FOSS: VIdeo Edit: Shotcut app

Software
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FOSS: VIdeo Edit: Shortcut app
https://www.shotcutapp.com/

Shotcut proves that a top-notch video editor doesn’t have to cost a fortune. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and is totally free with no ads, bundled adware, or features hidden behind a paywall.

If you’re looking for a free video editor that can replace Windows Movie Maker, Shotcut is a particularly good choice. This open source app contains all the tools you know and love from Microsoft’s classic video editing software, plus a raft of extras that bring it up bang up to date.

In just a few easy steps, you can use Shotcut cut your video footage to a specified length before converting it to a format of your choice. You can also edit your projects with a selection of filters and effects.

Shotcut also includes a recording function lets you save and edit footage from your webcam, and it can handle streaming in HTTP, HLS, RTMP, RTSP, MMS and UDP formats.

https://www.shotcutapp.com/features/

Wide Format Support

  • Support for the latest audio and video formats thanks to FFmpeg
  • Supports popular image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG, TGA, TIFF, WebP as well as image sequences
  • No import required - native timeline editing
  • Frame-accurate seeking for many formats
  • Multi-format timeline: mix and match resolutions and frame rates within a project
  • Webcam capture
  • Audio capture
  • Support for 4K resolutions
  • Network stream playback (HTTP, HLS, RTMP, RTSP, MMS, UDP)
  • Frei0r video generator plugins (e.g. color bars and plasma)
  • Color, text, noise, and counter generators
  • EDL (CMX3600 Edit Decision List) export
  • Export single frame as image or video as image sequence
  • Videos files with alpha channel - both reading and writing

Audio Features

  • Audio scopes: loudness, peak meter, waveform, spectrum analyzer
  • Volume control
  • Audio filters:
    Balance, Bass & Treble, Band Pass, Compressor, Copy Channel, Delay, Downmix, Expander, Gain, High Pass, Limiter, Low Pass, Normalize: One Pass, Normalize: Two Pass, Notch, Pan, Reverb, Swap Channels
  • Audio mixing across all tracks
  • Fade in and out audio and fade video from and to black with easy-to-use fader controls on timeline
  • Cross-fade audio and video dissolve transitions easily by overlapping shots on the same track of the timeline
  • JACK transport sync
  • Tone generator
  • Stereo, mono, and 5.1 surround

Video Effects

  • Video compositing across video tracks
  • HTML5 (sans audio and video) as video source and filters
  • 3-way (shadows, mids, highlights) color wheels for color correction and grading
  • Eye dropper tool to pick neutral color for white balancing
  • Deinterlacing
  • Auto-rotate
  • Fade in/out audio and fade video from and to black with easy-to-use fader controls on timeline
  • Video wipe transitions:
    bar, barn door, box, clock (radial), diagonal, iris, matrix, and custom gradient image
  • Track compositing/blending modes:
    None, Over, Add, Saturate, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Dodge, Burn, Hard Light, Soft Light, Difference, Exclusion, HSL Hue, HSL Saturation, HSL Color, HSL Luminosity.
  • Video Filters:
    Alpha Channel: Adjust, Alpha Channel: View, Audio Spectrum Visualization, Blur, Brightness, Chroma Key: Advanced, Chroma Key: Simple, Contrast, Color Grading, Crop, Diffusion, Glow, Hue/Lightness/Saturation, Invert Colors, Key Spill: Advanced, Key Spill: Simple, Lens Correction, 3D LUT, Mask, Mirror, Mosaic, Old Film: Dust, Old Film: Grain, Old Film: Projector, Old Film: Scratches, Old Film: Technocolor, Opacity, Rotate and Scale, Rutt-Etra-Izer, Saturation, Sepia Tone, Sharpen, Size and Position, Sketch, Stabilize, Text, Timer, Vignette, Unpremultiply Alpha, Wave, White Balance
  • Speed effect for audio/video clips
  • Reverse a clip

Editing Features

  • Trimming on source clip player or timeline with ripple option
  • Easy-to-use cut, copy, and paste operations
  • Append, insert, overwrite, lift, and ripple delete editing on the timeline
  • 3-point editing
  • Hide, mute, and lock track controls
  • Multitrack timeline with thumbnails and waveforms
  • Unlimited undo and redo for playlist edits including a history view
  • Create, play, edit, save, load, encode, and stream MLT XML projects (with auto-save)
  • Save and load trimmed clip as MLT XML file
  • Load and play complex MLT XML file as a clip
  • Drag-n-drop files from file manager
  • Scrubbing and transport control
  • Keyframes for filter parameters
  • Detach audio from video clip

AND MUCH MUCH MORE! FOSS!

2 Likes
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I tried Shotcut recently. I was trying to make a slideshow video – something I do very easily with Windows Movie Maker but found very challenging with Shotcut, largely due to the lack of numerical input to control clip length. The drag and drop interface for transitions was also something I struggled with. I’ve never needed a tutorial of any kind to use Windows Movie Maker, but I couldn’t come to grips with Shotcut despite watching several how-tos on YouTube.

Admittedly this is just a single user’s single use experience of attempting a video that I could have created with PowerPoint, and those making ‘proper’ videos may like it, but I’ve used Windows Movie Maker to make simple corporate videos to great effect and would hesitate to try the same thing with Shotcut, involving precise syncing of audio with video, given how much I struggled just to make a simple video without audio.

I haven’t uninstalled it because it seems to have a lot of potential, but am wondering if I have to look elsewhere for a tool that is easier to use.

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I gave Shotcut a try when it first came out. It was nice but buggy. Don’t know where it is at nowadays.

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Shotcut is OK, but very limited. I like Kdenlive better. Works great in Linux.

Since you’re talking about FOSS video editors, I’m going to suggest Aviutl. The only bad thing I can say about Aviutl, is it’s Windows only. I run it in a VM. I can make it run under Wine, but choose not to install Wine in my PC.

Aviutl is a true gem, very powerful and versatile if you can figure out how to use it…

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I see it is Japanese. See English translated app here: AviUtl 1.10 / Extra Pack 1.14 Free Download - VideoHelp

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Here is a very basic example of what Aviutl can do. I made the glass text in Gimp, then animated the red blob particles in Aviutl using a track mask.

lava

1 Like
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I’ve heard of Aviutli but never tried. Interesting.

Actually what I’m looking at the moment is a video2gif converter. Yes. GIFs. I make GIFs for to be used on websites - I’d want to just set desired outcome and the app would take care of much… But single GIF filesize is max 3MB - so it’s time consuming to eventually get snippet into 3MB while retaining decent size X size, length and details so that it appears much with quality…

Any apps that are awe with vid2gif? I’ve tried some commercial apps and online converters, and while some of those might be decent - I’m looking for better one. FOSS would be preferable.

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High quality GIF of a video using FL/OSS?

There’s a great tutorial on doing this with ffmpeg that I’ve been using for quite a while personally:

http://blog.pkh.me/p/21-high-quality-gif-with-ffmpeg.html

In a nutshell, you run two passes to encode. The first generates a global color palette to use, the second encodes using that palette. (It seems complex, but is pretty simple once you see what it’s doing and just drop the whole thing in a shell script).

For posterity, from the site:

#!/bin/sh

palette="/tmp/palette.png"

filters="fps=15,scale=320:-1:flags=lanczos"

ffmpeg -v warning -i $1 -vf "$filters,palettegen" -y $palette
ffmpeg -v warning -i $1 -i $palette -lavfi "$filters [x]; [x][1:v] paletteuse" -y $2
2 Likes
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Actually my example above was encoded from video to GIF using ffmpeg. I didn’t use palettgen however. I have a custom command preset in WinFF that I use for quick conversions to GIF. Quality and file size is usually good.

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Thanks Patdavid - but I prefer GUI. Because there’6s resizing and cropping and optimizing,

There are some goodish apps but not “perfect”. Of course Adobe apps like PS and Premiere make HQ gifs but those are heavy apps for tiny gifs :smiley:

Sometimes I might resort to use this: Video to animated GIF converter

^ ezgif has plenty of options for vid2gif conversion… yes - but online service isn’6t the best however.