Possible Fix for Shotcut Lag / Jerky Playback (Ryzen + Windows 11) worth checking

Help/How To
1

I’ve spent the last few days trying to diagnose an odd Shotcut playback issue, so I thought I’d share what I’ve found in case it helps someone else.

My symptoms

  • Playback was perfectly smooth when I first opened a project.

  • As soon as I imported any new media (video, image or audio), playback immediately became jerky and slightly out of sync.

  • Saving the project, closing Shotcut and reopening it restored perfectly smooth playback… until I imported another file.

  • CPU, RAM, GPU and SSD usage all stayed very low, so it wasn’t a hardware performance issue.

I tried just about everything:

  • Different Shotcut versions (including older releases)

  • Preview scaling

  • Hardware decoding

  • Display methods

  • AMD driver checks

  • Process Explorer looking for injected DLLs (Grammarly, Reverso, overlays, etc.)

  • Even tested Premiere Pro and Kdenlive

None of those solved it.

What made the biggest difference

The first major improvement came after disabling Windows gaming features:

Settings → Gaming

  • Turn off Xbox Game Bar

  • Turn off Background Capture / Record what happened

Playback immediately became much smoother after that.

The second thing I found

I also use Malwarebytes.

I’d previously tried disabling it without success, but later I:

  • Turned Real-Time Protection back ON

  • Then turned it OFF again

  • Added Shotcut and my media/project folders to the Malwarebytes Allow List

Since doing that, the remaining playback issues appear to have disappeared.

I can’t say with certainty that Malwarebytes was the root cause yet, because I want to do a longer editing session to confirm it, but it’s the first thing that has made a noticeable difference after ruling out almost everything else.

My system

  • Lenovo ThinkPad T14

  • AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U

  • AMD Radeon Graphics

  • 32 GB RAM

  • Windows 11 Pro

Hopefully this saves someone else from spending days chasing codecs, proxies, GPU drivers and Shotcut settings like I did.

If anyone else has experienced similar behaviour, I’d be interested to know whether disabling Xbox Game Bar and adding Shotcut to the Malwarebytes Allow List made any difference for you.

2

It could be the file you are importing or the player settings in Shotcut.

Try going to Settings > Playback and enabling or disabling certain functions to optimize playback.

If that doesn’t work, try converting the file to a different format or a lower resolution.

And last but not least, use proxies.

3

Video editing is a very CPU intensive process.
The CPU itself is a 6 year old chip.
When was the last time it was professionally cleaned with fresh thermal paste?
Your laptop is thinner than most; there is not much room for airflow.
This is what your heatsink/fan looks like. This is what takes heat away from your CPU.

opera_2026-07-07_15-11-36
opera_2026-07-07_15-11-36771×400 55 KB

Thermal paste on the CPU degrades over time, and the fan will collect tons of dust even in the cleanest environments. I do not recommend attempting to clean your own laptop. Shops know how to take apart your laptop without damaging vital components. When the CPU gets too hot, it will be throttled down in an attempt to save the CPU from getting too hot.

Are your CPU temps spiking when you get lag?

Xbox Game Bar and any anti-virus program just sit there and eat up memory all the time. OBS Studio is a much cleaner program to capture the games you play or other video content. I’ve had Xbox Game Bar blocked from downloading for many years now.

Can you share a screenshot from Shotcut’s Properties window about the file you’re having a problem with?