I bought the software on a monthly rolling plan as I wanted to be able to get things in the cloud and upload from mobile and other devices easy.

One problem is that if you have a video with audio you can't easily split the audio from the video. Most other software I've used makes that easy.

The main problem is that if you try to upload a video that is large (for me using my twitch.tv/pjenx1986 vods) you have to upload and process and wait for them to process the video.
It took over 24 hours for one 4 hour vod to get processed and due to the time I think a connection dropped somewhere, I then had to return and re do the editing and upload the video again. So a total waste of time.
The quicker way is to edit your video first which is stupid. You should be able to just select 20 mins from a 4 hour video and only use that surely?!
Anyway it seems stupid and you then can't access it from your mobile app if you used your pc. So all in all a waste of money. I could have just uploaded a bunch of the videos to fiverr and waited for some professional to edit and clip my videos in the time I waited! Probably similar price too.

I recived from PayPal bill for $95 automatic, and I used only one time and pay $95 and no authorized auto payment

IT IS SLOW, IT SAYS PREPARING YOUR PREVIEW WHEN U HAVE TO WAIT FOR 15 MINutes, it doesn't have good detail.

I have used WeVideo for multiple projects, and every time, I have had to switch to iMovie. IMovie! The built-in video editor for Mac machines is better than this terrible website.

"But oh, John, it can have multiple people editing the same document"

Yeah right. This website advertises that it can have multiple users editing the same document. Does it follow up on this bold claim? Absolutely not. First off, it is a pain to share things with other people, and when you finally get it in your inbox, if someone is in the editor already, it will say something along the lines of "Too many people in document"

So that's the end of it, right? No. Of course not. There is an incredibly janky way to get around this, by reloading the page, restarting your computer, and repeating until you barely make it in the document.

Now we're fine, right? We must be because we got into the document and there are multiple people, right? Wrong. Now that we got in, there are so many other hurdles to jump over, too. First off, the website is incredibly laggy. If someone else moves something it can take over a minute for it to appear on everyone's screens. This is even on the same internet! I can only imagine the horrors of working on different networks! Secondly, when you try to do ANYTHING, 90% of the time, it just snaps back to what it was like in the beginning. Thirdly, even doing the thing it was intended to do, editing, is almost impossible, even without having a shared document. There is no way to select a specific portion in the audio line unless you want to split the entire video in half twice, then delete out the audio in the middle. Once you have deleted the audio, where do the images go? Pushed to the side? No! Deleted!

Now you may realize that in my title, I put "almost". This is for one reason, and one reason only.
The title slides are decent. Yep, that's the only good part about WeVideo.

By Jack, a very disgruntled 8th grader.

I have tried the Free Version, the free trial for educators, and the Unlimited Plan. Of these three, the Unlimited is the most useful.
Free: Only get 5 minutes publish time and minimal options
Trial for Educators: Stamp in the upper right, and minimal options, not as easy to use
Unlimited Plan: This is the one that I ended up going with. No cap on publish time, reasonably priced, basic options, but worth the money for ease of use.

Right now, I use this program for editing virtual class meetings- taking the recording of the full meeting and splitting it up into individual lessons for assignments. I have found it easy to use, makes quality videos, and is connected to a variety of other platforms you can upload to (including Google Drive, which is where I can upload to the virtual classroom from).

I have also used this for personal use- a music video, a collaboration video with clips uploaded from my Google Drive, and educational videos. It has a variety of sound effects, text options, backgrounds, music tracks, and the ability to add various tracks to be able to stack the videos on, edit how small/big and location each track is on the screen.

You can create different projects to organize the kinds of videos you make to- I have my personal projects, classroom read alouds, and virtual lessons in their own projects. When I upload them to Google Drive, it sends them all into a specific WeVideo folder and I can move it from there to where I want it within my Drive.

There are a few downsides I've found, but aren't worth ditching the program for- some of the offered backgrounds/music tracks are only available through certain plans. So if you search for a certain background and use it, you may unknowingly end up without it in your final product because you haven't paid for that plan.

The other downside is it seems to take a while to process the videos (importing and exporting). But again, not worth avoiding it for.