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Shotcut is a free, open-source, and cross-platform video editor available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is developed by Meltytech, LLC, with Dan Dennedy as its current lead developer, who rewrote the software based on MLT.

Shotcut Features

Shotcut offers a surprisingly powerful set of features for a free program, catering to diverse user needs, from seasoned creators to novice editors.

Core Video Editing Capabilities:

  • Trimming, Cutting, Splitting, and Merging: You can easily cut and split larger videos into clips, then merge them together. Trimming can be done on the source clip player or timeline with a ripple option.
  • Reversing Videos: Play videos backward in seconds.
  • Cropping: Crop videos to any aspect ratio for free.
  • Converting and Exporting: Convert video to HD quality or MP3 audio and export without watermarks. It supports a large array of output options, including Apple ProRes, HDV, DVD, Flash, H.264, GIF animation, OGG Vorbis, WebM, and WMV, and can export with the H.265 codec for better 4K compression.
  • Multi-Track Timeline: Features a multitrack timeline with thumbnails and waveforms. You can hide, mute, and lock track controls.
  • Non-Destructive Editing: Allows for native timeline editing without requiring import, which also means you save space on project files as it uses references to files on your drive.

Advanced Editing and Effects:

  • Audio Editing: Add audio, songs, voiceovers, and sound effects to videos. It includes extensive audio features such as volume control, various audio filters (e.g., Equalizer, Compressor, Noise Gate), audio mixing across all tracks, and fade in/out controls. You can record directly to the timeline for voiceover.
  • Motion Control: Create easy stop motion video animations, slow down videos for cool slo-mo effects, or speed them up. It also supports speed ramping and reversing clips.
  • Visual Enhancements:
    • Blur Video: Add blur/mosaic or pixelate videos.
    • Picture-in-Picture (PIP): Create overlay videos like a professional. This is treated as a filter using the “Size and Position” tool, providing WYSIWYG handles for resizing and moving PiPs.
    • Video Effects & Filters: Includes transition effects, slow-mo FX, bold glamour filters, hyperlapse, and numerous other video filters such as Color Grading, Chroma Key (Simple and Advanced), Crop, Drop Shadow, Glow, Gradient, HSL Primaries, Invert Colors, Lens Correction, Mask, Mirror, Noise, Opacity, Posterize, Reduce Noise, Rotate and Scale, Saturation, Sepia Tone, Sharpen, Stabilize, Text, Threshold, Vibrance, and Vignette. It’s loaded with reel templates for Instagram and effect house templates for TikTok.
    • Stabilize shaky footage and remove camera shake effects.
    • Green Screen Editor: Remove a selected color from video using the chroma key technique. While the “Simple Chroma Key” might leave some green, the “Advanced Chroma Key” offers more control.
    • Video Background Remover: Cutout and remove video backgrounds without a green screen.
    • Color Grading and Correction: Offers 3-way color wheels for color correction and grading, an eye dropper tool for white balancing, and support for LUT (lookup table) files for custom color effects.
    • Text Options: Add text over videos, including simple and 3D text. Shotcut can also convert spoken word to subtitle text.

AI Video Editor Tools: The “AI Video Editor: ShotCut AI” app on Google Play (note: this is distinct from the general open-source Shotcut mentioned in other sources, but uses a similar name) highlights several AI-powered capabilities:

  • AI Captions: Offers a free trial for transcribing videos to text with smarter sentence and precise word segmentation, supporting all major languages.
  • AI Automusic: Enriches videos with auto-generated music that matches the video’s style.
  • AI Text Generation: Crafts powerful titles, hashtags, and descriptions for maximum engagement after you upload your video and specify the platform.

Other Noteworthy Features:

  • Wide Format Support: Supports hundreds of audio and video formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg, including popular image formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP, as well as image sequences.
  • Resolution Support: Supports 4K and 8K resolutions.
  • Multi-format Timeline: Allows mixing and matching resolutions and frame rates within a single project.
  • Keyframes: Supports keyframes for filter parameters and easing functions, allowing for dynamic adjustments over time.
  • Portable App: Can run as a portable application from an external drive.
  • Hardware Acceleration: Supports AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA hardware encoding to dramatically speed up H.264/HEVC video encoding.
  • Low Resolution Proxy Editing: Improves speed of seeking and minimizes scaling, useful for improving performance on less powerful machines.

Shotcut Pricing

Shotcut is completely free to use. As an open-source software, all users have access to its full suite of features without any cost, subscriptions, or purchases. Notably, it does not impose watermarks on your videos or bombard you with ads, unlike many other free video editing tools.

How to Use Shotcut (Basic Workflow)

To get started with Shotcut and create a video, here’s a basic workflow:

  1. Download and Install: Download Shotcut from its official website to ensure it’s safe and clean, then follow the setup wizard.
  2. Start a New Project: Every time you open Shotcut, you’ll need to create a new project. Set a project folder path, give it a name (e.g., “Test”), and select a video mode (e.g., HD 1080p 30 fps) before clicking “Start”.
  3. Set Layout: For typical video editing, choose the “Timeline Project” layout.
  4. Import Media: Import your video files by going to “File” > “Open File,” or by clicking “Open File” in the toolbar if “Show toolbar” is enabled. Alternatively, click “Playlist” in the toolbar and drag and drop your video files there.
  5. Add to Timeline: Drag the imported videos from the Playlist to the Timeline area for editing. It’s helpful to enable the “Toggle snapping” option and zoom in or out of the timeline as needed.
  6. Basic Edits:
    • Splitting: Move the playhead to the desired split point on the Timeline and click ‘Split At Playhead’ (or press ‘S’).
    • Adding Text: Click “Filters” in the toolbar, switch to the “Video” tab, search for “Text,” and choose “Text: Simple” or “Text: 3D.” You can then type your text, choose font, size, and color.
    • Speed Adjustment: Select a clip on the timeline, click “Properties” in the toolbar, find the “Speed” option, and change the value (higher than 1x for speed-up, lower than 1x for slow motion).
    • Adding Transitions: Drag two adjacent video clips so they overlap on the same video track. A transition zone will appear, and you can choose a transition type in the “Properties” panel (e.g., Dissolve, Cut).
  7. Export Your Video: Once editing is complete, go to “File” and then “Export video”.
    • Choose a preset for online platforms like “YouTube” or codecs like “H.264 Main Profile” or “HEVC”.
    • You can click “Advanced” to change resolution, frame rate, or aspect ratio.
    • If your computer has hardware acceleration (Intel, Nvidia, AMD), check “Use hardware encoder” for faster encoding.
    • Click “Export File” and give your video a filename, remembering to keep the file extension.
    • Important: Use the “Export” function to get a playable video file. “File > Save” or “Save As” will save a project file, which is useful for future editing but not for playing the final video.

Tips for Performance: For users with older machines or less powerful hardware (e.g., Intel Core i5-10210U CPU and 8 GB of RAM), it is crucial to use Proxy Edit and Preview Scaling features to prevent lagging during editing. Proxy editing allows you to edit in low quality, with the video exporting in high quality, and preview scaling lowers the quality of your editing preview for faster performance.

AI Alternatives

While the open-source Shotcut (as described in many sources) does not inherently feature AI tools, the “AI Video Editor: ShotCut AI” app on Google Play does incorporate AI capabilities as mentioned above. Beyond this specific app, several other video editing software, particularly those leveraging AI, serve as alternatives for various needs:

  • CapCut:
    • Pros: Highly recommended for beginners due to its user-friendly interface and rapid workflow automation. It’s praised for its extensive library of filters, effects, and pre-designed templates, which simplify and speed up the editing process. CapCut offers automatic transcription, smooth transitions, multi-language support, and high-quality export. It runs well even on notebooks with less powerful hardware and supports proxy editing. It’s leading the industry for TikTok and Instagram reels and is highly linked to these platforms.
    • Cons: Some users consider it a more basic version of Shotcut with fewer functions and note its strong encouragement to connect with TikTok. It sells plugins for more filters/effects, unlike Shotcut which is entirely free.
  • DaVinci Resolve:
    • Pros: Considered the most professional and best free video editing software. It’s an industry-standard tool for post-production, encompassing video editing, visual effects, color correction, and sound design. It has a node-based interface renowned for advanced color grading and editing capabilities. Its AI features include Smart Reframing, Object Detection, Facial Recognition, Film Look Creator, ColorSlice Vector Grading (Studio version), Atmospheric Simulation, Edge Detection, and IntelliTrack AI Tracking.
    • Cons: It’s often described as complicated and heavy to process for computers without a dedicated GPU, leading to lagging and crashes. It has a steep learning curve and users have reported bugs, especially with Bluetooth headphones and exporting.
  • Adobe Premiere Pro: Often considered the gold standard for video editing. It is a paid software, typically accessed via a Creative Cloud subscription. Its AI features include smart masking and tracking tools, scene edit detection, auto-reframe, and tools for editing multiple clips. It also includes Lumetri for AI-driven color adjustments (Color Match, Auto Color) and After Effects, the industry standard for VFX and motion graphics with AI features like Content-Aware Fill, Auto Reframe, Morph Cut, Auto Select, Auto Edge Detect, and Auto Propagate for motion tracking and rotoscoping.
  • Final Cut Pro: Preferred by Mac users for its fast processing and AI tools like Smooth Slo-Mo, Shaky Video Correction, and Magnetic Timeline. It is a paid software.
  • Other AI Tools for Post-Production: The sources mention various AI tools specialized for different aspects of post-production:
    • Sound Design: Adobe Audition (Audio Category Tagging, Enhance Speech) and iZotope RX (Dialogue Isolate, Repair Assistant).
    • Visual Effects & Animation: Runway AI (Video Manipulation, Motion Tracking, Style Transfer, Image/Video Generation, 3D Capture), and Adobe Animate (Lip-Syncing, Character Animator).
    • Compositing: Nuke by Foundry (Deep Image Compositing, Custom Scripting).
    • Localization/Subtitling: Wondershare UniConverter (AI Subtitle Translator), Veed.io (AI dubbing), Descript, and Kapwing (instant subtitles, captions, translation).

In essence, if you’re looking for a free, robust, and feature-rich editing tool that gives you a lot of control and don’t mind a learning curve, Shotcut is like a well-equipped workshop with all the necessary hand tools. However, if you prefer an automated workflow with more ready-made effects, templates, and a quicker learning curve, then CapCut is more like a modern factory with assembly lines and pre-fabricated parts, especially for social media content. For those aiming for professional-grade productions with extensive color grading and complex visual effects, DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere Pro are akin to specialized studios with high-end machinery and dedicated experts.