General purpose video editing software I am writing an assignment about basic video editing software, and I need to mention video editing software that is Mac OS X compatible.

As a Linux user, I personally don't have access to a computer running Mac OS X and have never used one. I would therefore like to know what software comes pre-installed on Mac OS X (I'm not sure if this may vary for each release, but say for the 3 latest releases (10.6 - 10.8)), as well as the most used paid / free software available.

I'm not interested in every available application, but only the most commonly used for basic purposes.
Like Ian C. mentioned, Quicktime is the only thing pre-installed. You can do the basics: rotate, scale, and merge clips.



iMovie is the consumer standard. It comes with the iLife suite. It has an easy to use interface and can create some pretty fancy and professional looking videos. The current version has a tool to make trailers for home movies, includes great control over the audio, has facial recognition, and supports the AVCHD format.



Final Cut Pro X is the prosumer application for video editing. It is the successor to Final Cut Express 4 and Final Cut Pro 7. It, like iMovie, is a paid application. It has a important feature which is not in iMovie: multicam editing. Final Cut Pro X allows you to overlay multiple video tracks, then edit them simultaneously. It also is a 64-bit application.