This setting is only available on Linux.
As of version 26.6, the Software option mentioned below was removed because at some point it seems to have stopped working. I kept the information below in case you are using an older version and it works. Version 26.6 added a new option: Vulkan. Vulkan is a newer GPU technology.
Shotcut uses OpenGL technology to draw its user interface and display video. OpenGL is typically implemented in the GPU of your computer and its driver in the operating system. These two pieces (Shotcut and the UI library it uses) and the OpenGL implementation need to communicate using a complex protocol. Sometimes, they do not communicate well and have compatibility or interoperability problems. Thus, there are some workarounds:
- use only software using a library called Mesa 3D. While this is known to be very compatible, it is much slower since it is not hardware-accelerated.
If you choose Automatic, Shotcut’s UI library chooses one of the options based on the model of your GPU, and usually that is OpenGL. You can see what Shotcut is using by looking in View > Application Log… from the main menu. Then, after about 100 lines, look for the lines start with
[Info ] Mlt::GLWidget::initializeGL
If you see the following, then it is using Software:
[Info ] Mlt::GLWidget::initializeGL OpenGL vendor “VMware, Inc.”
[Info ] Mlt::GLWidget::initializeGL OpenGL renderer “Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.4, 256 bits)”
This setting corresponds to the key opengl in the configuration file or registry.