I have an instructional video for teaching a piece on guitar. I need to be able to insert the chord names at appropriate spaces in the video; the text, therefore, changes every few seconds. After finding a few instructional videos, it seemed that the best way to accomplish this was to add text via Filters, and then use the Split at Playhead command to create text for the next chord. This all went very well (although I did find that about halfway through the video the text filter refused to add any more text, and I had to add a new text filter for the remainder of the piece), and after it was all done, I exported the video.
The exported video is full of clicks and pops, and I realized that they occur at every point where I split the video. In other words, every time the text (chord) changes, there is a pop or click. I went back to the original .mlt file, and the pops and clicks are there as well.
Is there any way to avoid this, or a better way to insert the text the way I need to use it (i.e., every few seconds)? I appreciate the time and effort it takes to keep this forum responsive.
Add a new video track (Ctrl+Y) then add a transparent colour (File>Open Other>Color then press OK, no need to choose a color as the default is transparent). This will appear as black in the preview window, ignore that just drag it to the new video track (V2). You can then split this transparent colour as needed so that you can add the text where necessary for your video in the V1 timeline.
Not all audio formats/codecs, for example mp3 or AAC split perfectly clean, which is what you experienced, even though Shotcut tries hard to prevent it. Steve’s suggestion helps you avoid the need to split. There are some other things to try in cases where you still feel the need to split. For one, use the filter trimming feature in the Keyframes panel to limit the time range of a filter. Secondly, in the clip Properties panel there is a menu button with the item “Convert to Edit-friendly…” that you can use to convert the file to something better. Use the “better” or “best” options in that dialog to avoid AAC audio.