Ideas to make Shotcut more intuitive

This is just an idea I had about some filters.
The idea of a filter is that it applies an effect to a video.
Therefore filters such as the text filter, the audio waveform generator filter and the HTML overlay (also any other filters that create an overlay) aren’t really filters, so it would be much better for them to be:
a) in their own section. This would help with continuity and make navigation easier for beginners.
b) not need to be attached to any particular clip (they are their own object on the timeline). This would be useful for having just that filter without anything else in the background.

Let me know what you think

I think you are seeing problems where none exist. I haven’t found anything particularly un-intuitive about Shotcut. What are the difficulties you are experiencing with the current UI?

I don’t particularly have problems with the UI at the moment, but when I was just starting to use shotcut back at v16.9, I couldn’t figure out how to add things like text where there wasn’t any other video playing.
I now know that this isn’t possible and I am forced to use a cheap workaround by having a black image which I add text to.

Making filters such as text and audio visualisation into objects that aren’t attached to any other file would as well as making the use of these filters easier, also add the capability to add filters to them (for example adding a fade-in to an audio visualisation. (This currently doesn’t work and I need to do cheap workarounds))

In my opinion, this design just makes more sense than the current design.

I’ll quickly photoshop a concept

Edit: the reason that I put this as a feature suggestion rather than a bug is that it isn’t an issue, it is just an area in which improvements can be made

I think I have an idea of what you’re saying. But I’m not quite sure how that would work, as when I’m working with filters, I may only apply one filter to one clip out of 12 in V1, then might have 5 various filters applied to 10 out of 20 clips in V2.

I think I’ve ventured out of the Beginner stage, and emerging into the moderate stage of understanding of this program. Just started editing video in Fall 2017, and this has been the only software I’ve used. I do have quite a few years of linear editing 1/2" tape (VHS). I’m quite comfortable on how Shotcut is layed out and how it functions.

Thanks for explaining.
BTW: ‘Cheap Workarounds’ is a rather unkind way of describing different methods used by Shotcut. Software doesn’t have to adhere to our personal tastes. Rather like telling the author of a book to write like everyone else because that’s what you’re used to.

Sorry if you interpreted it that way. What I meant was that I had to come up with unusual and complex was of doing things that I feel should be simple (such as using keyframes on an opacity filter to get a fadeout to work properly or importing an audio visualisation mlt as a video so that I can add filters to it)

Overall I love shotcut because of its nice design and the community that has built up around it.

I’m not quite understanding. I use fade in/ fade out on both audio and video all of the time without a problem. How should they work? I’m missing something there. Not quite understanding how keyframes and the apacity filter make them work for you.


This is the basic idea of what it would look like on the timeline

image
This is a concept of the media tab (which could contain media that has already been added to the project, as well as standalone objects such as text)

(Witness the power of MS paint)

The fade-in and fade-out issue is unreleated to this. Here’s a link to the bug report

any thoughts? @Steve_Ledger ?

(See concept above)

Off topic and likely spam!

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