[HN Gopher] Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video...
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Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor
Author : memorable
Score : 204 points
Date : 2022-06-09 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shotcut.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (shotcut.org)
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Too hard to use after trying for awhile. By way of example adding
| text, then moving it & truncating it to only appear over part of
| the clip I could not intuitively understand. Perhaps its me.
| mrdonbrown wrote:
| Shotcut has this one cool feature [1] - drop a bunch of pictures
| into it and it'll create an animated slide show automatically.
| I've looked for ways to automate that via something like ffmpeg,
| but haven't found any better options.
|
| [1] https://forum.shotcut.org/t/slideshow-generator/19162
| Diris wrote:
| So basically this[0] with a crossfade[1] between frames? Which
| would be (by stitching examples together)
| ffmpeg -framerate 1/5 -pattern_type glob -i '\*.jpg' -pix_fmt
| yuv420p -filter_complex
| xfade=transition=fade:duration=2:offset=2 out.mp4
|
| (1 jpg image per 5 seconds with a 2 seconds crossfade in
| between)
|
| [0] https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Slideshow
|
| [1] https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#xfade (only
| available in >4.3)
| heretogetout wrote:
| Yeah, although I'd be surprised if this isn't what Shotcut
| does (it uses ffmpeg).
| rockostrich wrote:
| ffmpeg has an entire page in their wiki devoted to slideshows:
| https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Slideshow
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| There is so much value in doing this in a normal application
| with a UI that lets you see what you're doing. ffmpeg is a
| fantastic utility if you already know what you need, but it's
| absolutely terrible for jobs where you need to be able to see
| and do things between the two states of "having input" and
| "having final output".
| syl_sau wrote:
| I agree, although it has to be noted that that you can
| preview most ffmpeg commands using ffplay. The syntax is
| the same as the ffmpeg command, without the final output
| filename obviously.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Right, but now we're going "replace this single app with
| a normal graphical interface for working with visual
| media with multiple command line utilities including the
| terminal that you're always going to have to look up the
| commands flags for" and that's not really selling it =P
| mrdonbrown wrote:
| Where I found that fell down was wanting to do things like
| slow zooms and interesting transitions. I'd love something
| like a Python or bash script to tweak that addressed those.
| Diris wrote:
| Like this?
|
| Zoom in up to 1.5x and pan always at center of picture (not
| tested): import ffmpeg (
| ffmpeg .input( '\*.jpg',
| pattern_type='glob', framerate='1/5' )
| .zoompan( z='min(zoom+0.0015,1.5)',
| d=700, x='in_w/2-(in_w/zoom/2)',
| y='in_h/2-(in_h/zoom/2)' )
| .output('output.mp4', pix_fmt='yuv420p') .run()
| )
|
| stitching [0], [1], and [2]
|
| [0]https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python#quickstart
|
| [1]https://kkroening.github.io/ffmpeg-
| python/#ffmpeg.zoompan
|
| [2]https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#Examples-133
|
| EDIT: added options for slideshow style
| password4321 wrote:
| Nice! I think iMovie does this, but I usually use
| https://www.photofilmstrip.org/en
| agilob wrote:
| This looks identical to Kdenlive, how is this different from
| kdenlive? https://docs.kdenlive.org/en/user_interface.html#user-
| interf...
| woojoo666 wrote:
| In terms of history, looks like Shotcut had Windows support a
| few year before Kdenlive, for one. Also the main developer of
| Shotcut was one of the co-creators of MLT, which is the
| multimedia framework behind both Shotcut and Kdenlive.
|
| As for features I haven't used Kdenlive enough to compare,
| since Shotcut works fine for me (never had any crashes, though
| this was using the Windows version so ymmv)
| baud147258 wrote:
| I did a pair of videos a few years ago, neat product, had a bunch
| of crashes the first time (like every few hours while editing,
| but never while exporting), not so much the second. Encoding
| options were confusing, so as a total novice I just choose at
| random until I was happy with the results.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Anyone use this? Opinions?
| suby wrote:
| I use it and like it, though I don't make videos often or have
| experience with non-free video editors. It's more than enough
| for me and was dead simple to learn.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I've tried every open source video editor. They're all pretty
| awful. Even something as simple as iMovie is frankly several
| leagues ahead of them.
|
| The one I always come back to is Blender. It too has serious
| issues, but it is actually improving fairly rapidly. In the
| latest releases you can scrub through video without it crawling
| to a halt (wow I know right!) and it has a non-tedious way to
| add text, etc.
|
| Basically its interface is ... well if you've used Blender you
| know what it's like. But it does at least not crash, and you
| are unlikely to run into "you can't do that" issues, even if
| doing some simple things like changing the speed of a clip
| involves several YouTube tutorials and a bunch of caveats.
|
| So yeah, open source video editing still sucks.
| heretogetout wrote:
| I use it every few days to create game videos to share with
| friends. I like that it's super easy to extract and combine
| segments from multiple videos and easy to add a second audio
| track (like from a microphone). It's never crashed on me and it
| feels relatively polished compared to the other free
| applications I've used (the names of which escape me).
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Didn't have all the bells and whistles that kdenlive had for my
| use case.
| rchaud wrote:
| I used both Shotcut and Davinci Resolve on MacOS. Shotcut
| provided the perfect amount of middle ground between iMovie and
| all the power user stuff in Davinci. More importantly, Shotcut
| worked well on my 2014 Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and 128GB
| storage. Davinci is probably the better software but it ran
| very slowly once you added a couple of video/audio/photo
| layers. And the storage it ate up inside project files to store
| the cache was unbelievable. 30GB+ for for a 10 min 1080p video.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Reluctant to say "throw hardware at it", but I got one of the
| new M1 MBPs, my first Mac ever, and I can throw multi-cam
| 4K30 2/3 cams around with no optimized media, and it
| basically always runs without dropped frames, just using the
| H264/265 media generated by the cameras. I got the 2TB
| storage, because on my previous laptop I always was eating up
| so much space with optimized media, but it's way overkill now
| that I don't need that. But I didn't know that going into it.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| When did you last use DaVinci? I've been using it for the
| past year and a half, and my project files are all under
| 10MB. I just checked my most recent video (around 30 minutes
| of 4K video), and the project file was 5.77MB
|
| Edit: I just opened the project up because I was curious
| about the RAM and vRAM. When it's idle it took 1.5GB of RAM
| and 1GB of vRAM. Scrolling through the project very quickly
| pushed the RAM up to 4.5GB and vRAM up to 2GB.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I've used it for youtube videos and some school projects for
| the kids. I'm happy that it's free. It did not have any
| crashes, but definitely I'm not a heavy user. I used it in
| Linux.
|
| The user interface could be easier, for example deleting "ahs
| and ums" and silent time is a bit tedious. Also there are many
| output options, and it's confusing for a light user which to
| choose.
|
| I've also used Lightworks, which is much nicer, but not free
| (except for 720p). Many of the non-free options want you on a
| subscription basis.
| hjek wrote:
| For me, Shotcut, Openshot, Flowblade, Olive and Pitivi have
| been crashing to often to be worth using. Openshot used to be
| less flaky when I used it a few years ago when it was in GTK
| but the Qt version has not been stable to me.
|
| Kdenlive is amazing though, especially the timegraphs for
| applying effects, and the clip proxying which makes it
| amazingly smooth for large projects on old laptops. I don't
| think any of the other free video editors come anywhere close.
| RappingBoomer wrote:
| kdenlive used to be fairly usable, but a recent upgrade
| messed up the interface, making it too large to be very
| usable
| Inityx wrote:
| I had a really bad experience last time I tried to use
| Kdenlive.
|
| Even on a pretty powerful system, having a project timeline
| longer than an hour made the entire interface run at ~5fps
| for me when adjusting cuts. After that, I started using
| DaVinci Resolve, which definitely still has problems, but
| runs like nothing else I've seen.
| hjek wrote:
| > Even on a pretty powerful system, having a project
| timeline longer than an hour made the entire interface run
| at ~5fps for me when adjusting cuts.
|
| Did you use proxy clips? It's not on by default[0].
|
| [0]: https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Projects_and_
| Files/...
| simbas wrote:
| We use kdenlive at work with the same results. Sometimes
| crashes but Auto save saves the day
| prox wrote:
| Never had Kdenlive crash on me. Win 11. Solid here.
| Jistern wrote:
| This! Simply presume kdenlive will frequently crash. I
| found it very disconcerting at first, but I learned to
| treat kdenlive's frequent crashing as a mildly annoying
| glitch (peccadillo).
| Bellamy wrote:
| Best that I've found for Linux. For cutting it's really good
| but if you need advanced object tracking or special effects,
| keep searching.
| jaggs wrote:
| I've used it. It's great. Pretty easy to learn, and output
| looks nice. Mind you I'm an enthusiastic amateur not a pro
| user. I've used other video editors before, like pinnacle,
| premiere elements etc, and while Shotcut is not as slick, it
| gets the job done with minimal fuss. And hard to argue with the
| price.
| brink wrote:
| I used it for a few projects. Very good for being free.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I used it for awhile, but there are a lot of short comings.
| It's very unintuitive and I would often spend more time trying
| to figure out how to do a thing than doing a thing. I switched
| to DaVinci Resolve (also free), and never looked back. I
| eventually spent the one time payment of around $300 for access
| to GPU accelerated encoding and a few additional filters and
| stuff.
| wazoox wrote:
| Resolve is free as beer, but Shotcut is free as speech. Know
| the difference.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| It's free.
|
| It actually has quite a lot of functions, and effects, but the
| UI/UX is so so in my opinion.
|
| Video rendering and export is fast enough which is a good
| thing, even when using effects.
|
| The real test with most of these authoring tools is text
| support and how comprehensive it is, or not, as titling is an
| important aspect of video editing.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| > The real test with most of these authoring tools is text
| support
|
| So how's the text support?
| jarrell_mark wrote:
| It's good. For my use case, better than Kdenlive on Windows.
| Shortcut renders much faster than Kdenlive because Shotcut
| supports HW encoding using the integrated Intel GPU. Kdenlive
| only supports that on Linux.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I've only used it for splicing together bike cam videos and
| then cutting them to 2 minutes before and after the incident
| for submitting to police (that's quite common for police forces
| in the UK when dealing with close-pass etc footage).
|
| It was easy enough to figure out how to use it and I've got
| about zero knowledge of video editing. To be honest, I should
| really change to using ffmpeg instead as OpenShot can be a bit
| of a resource hog when exporting the video.
|
| I have found the cross-platform support to be useful as I
| mainly use linux, but the more powerful PC that I've got is
| running windows (for running games).
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| You want "ffmpeg -ss <start time as hh:mm:ss> -t <length in
| seconds or as hh:mm:ss> -i <your video here>.mp4 -c copy
| output.mp4" or something along those lines.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Wow, the police actually care about stuff like that over
| there? what a world.
| inwit wrote:
| A good one, right?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It varies a lot between different areas as to how well they
| deal with it and they have inconsistent standards as to
| what consists of actionable evidence. I'm covered by Avon &
| Somerset which is one of the better ones.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Meanwhile here in the states the most significant police
| action in regard to cyclists rights I can identify is the
| time I took the lane in front of a police cruiser due to
| a car illegally parked n the bike lane, pointing at this
| infraction as I did so, and the pig riding shotgun rolled
| down his window to mock me as they cruised past.
| pmontra wrote:
| I used to use OpenShot. I totally forgot how to use it after
| a few years hiatus and I could not find a way do what I
| remember I was doing, so I switched to plain ffmpeg. I use it
| to cut pieces of videos and extract the audio track. I use
| Audacity to denoise the audio, adjust the volume and silence
| some sequences. Then ffmpeg again to assemble everything into
| the final video. That never crashes and it's easier to
| document than working in a GUI.
| ericskiff wrote:
| I taught my 10 year old son how to use this because he wanted
| more than iMovie.
|
| He loves learning how to use effects and titles, creating lots
| of cuts, and intercutting between different tracks. He even did
| some lightweight animation using it.
|
| It's the most similar to the old-school feel of Premiere and
| Final Cut, and has given him a great foundation in non-linear
| editing and 2 years later he absolutely flies in it!
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| This is probably the best /advertisement/ of a product. If a
| 10yo can do things in it - then (at least) it has the UI what
| is understandable even to 10yo, for a pretty convoluted
| process of a non-linear editing.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Obligatory "strongly consider switching to Davinci Resolve".
| ziftface wrote:
| Can you explain for someone who is not familiar with this line
| of work?
| Joeboy wrote:
| Davinci Resolve is non-free but good. Shotcut is free but
| non-good.
| byteflip wrote:
| I've only used resolve a handful of times but it's
| fantastic. Also pretty sure you get a lot of features in
| the free version of Resolve... it was more than capable for
| my needs.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| My experience was: shotcut makes the hard things hard, and
| the easy things even harder. DaVinci felt like a
| straightforward, no BS, just get the job done kind of tool in
| comparison. I guess my big takeaway was UX was horrible in
| Shotcut compared to DaVinci.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Tried to use Shotcut years ago to edit a documentary and it
| crashed constantly. Neat idea, bad execution. Maybe it's gotten
| better since then but it was unusable for serious work ca 2015.
| progre wrote:
| My take: It worked excellent for unserious work a couple of
| weeks ago.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| 2015 was 7 years ago.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Yeah, it was bad enough that I gave up on my quest to use
| Linux for media production and switched back to macOS. Never
| had the occasion to try it again.
| btown wrote:
| This is very cool! I've been looking for some time for a project
| that has:
|
| - a stellar editing UI for "prototyping" a well-edited video
|
| - a well-documented timeline-level API for the file format that
| can replace, timeshift, and add clips and tracks, and
|
| - be able to run on cloud hardware as a render service
|
| Imagine creating a promotional video, then automatically swapping
| in each client's logo and re-rendering it for each one! The
| possibilities here are endless.
|
| DaVinci Resolve can't be beat for #1 and seems to support #3
| well, but its API seems designed more for plugins than for
| automated authoring. For instance, the documentation at
| https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9927...
| seems to give just read-only access to a lot of things at the
| TimelineClip level. And https://github.com/pedrolabonia/pydavinci
| has exactly one contributor.
|
| By contrast, Shotcut seems to be built on, and by,
| https://mltframework.org/ with a close correspondence between the
| runtime API surface and the file system representation of a file,
| and it's fully open-source. Very possibly the sweet spot we've
| been looking for!
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Here's a bit of feedback, in the event anyone who manages the
| site reads this comment section:
|
| 1) I checked the FAQ and the 2nd and 3rd question in the FAQ were
| about crashing on Windows. I get the impression that this
| software is extremely unstable across OSes. This is a really bad
| foot to start off on.
|
| Can anyone speak to the stability of Shotcut? I see a few
| comments below mentioning crashes, I just can't tell if we're
| talking every month or so, or every 5 minutes. If I were to
| switch video editors, having the program crash on me constantly
| is obviously a very big problem.
|
| 2) I didn't see any obvious language defining _why_ I should
| switch to Shotcut. I use kdenlive to cut up screen shares and
| render them to webm; I do occasional light editing work to make
| tutorials for people. Kdenlive is a _little_ clunky in some ways,
| but it gets the job done and I was able to figure out the basics
| after watching a quick tutorial on YouTube.
|
| So...what does Shotcut offer that kdenlive doesn't? How could
| this task be made easier? Both software options can be used for
| commercial use, so what's the benefit of Shotcut over kdenlive?
| If Shotcut renders quicker, or supports more file formats, or
| makes it somehow easier to edit videos, I can see the appeal but
| there doesn't appear to be any introductory literature on their
| landing page or FAQ hammering these points home. Granted, I could
| probably devote the time to figuring this out myself, but it just
| seems like a lot of effort to learn something that should have
| been covered on the site.
|
| One of those comparison breakdowns of side-by-side +/- images
| would have been a good starting point. Maybe it's buried
| somewhere else on the site, but if it is, it should be moved up
| to the front of the site, preferably on the main page.
| mike_hock wrote:
| So apparently in Shotcut you can make a transition between
| clips on the same track by just sliding them into each other.
| in Kdenlive you have to have them on different tracks and add
| transitions between them.
|
| Not something that makes or breaks the editor, just something
| that caught my eye watching the tutorial videos. It's great for
| really simple home video editing.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I had it crash consistently on linux on startup, which as IIRC
| was something to do with the initial splash screen and was
| fixed by manually setting an option. Other than that, I've had
| it crash a couple of times when exporting, but I think that was
| the OS desperately reclaiming memory on an under-powered
| machine.
|
| Can't help with comparing it to kdenlive.
| truly wrote:
| I use it for small video processing. It is better than openshot
| in my experience in terms of stability. The interface is
| reasonably good, with the exception of cropping, where you have
| to turn to ffmpeg (to be fair, all visual video editors do
| cropping badly).
| mro_name wrote:
| congrats, what a cute name.
| leke wrote:
| I thought this was Openshot for some reason, but then realised it
| wasn't :)
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