Shotcut offers an option to convert video clips to make them better for editing.
Some reasons people might want to convert their clips:
- Editing HDR Source Clips
- Editing Variable Frame Rate Source Clips
- Converting clips to “intra-only” to apply speed effect filters (Time remap, etc)
- Performing motion compensated frame rate interpolation to provide intermediate frames for slow effects
- Editing clips that are difficult for Shotcut to edit
To access the “Convert to Edit-friendly…” dialog, view the properties panel for the clip, and then click on the “Convert…” button.
This button will open up the “Convert to Edit-friendly…” dialog.
The dialog allows the user to choose the quality of the converted file. All three options are considered “visually lossless”. For most applications, “good” is a great choice. The “best” option creates considerably larger files with only slightly better quality.
Click the “OK” button to start the conversion job. After the job finishes, the original clip in the project will be automatically replaced by the converted clip. It is safe to continue editing the project while the conversion job is in progress.
Advanced Conversion Options
Click the “Advanced” button to display the advanced options.
The advanced options include:
- Use sub-clip - converts only the trimmed portion of the source clip plus a little instead of the entire clip. When this option is used not all of the matching source clips are replaced, instead only the currently selected one
- Deinterlace - force the converted clip to be progressive and will apply deinterlacing to the source file if it is interlaced
- Override frame rate & Frames/sec - allows the user to set a specific frame rate. When unchecked, the converted file frame rate will match the original clip frame rate. If the clip is detected to be VFR, Shotcut will automatically set the frame rate to match the Settings > Video Mode frame rate
- Frame rate conversion - specifies the frame rate conversion method. only enabled when Override frame rate is checked. The options include:
- Duplicate (fast) - skip or repeat frames to achieve the desired frame rate
- Blend - blend adjacent frames to create new frames as needed
- Motion Compensation (slow) - apply a motion compensation algorithm to generate new frames
- Convert to BT.709 colorspace - this option converts the colorspace to BT.709. This is useful for HDR source clips. If Shotcut detects the source clip is HDR, this option will be checked automatically.
- Sample rate - convert the audio sample rate. Sometimes it is helpful to convert the audio sample rate to 48kHz to avoid audio resampling when editing and during export.