We stumbled upon Shotcut out of necessity. A few years ago, we spent our discretionary income on photography gear, then pleasantly discovered it also made great 4K video that was way more interesting than photographs. But we had no money left for computer hardware or editing software.
I do part-time professional audio recording and mixdown, so I had a very old Windows box with my DAWs and VSTs already loaded up. But the hardware wasn’t beefy enough for video editing. So we bought a used (and old) graphics workstation for $100 to get the raw core count up, then used Linux to avoid OS costs. We wanted to find an editing program that was cross-platform so we could move to Windows in the future. Linux is great for many things, but pro audio work is not one of them due to fledgling VST support and weak DAW compatibility with other audio shops. My end game was to do audio and video editing on the same computer, meaning Windows was the ultimate destination, but I couldn’t afford a Windows license on the new hardware yet.
The search for a free open-source video editor began. Blender was cool but not intuitive. It also required that all source videos be pre-processed to the same frame rate. This is a total deal-breaker when doing documentary-style productions. Source videos are 25fps from Europe, 30fps from USA, who-knows-what from cell phone variable frame rate, and then 24fps from the guys who hope it will make their street shots look more cinematic (it doesn’t). Then there are the mismatches between drop-frame and non-drop. When I first experienced Shotcut letting all these frame rates play nicely on the same timeline without pre-processing, I was sold. I suppose Kdenlive can do the same thing, but our search for an editor happened during the time that Kdenlive had the big refactoring challenge going on and the program was simply not stable. I assume they’ve worked it all out now, but I’m already entrenched with Shotcut, and I at least know Shotcut does and has worked great on Windows.
We may have found Shotcut out of necessity, but here are the reasons we stay with it even though we could now move on to Resolve or Premiere:
Xcopy deployment on Windows and AppImage deployment on Linux. Multiple versions can be installed side-by-side. This is an archivist’s dream because old projects can be opened with the Shotcut version that created them without doing an uninstall/reinstall.
Shotcut is nearly feature-complete for narrative filmmaking tasks.
Shotcut has very accurate color processing.
Extreme control over the export settings.
An active and responsive forum community that can solve any problem. The quick bug fixes and release cycles are also a nice by-product of the forum.
Totally transparent. No complicated project folders or binary file formats that prevent carrying files between computers or OSes. MLT files are human readable. Shotcut can be extended with new features like filters and a proxy workflow because of its openness.
Wide-ranging video format support, and forgiving about input formats thanks to ffmpeg. The data in files do not need to match the filename extension, which is critical to faking a proxy workflow.
Since it runs on Linux and can support proxies (with manual intervention), Shotcut can run well on really old hardware that Resolve and Premiere wouldn’t even install on. This drastically lowers the entry cost of video editing and extends the service life of any hardware purchase.
So yeah, there’s a lot to like, especially when broke. Thanks to Dan and Brian and any other developers or contributors who keep this project going!
Just started with Shotcut. I was a longtime user of Pinnacle Studio since 2006. Recently on my Windows 7 setup, Studio started crashing.
It was impossible to do a clean uninstall and re-install failed to fix issues.
Initial experience mostly positive.
The UI is a bit quirky - but hey, that’s the designers’ choice.
Had a couple of crashes when adding .png files to the timeline. I’ll try to reproduce and bug report.
A couple of things I’d like to see added, but I’ll wait until I’m more experienced.
Finally, is there a way to donate to help the developers?
Deciding which software to get into is an understandable question. After all, you invest a lot of time and energy. You also want to know whether you have saddled the right horse.
Why did I switch to Shotcut? Shotcut has fewer features and filters than Kdenlive. But here, with Shotcut, they all work very well.
When I don’t understand something, which is often, the forum gives me uniquely good and fast help - I’ve never experienced anything like it. Great people with profound knowledge and real willingness to help - what more could you ask for?
And if something doesn’t work properly and you report the error in the forum, there is always a quick answer, usually with a good solution and the prospect that the problem will already be solved in the next version. That is incredibly reassuring to know that you are not alone with problems and that the software is developing in the right direction.
For my work, which is classic video, I don’t need any pre-made effects. It’s very important to me that I can rely on the (relatively little) that Shotcut can do. Up until a few weeks ago, I was struggling with the range of countless filters in Kdenlive. Time and time again I’ve tried another one because one or the other doesn’t work properly. This is very frustrating and it discourages me a lot in my intuitive work.
And when I ask myself what I would like to see from Shotcut in the future?
Just keep up the good work. Shotcut can do everything except magic. The idea and intuition for my videos still have to come from me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hi, I’ve come from a stills and fine arts background and have been a longtime Linux user.
Started making video slideshows and have moved on from there. When I was looking for an application to use I researched what was out there. I guess Ive been using shotcut for 3 years and every year I have a look around to see what’s available. When I first started researching it seemed like the MLT framework made sense and I saw an interview with Dan once and he seems very relateable and a person who thinks laterally and comes across really well (which must be one of the hardest things with everything that gets thrown around).
I am after reliable software and non-proprietary formats. MLT has this requirement being a human readable file format.
It’s intuitive and works on reasonable hardware.
My future needs and the reason I do check out other software is I would dearly love 10bit colour all the way through the pipeline as well as graphics accellerated processing for during the workflow.
The one great surprise is how awesome this community is. I’ve learnt a lot from people here and even though my use case scenario might be different to most there is a relateability factor to most of the posters. The markers/youtube chapters feature that has been worked on is just one of the great examples of collaborative software development and feedback Ive seen.
What it does for me it does really well. I sometimes even feel bad for looking elsewhere because everything about what I listed above. Maybe I’ll stop looking and just be happy I’ve got workflow, Capture → Shotcut → picture lock → Ardour I really am comfortable with.
Thanks to Dan and Brian and any other developers or contributors who keep this project going!
