What PC specs is needed to edit videos smoothly with Shotcut?
I want to share my experience with Shotcut. Maybe other members in the community can find this post useful.
My first attempts with Shotcut was with a consumer grade HP laptop:
HP Notebook - 15-bw045no, CPU: AMD Dual-Core A9-9420 APU (3 GHz base frequency, burst up to 3,6 GHz, 1 MB cache). I bought this laptop new 2018 for appr USD 900.
Merging MP4 files works on this laptop. But editing is painfully slow.
I also have a business grade HP laptop with CPU Intel® Core™ i5-8265U with Intel® UHD Graphics 620 (1.6 GHz base frequency, up to 3.9 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 6 MB cache, 4 cores). Processor family 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 processor. Original memory 8 GB DDR4-2400 MHz RAM (1 x 8 GB) Transfer rates up to 2400 MT/s. Internal drive 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ SSD. This laptop came out 2019. Price was probably around USD 1000. I bought it used in December 2024 for USD 330.
Since then I have upgraded this laptop as follows:
Memory:
Crucial 32GB Kit (16GBx2) DDR4-3200 • CL=22 • NON-ECC • SODIMM • 260-pin • 1.2V • 2Rx8/1Rx8 • PC4-25600
Disks:
Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe M.2 2280 SSD SKU: CT4000P3PSSD8
Crucial BX500 4TB 2.5 inch SSD SKU: CT4000BX500SSD1
Total cost for these upgrades was EUR 638.
As it turns out 32 GB RAM was not needed. 16 GB would have been enough, but that part of the upgrade was only EUR 80. And maybe it will be useful in the future.
Editing videos runs smoothly on the business grade laptop after these upgrades (didn’t try Shotcut before the upgrade). According to task manager 7 GB RAM and 100% CPU is used during export / saving a large mp4-file. The export process takes a long time but that is not a problem for me because the laptop handles multitasking very well. I can multitask other programs while Shotcut is taking care of the export job in the background and other tasks isn’t running slower because of Shotcut. When I launch other applications, Shotcuts’ share of CPU is slightly reduced, and that part of CPU capacity is allocated to other apps I’m running. If I need to put the laptop in my backpack during travel, I can hibernate it and when I resume Windows, the export job also resumes and finishes automatically.
The reason why Shotcut export job takes long time can be the settings I have in Shotcut. Here is my Advanced Export settings in Shotcut:
No hardware encoding.
Advanced export settings:
Video tab (my changes):
Deinterlacer: BWDIF (best)
Interpolation: Lanczos (best)
Codec tab:
No change
Audio tab:
Rate control: Quality-based VBR
Quality 100%
Other tab:
vprofile=high
movflags=+faststart
preset=medium
tune=film
channel_layout=auto
The other settings are note changed so they should be as they were from the start (default).
Se screenshot:
I’m a Shotcut beginner and I must confess I hadn’t a clue if these settings would work or not. I read about the “Other tab” entries in another post. “Tune=film” is supposed to be good for videos with fast moves. I don’t remember what the other entries is for… But they have worked well for me.
My goal is to merge several mp4 files and create a new one with smallest size possible but still keeping the quality of the source files. I have compared the source files and the file created with Shotcut (watching them on large screen) and I can’t see any difference. I have no large surround system or HiFi system I can use to compare sound. I have great earphones from Skullcandy, and I am very pleased with the sound of the Shotcut export file in the Skullcandy earphones. I can’t wait to try this on a large sound system. In my experience the ultimate sound quality test is when you play music with a high end sound system in a large room with very loud volume, if the sound is great under those circumstances, then you now the source is great also.
It’s amazing how small files Shotcut export can create. For example, I had 6 mp4 files consuming 11.6 GB of diskspace. I merged them and exported with Shotcut using the settings specified above and got a file with size only 3.93 GB on disk! And I can’t notice any quality degrade!
As I have stated above I don’t know if the settings I’m using in Export Advanced Settings are the best for my goal.
Comments are welcome!
FIRST. Both computers are powerful, “deceptively modern,” but not enough to work with very large encoded 4K files.
reminds me of Open Movie Editor, a dead project. In fact, the author recommended AVS Video Editor to its users.
, export to MJPEG and look 
the difference 
… in the end your good videos will be ruined when uploaded somewhere, when they are converted!