

Shotcut – A free, open-source, cross-platform video editor - oridecon
https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut

======
oridecon
[http://www.shotcut.org](http://www.shotcut.org)

[https://i.imgur.com/oYNJEHk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oYNJEHk.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/ZV9X1nv.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ZV9X1nv.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/XMi93BV.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XMi93BV.jpg)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjuv-
Js1znyvErPy9vZf37A/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjuv-
Js1znyvErPy9vZf37A/videos)

I'm not affiliated with the project.

~~~
hobs
Looks fairly interesting for some of my more casual use, I might give it a
download.

Any big gotchas that you have come across or any tricks using it (special
plugins, etc)?

~~~
oridecon
Like most (all?) of the Linux video editors you have the occasional crash. It
happens way less than Openshot or Pitivi but it's still present. I don't know
if it also happens on Windows or OSX.

You can version control your edits and do text operations since it's a MLT
file so that helps.

Not really my thing but you can insert HTML5 overlays and animations. There's
a demo on the youtube channel but it's quite "verbose" for most users.

GPU accelerated filters are really fast and I have no problems working with
1080p 15GB+ files. But that's nothing compared to what professionals use so I
can't really comment on that.

~~~
WalterBright
> the occasional crash

I don't get this. Why is this true for the genre? I've been trying various
video editors for 10 years, and they all crash. Every last one of them. I
recently gave up on Windows Moviemaker because it crashes rendering anything
over 30 minutes long. (Not only does it crash, it freezes Windows so bad you
have to powercycle.)

~~~
tomcam
Exact same experience here. I too would like to understand why this happens.
Am guessing the excuse on Windows would at one time have been the huge variety
of supported video hardware, but that no longer seems to be the issue. And
that's only a guess. Not sure if it's DirectX or whatever they call it, device
drivers, application-level code, or what. These experiences have made me loyal
to exactly zero video editor programs.

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deckar01
> Leap Motion for jog and shuttle control.

I love this idea. I added the ability to scrub through the history of my paint
app [1]. The circle gesture provides the direction, size, and speed which can
be used to create a very expressive scrubbing tool. Fast tight circle scrub
really fast and large slow circles scrub really slow with high precision.
Can't wait to check out their implementation.

[1] [http://youtu.be/DM1JtYyr88k](http://youtu.be/DM1JtYyr88k)

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hackeyed
Not to mention Kdenlive, which is being actively developed again and has been
the most capable and stable of the free video editors I've used this past year
(including Openshot, Pitivi, and Flowblade)

~~~
tombh
And Blender! I've found it more intuitive, feature-rich and stable than
anything else. And it installs straight from Debian's default repos.

~~~
michaelbuddy
Blender could almost replace aftereffects for a lot of us, but it does so much
it would probably confuse a new user as to how you could replace AE.

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rogerbinns
Folks may also be interested in the Openshot cross platform video editor (no
affiliation other than as a user). They use (and helped develop) some of the
libraries used by Shotcut. [http://openshot.org/](http://openshot.org/)

However openshot did commit the cardinal sin of second system effect. Version
1 was doing well, with a whole bunch of changes queued for version 2 including
going cross platform, changing the UI toolkit, updating/changing the media
toolkit, and a thousand other features. Version 2 has been imminent for well
over a year now, and still doesn't seem too close to release.

~~~
maheart
The relationship extends further than that. Openshot 1.x was developed on top
of the MLT (Media Lovin' Toolkit) Framework. MLT and Shotcut are developed by
the same person.

------
ris
Or if you want something that works now, you can use Blender, which has a very
full featured video editor built in to it, and has had for a long time.

~~~
oridecon
Blender is a good option too. You can cut and do things very fast using full
timeline with overdrop or the regular flow.

IMO for anything more complex than that the UI gets on your way. I even
learned most of the keybinds but it just doesn't feel intuitive.

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ecesena
Partially OT, but does anyone know any open source video editor or better
library for merging multiple videos into a 360 degree video? (python would be
awesome)

~~~
kej
MoviePy might do what you need, particularly the CompositeVideoClip class. See
[https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/ref/VideoClip/VideoClip.html...](https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/ref/VideoClip/VideoClip.html#compositevideoclip)

~~~
ecesena
Thanks, I'll look into it!

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bobbles
Is there a simple way to do a picture in picture effect (with unlimited levels
of PIP?)

Trying to do this for a recent project with anything else just did my head in
with complexity...

(I guess the best i can think of as a comparison is the TED intro? where lost
of different clips fly across the screen)

~~~
michaelbuddy
aftereffects could probably be scripted for this.

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kazinator
Name looks too annoyingly like a typo for "shortcut".

How about "CTTC".

"With CTTC, you can trim your video of boring dialog, and just keep the
exciting chase at the end!"

"CTTC is pronounced 'see-tick', or by uttering its expansion: Cut to the
Chase."

~~~
danvoell
I thought the same. At first I thought typo. Then I thought they took a
shotcut on spelling shortcut. Then I realized it was for video apps.

------
UserRights
also very interesting:
[https://github.com/jliljebl/flowblade](https://github.com/jliljebl/flowblade)

------
Klasiaster
From UI perspective as well as the architectural design behind I would rather
recommend Pitivi, as it's based on GStreamer.

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beatpanda
I've been using shotcut for over a year and I highly reccomend it. It is leaps
and bounds ahead of most Linux-supporting video editors.

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pbreit
Comparisons to iMovie?

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hendry
Wish there was a Web app to edit video. Upload to S3 and away I would go
creating (jump cut) edits which would be fed to ffmpeg to dice up.

~~~
anc84
That sounds like an incredibly wasteful way of editing. Why would you want to
use a web app?

~~~
deckar01
Although video editing requires a level of performance that javascript is not
equipped for, a web video editor is not a terrible idea.

I would imagine all the heavy lifting would need to be done by a plugin or a
local media encoding server. Portability and a rich editing interface would be
the key features. Collaboration and version control would be a nice feature
too. I am surprised how terrible the top commercial video editing programs are
at simply sharing a project file with another person. Video projects really
need the cloud backing the source files and version control.

All of this can be done in native applications, but imagine being able to work
on a video project from any modern browser. Maybe you don't even need a local
media encoder, the server could render your changes and stream them as needed.

Edit: I would love to be able to edit video on my Macbook Air and have a GPU
cluster in the cloud doing all my rendering.

~~~
jpgleeson
I'm having trouble finding a source at the moment, but I believe that the BBC
attempted this a few years ago. They eventually abandoned the project because
as the editors needed the full resolution file of everything they were using
to ensure the shot was in focus etc., storing them locally was a better
option. I can't really see that changing in the future either.

An NLE that checked out files from a remote server and then made edits to a
text based file from which anything could be shared would be very useful
though.

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anon3_
Nice! I'm excited about this.

Why GPLv3? Why not make the license permissive as possible?

~~~
254m4
Although permissive licenses are great for libraries, they aren't that good
for applications. Why would you let someone make a closed source version of
your open source video editor? No, you never ever want that happens, that's
when copyleft comes into play, it's ideal for applications like this.

~~~
anon3_
> Why would you let someone make a closed source version of your open source
> video editor?

How is that a bad thing? I think that's a zero sum game way of looking at it.

No damage is done if someone makes a closed source version. They can add value
and stimulate competition. More often, they fail.

Occasionally, core developers may enrich and provide additional functionality
upon a permissive core. Why not look at Postgres as an example?

And what harm is done? Lost code contributions? Some have no interest in
collaborating on software they can't incorporate / copy from later without
restriction. It takes time to wrap ones brain around a codebase.

Why would someone take time to understand the internals of a GPLv3 app, when
they could never incorporate pieces of it in their code later on?

> it's ideal for applications like this.

Ideal is subjective. Judging by the above, it seems as if enforcing envy
trumps programmers doing as they wish with the code.

~~~
eropple
_> Why would someone take time to understand the internals of a GPLv3 app,
when they could never incorporate pieces of it in their code later on?_

...to make it better for their uses, rather than their products? "Enforcing
envy," though--please, _be_ more of a jerk.

I'm curious as to what large-scale applications have you developed and
released under a permissive license that make you such an authority on what
others should do with tens of thousands of their man-hours.

