Shotcut is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

, cross-platform

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

, and

image An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be di ...

editing program for

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. Started in 2011 by Dan Dennedy, Shotcut is developed on the MLT Multimedia Framework, in development since 2004 by the same author.

Features

Shotcut supports video, audio, and image formats via

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...

. It uses a timeline for

non-linear video editing Non-linear editing (NLE) is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by speciali ...

of multiple tracks that may be composed of various file formats. Scrubbing and transport control are assisted by

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

GPU-based processing and a number of video and audio filters are available. The output options for the 2017 version included Apple ProRes, HDV, DVD,

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and d ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

animation, Ogg-Vorbis,

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by ...

, and

WMV Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: the original video compression technolog ...

. * Format support through FFmpeg **Frame-accurate seeking for many formats * Webcam and audio capture * Network stream playback (HTTP, HLS, RTMP, RTSP, MMS, UDP) * EDL (CMX3600 Edit Decision List) export

Audio

* Audio scopes **Loudness **Peak meter **Waveform **

Spectrum analyzer A spectrum analyzer measures the magnitude of an input signal versus frequency within the full frequency range of the instrument. The primary use is to measure the power of the spectrum of known and unknown signals. The input signal that most co ...

* JACK transport sync

Video effects

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

as source and filters * Color grading tools * De-interlacing * Wipe transitions * Track compositing/blending modes * Speed and reverse effect for clips * Keyframes * Motion Tracking * Time Remapping *

Rotoscope Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, live-action film images were projected onto a glass panel and traced onto paper. This pr ...

Hardware

* Blackmagic Design SDI and

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...

for input and preview monitoring * Leap Motion for jog/shuttle control * Webcam capture * Audio capture to system audio card * Capture (record) SDI, HDMI, webcam (V4L2), JACK audio, PulseAudio, IP stream, and Windows DirectShow devices * Multi-core parallel image processing (when not using GPU and frame-dropping is disabled) * DeckLink SDI keyer output * OpenGL GPU-based image processing with 16-bit floating point linear per color component

Other

* Does not depend on system codecs * Can run as a portable app from external drive * Batch encoding with job control * Stream (encode to IP) files and any capture source * Video quality measurement (

PSNR Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is an engineering term for the ratio between the maximum possible power of a signal and the power of corrupting noise that affects the fidelity of its representation. Because many signals have a very wide dynamic ...

and

SSIM The structural similarity index measure (SSIM) is a method for predicting the perceived quality of digital television and cinematic pictures, as well as other kinds of digital images and videos. It is also used for measuring the similarity betwe ...

) * Perform integrity check of an audio/video file * View detailed information about an audio/video file * Choice of six different interfaces, like audio effects and video effects

History

Shotcut was originally conceived in November 2004 by Charlie Yates, an MLT co-founder and the original lead developer. The current version of Shotcut is a complete rewrite by Dan Dennedy, another MLT co-founder and its current lead. Dennedy wanted to create a new editor based on MLT and chose to reuse the Shotcut name, since he liked it so much. He wanted to make something to exercise the new cross-platform capabilities of MLT, especially in conjunction with the WebVfx and Movit plugins.

References

External links

* * * Official Forum https://forum.shotcut.org/ {{Video editors Audio editing software for Linux Free and open-source video-editing software macOS audio editors Software that uses FFmpeg Video editing software for Linux Video editing software for macOS Video editing software for Windows