Shotcut is a free, open source video editor for Windows, Linux and macOS. The application has remarkable features and deserves a tribute.
Video editors are usually heavy programs, with a high demand on memory and cpu, and are basically expensive. Shotcut is a free one alternative, which along with Openshot, available completely free of charge. Supports Windows, Linux, MacOS, 32-bit and 64-bit architecture, installer and portable version.
Installing and running Shotcut the first screen may seem confusing, as it is essentially "empty" and needs to be built.
But once you take the first steps, you will quickly realize that you are dealing with a user-friendly program. First of all, it supports Greek, that is, it has a Greek menu, which will help the most inexperienced in video editing.
From the start, select or create the project folder, name and video function (resolution) and click the Start button. There are some boxes on the left and right side of the screen, these are the filters, the sound counter and the recent files. You can close them if you do not need them, and they can be retrieved from the toolbar at the top. Closing them may make the screen look simpler.
Then use the “File” menu to add some videos for editing. The video will load in the preview window. If you have added more than one file, you will see in the Playlist window each video you have added, its duration and its thumbnail.
Use the toolbar at the bottom of the window to add/remove items to the playlist or change the view.
Shotcut supports a large modern range of video and audio tracks (4K). It also supports images as long as they are JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, SVG, TGA, TIFF, WebP. You can also capture photos and videos from your webcam, as well as use your microphone as an audio source.
The "Filters" panel lets you add effects to your video, such as Fade in / out, text, gain, brightness, contrast and more. The names of the effects as far as the video is concerned, are in English, as it is quite difficult to render in Greek and to be understood immediately.
The toolbar has options for undo and restore, as well as the ability to view or close individual windows on the program screen. The layout options of Shotcut are very nice and you can save the custom layout with only the frames you want.
The video player on the main screen is in the preview window. At the bottom of the preview are the play buttons and other interesting features, such as an optional grid view, zoom and search box to scroll to the specific time of the video.
You can also use the preview player to edit videos, something you do not see in many similar programs.
Upgrade
Shotcut version 24.04 was released today with more new features and many bug fixes.
Shotcut 24.08 is here with a big new feature, its support NVIDIA AV1 (av1_nvenc) hardware encoder on Linux and Windows systems.
