Why do you use Shotcut?

I created this thread for people talk about the reasons they use Shotcut. When someone chooses something usually they have a set of reasons and Shotcut for sure isn’t different with this regard.

Let’s hear about your reasons, from my side here they are :

  • Easy to use video editor once you learn the basics
  • It has a good set of features for video edition
  • It’s free and available for three different platforms
  • Good developer support
  • It’s not a big package with more features that can really be used
  • A good set of planned features to make Shotcut even better
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I struggle but happily use ShotCut for the following reasons
High Resolution Trasnscoding and Exports

Fast FPS Video manipulation 180fps+

I can get my hands in the source code if something that’s breaking needs fixed.

Emense Codec and Container support for FOSS

E.G.

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  • I can use it to teach video editing to people with any OS at home and any income level and since 16.11 users don’t even need admin rights (free and* open source, cross-platform, portable)
  • It has excellent failure recovery and project savefiles are reliable (no glitches where after loading a project it is different from when you saved it)
  • I use it for small projects in which I need neither pan nor zoom animations

*open source means users are better protected against future malicious business models to me.

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  • I was a Kdenlive user but I never did like all the KDE baggage that it pulled in. And now that it’s gone to the KDE Frameworks thing, it’s no longer usable for me.
  • So I like that Shotcut does not require an installation on Linux.
  • Being cross-platform is also a major plus for me.
  • I think the developer has a clear vision of what a good editor should be and I like the direction he’s taking Shotcut in so far. Once we get keframable filters, I’ll be perfectly content. :slight_smile:
  • It’s free
  • It’s cross-platform (main selling point for me)
  • It has a lot of importing / exporting formats
  • It has the perfect balance for my needs between ease of use and features.
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I try to switch from windows to linux mint, so i’m looking for an alternative for Magix Video deluxe. As i wrote in another post, i need to import many small clips in 4k and i want to have standard transistions between the clips, i feature, which is obvious planned ( i hope so …). Other editors with more than one timeline are much more difficult to use. Cross platform is important, further development for the future is important. I like more to give a donation to an open source projekt then to buy a software.

Excellent export quality in 4k is important, Shotcut seems to have it but speed needs much improvement. I exported a 4k-MP4-High-Profile-File with Magix (3:30 min), the same with shotcut (Windows) more than 30 min. I did not test the same file unter Linux Mint because it’s not the same hardware.

I am a hobbyist youtube video maker, and I was looking for a fully featured video editor, for as little money as possible. For a while, I used a different editor alongside Shotcut, using Shotcut to clean and correct my footage before importing them into the other editor for the final cut. Alas, new hardware and software comes along, and my old editor just wouldn’t work anymore. I was looking around for professional editing suites in the ballpark of $60-100 (and options I liked were few and far in between). That’s when I decided to give Shotcut a chance to shine, as I started making my videos exclusively through it. While there were (and still are) a few features missing (like keyframe based animations and transitions), that didn’t keep me from liking Shotcut for editing any more than any other editing software, paid or otherwise.

There are many reasons why I wouldn’t switch away from shotcut, but here’s a short list:

  • It’s comprehensive, and yet has a relatively simple to understand interface. While a little unwieldy to the novice, users will soon come to appreciate the expanded interface options available here (especially when compared to other free (as in “beer” and/or “speech”) and freemium editors).
  • Numerous options are available when exporting, so I can export High-quality video elements for use later, or compress a final project for upload.
  • As it’s constantly under development, new features are being added all the time, and it has become more stable to boot (I will never forget the one time that I had to restart a project from scratch because shotcut messed up my project file. Thankfully, that has never happened since.).
  • I learned much more about video production than a one semester course on Video production ever did: with professional terms and measurements used throughout, but with an interface that lets users experiment and find out what each term means.
  • Easy settings to switch between video modes mean that I don’t need to re-learn key skills to create a specialized project, though it does mean I’ll need to re-create my projects from scratch if I change my mind midway through.

I’ll be very hard pressed to find any other free or cheap video-editor that does whatever Shotcut does better. It’s a phenomenal program overall and I hope the programmers keep up their hard work.

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My reasoning for using Shotcut was originally wrought out of desperation. I needed a video-editor that could correct fish-eye effects for free, and other software did not offer the ability to correct for that, weren’t free, or didn’t fit all my editing needs. Yes, Shotcut did not originally have the ability to correct fish-eye lenses, but I saw that it used the Frei0r effects, and it was an easy fix.

I also use the chromakey every now and then, but the sole purpose I had in mind was the fish-eye correction and some stabilization.

In the future, I hope blender can be used to make overlays that follow points on the screen. Ah, yes, the prospect of having holographic images rendered with actors is too good to pass up.

I hope my reasons help, but it was simply a very selfish reason: I didn’t want to pay for a fish-eye lens correcting editing software for making videos.

For me, because it works on Linux and doesn’t demand specific high-end hardware.

Years ago I bought MainActor for linux, crashed every 30 seconds sometimes but it still was better than other options on my plate.

I’ve gone through a lot of NLVEs lately and I had high hopes for some others, but in their subsequent revisions they focused more on bling and broke a lot of functionality.

I’ve now done about 10 videos from 5~50 minutes long with ShotCut and I’m starting to get the hang of it. Was even able to use some filters recently (blurring because I accidentally left in some client data on screen).

It works, it’s cross-platform, it doesn’t crash much at all ( and recovers well ), and it seems like the developers have the right targets in focus for their development path.

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  1. I FINALLY can work with videos entirely on Linux. Before Shotcut I would ONLY still have Windows (VM or dual boot) solely for the purpose of editing videos.
  2. excellent failure recovery
  3. I would still happily pay for Shotcut if it was a non-free software, as long as I felt it was priced at or under the price tag of things like Corel Video Studio. But I DO like it even more that it is free!

I installed Shotcut after buying a Mavic drone… The fact that I could edit my drone footage, my GoPro videos AND video from my DOD dashcam was THE biggest selling point for me, I’m glad it was free, but would have happily paid for it.

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My first time using a video editor “seriously” on a PC, have used Windows Movie Maker probably 15+ years ago for fun when file sizes were like below 5mb!

Bought a Mavic Pro drone for photography but realised that drone videos are amazing. The downside is that video editing is a real pain!

I love the simplicity of video apps on my iPhone but don’t think there would be anything as simple on a PC.

Read that Shotcut was free and easy to pick up so trying my hand at it. :grin:

i started using shotcut because microsoft no longer feature movie maker in the os…i looked for a free video editor on-line and was pointed to shotcut in the comments on a tutorial channel on youtube…and i have a chance to use a free and open source video editor with a vibrant community i’m able to give back to, (that was a bonus)

I found Shotcut while searching for a free NLE and I started use it beacuse it has no high-end pc hardware recommendations. It works very well on my old Core2 Duo 32bit and Win7. It’s really simple to use and has a low learing curve, starting from a base knowledge of video editing. I had no crashes and the lags are only imputable to my pc poor performances.

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I use Shotcut instead of other NLEs (on Linux) because of its fantastic “no crash” feature. :wink: Seriously, I wouldn’t quite know where to start listing all the reasons why I use Shotcut because it does everything so well. The Linux community really needed a good NLE like Shotcut. Thanks to the devs for making it possible for someone using Linux to produce videos without losing all of their hair in the process!

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I found Shotcut on this list - https://www.oberlo.com/blog/best-free-video-editing-software as a TOP3 choice and would like to give it a try. Could you please tell me whether it is difficult to figure out for a total noob? I have some experience with PS and Illustrator (I was hoping that might help somehow)

I’ve been using it for over a year now and find it reasonably straightforward to use and to create extensions, especially using the Overlay HTML Filter facility.

Take a look at the tutorials here;

https://shotcut.org/tutorials/

Some are a little out of date but they will give a good idea of how to do things. Also, the guys on this forum provide a lot of help if you get stuck.

I haven’t been using it long (about three weeks) – I needed something to make a family video at short notice.
I chose it after spending a couple of hours reading reviews – I’ve almost no previous experience in this area.
I’m hanging around as my son now wants me to help with a video for final college project.
I can’t really compare Shotcut’s functionality to other products but the best thing for me is this excellent forum.
So good to get such quick feedback to my noddy questions, from the developers and expert users such as Sauron.
Thanks guys.

As well summarized by EnzoD in a previous post, I subscribe to the same reflections.

  • Simple and at the same time complete
  • Creative possibilities and software in continuous evolution.
  • Clear interface for me, far from many options within other options, within other options of some commercial software that seems to fight to offer so much sophistication that it is often excessive.
  • Basic installation (including the necessary), without “leech” software that drains the resources of the equipment.

For my modest projects, it is perfect and it is my choice by default.

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I use Shotcut because Dan went to a great deal of trouble (with input from me) to make the color rendering accurate across most of the video codecs. It’s great that Dan listened to his users and went to the trouble of making the color rendering accurate, something even high-priced programs can’t claim, so thank you, Dan. He is very responsive to user input and actively maintains and improves it.

Shotcut also has a galaxy of export options and formats.

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