Video Editing Software

I do all of our video editing but I had a little background in it as a multimedia designer before jumping into the elearning realm. I use Final Cut Pro X now, which may be more than you need. I once shot a really nice interview video with my iPhone & edited it with iMovie and it turned out fantastic. If you're just doing basic shots, no need to spend on fancy equipment you could probably already work with what you have. Happy Shooting! 

It all depends on what you want your final product to look like.  If you want a very professional look/audio then buying the right (not necessarily expensive) equipment will help. You can get a lot of great looking video with most handhelds these days. The thing to worry about is the audio. A good mic extension can help reduce background noise. Also invest in a tripod for steady shots. Also look around for some basic video interview tutorials for poses and lighting ideas. You can get any software you want, but if the video source is garbage, the output will be garbage.

For software, something easy and inexpensive is Premiere Elements. It can do a lot of the features more expensive software can do and it is "dumbed down" to make it very easy to use.

A lot of consumer grade equipment (some of it can be very nice) comes with decent enough software to use also. I purchased a Sony Handycam many years ago and it came with a full copy of Vegas Pro. Very nice software but not as feature rich as Premiere Pro which you can get on subscription now and pay for only when you need it (although it's still probably more expensive than going with Premiere Elements which would do just as good of a job for basic editing).

Before I got the expensive software, I used ProShow Producer.  It's very easy to use and costs only about $250.00.

Hello Karen and welcome to the community!

I second Jerson on it depending on what you want the final product to look like. A lot of times when it's for something internal the consensus is steered by budget. The stakeholders don't want it to be embarrassingly bad but also don't want to spend tons of money on it either. That tends to land within the possibility of doing it yourself, but one thing to keep in mind if you choose that route-make sure you're given plenty of time to work on it. Even simple edits take a lot of time when you're new to video editing. If you're also new to eLearning it may be worth it to outsource the video portion so you can focus on the rest of the course. 

If you do choose to do the video in house there's a good chance you are just going to need a tool that allows you to cut, trim, add some transitions, has a separate track for audio and a variety of output options. These days there are a lot of decent options to choose from without buying the fully loaded tools. I'm not an expert on the topic by any means but I was looking into similar options a while back and came across a comparison review in PC Mag that I found really helpful. Several of the more powerful products have "elements" versions that contain pretty much everything I needed for basic video editing. Plus the learning curve tends to be far more forgiving. 

Here are some of the reviews I looked at and the average cost

Adobe Premiere Elements - $100

Sony Movie Studio Platinum - $70

Cyberlink Power Director 11 - $80

Best of luck to you and I hope we see you around the forums!

Natalia