Source video - video mode - export settings?

[brian]

@chrisb

if my source footage is 4k, say mp4, and I set the timeline to, say, HD prores

You are mixing concepts a little bit in your question.

prores is an export format. Which is different than the thing you really care about:

Settings > Video Mode

Introduction Video Mode is the project resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate, and color space. It is important to set this as you desire at the beginning of your project. If you try to change it later Shotcut will try to retain the timing of edits, but some users have reported problems, and it is risky. Also, at this time Shotcut will not automatically adjust anything for you related to size and positioning of elements like text and picture-in-picture when changing resolution. You can think of …

If your video mode is HD, and your source clip is 4k, the SPR filter will operate on the source video resolution in order to maintain the best resolution.

@chrisb

Related to this, it looks as though each open project can only have one timeline, so if we want to create different versions (say a vertical video) we would need to start a new project and import the XML of the master timeline.

Have a look at this:

Turn a full video into a TikTok-style vertical video

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 9:16, perfect for TikTok and other vertical video platforms. [Change Aspect Ratio In Shotcut Video Editor Reframe]