Good day to everyone, just decided to give my views of how well Shotcut performs for me. I use it on an HP Probook 6550B with 4 Gb of memory running Windows 7 Ultimate. My previous editor was Sony Movie Studio 13 Platinum and it worked very well for me. I started using Shotcut after seeing it on one of those best free software videos that are on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel where I post mostly electronics videos and I figured maybe someone might benefit from a good free video editor. I only meant to use it for a few videos and then go back to SMS 13, but the more I used it, the more I liked it.
I’ve now been using it since late September of last year and although it’s not perfect, it is pretty good for a free editor. I used Windows Movie Maker before switching to SMS 13 and while it doesn’t do a lot of special effects, it’s a pretty good basic editor. I’m still not sure I will continue to use Shotcut, but until something comes along that I totally don’t agree with I will probably stay with it.
There are a few “bugs” that I have learned to work around since I’ve been using it, one of the most annoying is not being able to use a fade in filter on a video clip without first moving it around a bit on the timeline. If I try to add a fade in to a video clip I’ve just added, the filter just doesn’t take. Then I move the video clip on the timeline and click on the empty area and then back to the clip, now the fade in will work just fine.
Another annoying one has to do with the 3D text. It does not stay where I put it. I set the spacing to where I want it, but after rendering the text will move closer together, most of the time overlapping. I’ve learned to space it out a good bit further than I want it to appear and this takes care of the problem most of the time.
Now I don’t know if these are truly bugs or it just has to do with the system I’m running on, but those are not enough to get me to stop using it and I figure at some time in the future these problems will be addressed. Of course if the problem is the computer or OS I am running, then they probably will never work right.
There are a few more minor items, but not worth mentioning here. I do appreciate the fact that this software is updated on a regular basis and all the hard work which goes into software like this. All in all I find Shotcut to be an excellent alternative to any of the free video editors out there that I have tried.
I gave it a try, works great! Thanks for the heads up Steve. How long has this been around? Is this considered a work around for a bug in the filter or just a new feature?
It’s been there for as long as I can remember. I’ve been a shotcut user for more than a year.
Many video editors use this grab’n’drag method for fades, so it was natural for me to go to it when I first tried SC.
Not a work around at all. It’s a way to manually and visually apply a video and audio fade in one action.
Yes, Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 works that way. With Shotcut, I have found that sometimes the context doesn’t get chosen correctly. I don’t know how else to describe it. But, sometimes I have had to select an adjacent clip and then re-select the target clip - and then the fade will apply correctly. Seems like there were some other instances of that happening as well but can’t remember them now. Best,
Well yes I’ve had that happen as well. Lately I’ve been having some problems with clips shifting. I will select a spot to split a clip and find after I do it the audio has moved to a different spot. Have to undo the split and then select it again. Frustrating, but I still am using it.
If you’re using a separate audio track, then locking it will prevent it moving.
If you;re not, then I don’t see how the audio can move when a clip’s video stream and audio stream cannot be unlinked. Can you give more information?
This can happen if you change the resolution in the Export panel. The HTML filters are using absolute size and position values, and when you change resolution, Shotcut is not smart enough to read the HTML and rewrite it with new values.
Okay, I have a clip with embedded audio and I split the clip just before the audio begins. Once I split it, the audio shifts so that the start of the audio is now on the other side of the split. This usually doesn’t happen on the original clip that I add to the timeline, but subsequent clips instead. It’s like the audio is not lined up properly when the clip is first added to the timeline and moves to align itself once a split is made. FYI sometimes I will set the cursor to a point before the audio and play the clip in the preview before I make the split. The audio does not match the audio in the timeline until you use the split tool. Again, an annoyance, not a deal breaker.
Thanks, but I never mess with the resolution until it’s time to export my edited video. And then the only thing I do is change the resolution from 1280x720 to 640x360 as it renders faster that way and uploads to YouTube faster also.
Should’nt have to.
I’ve never needed to use it - so I don’t know why you are having this issue.
I’m glad it’s there if I ever need to import a clip that does have an audio sync issue.
I split my clips all the time, it’s one of the first and most basic operations of any NLE. I’ve never had any go out of sync with their embedded audio track when using Shotcut.
