Shotcut

Shotcut supports a wide range of formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg. There's no import required meaning native timeline editing, Blackmagic Design support for input and preview monitoring, and resolution support up to 4k.

Other features include screen, webcam and audio capture. Network stream playback. Supports capture from SDI, HDMI, webcam, JACK & Pulse audio, IP stream, X11 screen and Windows DirectShow devices. Multiple dockable and undockable panels, including detailed media properties, recent files with search, playlist with thumbnail view, filter panel, history view, encoding panel, jobs queue, and melted server and playlist. Also supports drag-n-drop of assets from file manager.

Features

Wide Format Support

• Support for the latest audio and video formats thanks to FFmpeg
• Supports popular image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG, TIFF, WebP as well as image sequences
• Lottie and rawr JSON animations
• No import required - native timeline editing
• Frame-accurate seeking for many formats
• Multi-format timeline: mix and match resolutions and frame rates within a project
• Webcam capture
• Audio capture
• Support for 4K resolutions
• Network stream playback (HTTP, HLS, RTMP, RTSP, MMS, UDP)
• Frei0r video generator plugins (e.g. color bars and plasma)
• Color, text, noise, and counter generators
• EDL (CMX3600 Edit Decision List) export
• Export single frame as image or video as image sequence
• Videos files with alpha channel - both reading and writing
• Tone mapping HDR to SDR
• Optional full range video input, processing, and export

Audio Features

• Audio scopes: loudness, peak meter, waveform, spectrum analyzer
• Volume control
• Audio filters:
• Balance, Band Pass, Compressor, Copy Channel, Delay, Downmix, Equalizer: 3-Band, Equalizer: 15-Band, Equalizer: Parametric, Expander, Gain, High Pass, Invert, Limiter, Low Pass, Noise Gate, Normalize: One Pass, Normalize: Two Pass, Notch, Pan, Pitch, Reverb, Stereo Enhancer, Swap Channels
• Audio mixing across all tracks
• Fade in and out audio and fade video from and to black with easy-to-use fader controls on timeline
• Cross-fade audio and video dissolve transitions easily by overlapping shots on the same track of the timeline
• JACK transport sync
• Tone generator
• Stereo, mono, and 5.1 surround
• Pitch compensation for video speed changes
• Record directly to timeline for voiceover, for example

Video Effects

• Video compositing across video tracks
• 3-way (shadows, mids, highlights) color wheels for color correction and grading
• Eye dropper tool to pick neutral color for white balancing
• Deinterlacing
• Auto-rotate with manual override
• Fade in/out audio and fade video with easy-to-use fader controls on timeline
• Video wipe transitions:
• bar, barn door, box, clock (radial), diagonal, iris, matrix, and custom gradient image
• Track compositing/blending modes:
• None, Over, Add, Saturate, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Dodge, Burn, Hard Light, Soft Light, Difference, Exclusion, HSL Hue, HSL Saturation, HSL Color, HSL Luminosity.
• Video Filters:
• Alpha Channel: Adjust, Alpha Channel: View, Audio Dance Visualization, Audio Level Visualization, Audio Light Visualization, Audio Spectrum Visualization, Audio Waveform Visualization, Blend Mode, Blur: Box, Blur: Exponential, Blur: Gaussian, Blur: Low Pass, Blur: Pad, Brightness, Choppy, Chroma Hold, Chroma Key: Advanced, Chroma Key: Simple, Contrast, Color Grading, Corner Pin, Crop: Source, Crop: Circle, Crop: Rectangle, Deband, Distort, Dither, Elastic Scale, Flip, Glitch, Glow, GPS Text, Gradient, Grid, Halftone, Hue/Lightness/Saturation, Invert Colors, Key Spill: Advanced, Key Spill: Simple, Lens Correction, Levels, 3D LUT, Mask: Apply, Mask: Chroma Key, Mask: From File, Mask: Simple Shape, Mirror, Mosaic, Nervous, No Sync, Noise: Fast, Noise: Keyframes, Old Film: Dust, Old Film: Grain, Old Film: Projector, Old Film: Scratches, Old Film: Technocolor, Opacity, Posterize, Reduce Noise: HQ3DN, Reduce Noise: Quantization, Reduce Noise: Smart Blur, Reduce Noise: Wavelet, Reflect, RGB Shift, Rotate and Scale, Saturation, Scan Lines, Sepia Tone, Sharpen, Size and Position, Sketch, Spot Remover, Stabilize, Text: Rich, Text: Simple, Threshold, Time Remap, Timer, Trails, Vertigo, Vignette, Unpremultiply Alpha, Wave, White Balance
• 360° Video Filters:
• Equirectangular Mask, 360: Equirectangular to Rectilinear, 360: Equirectangular to Stereographic, 360: Hemispherical to Equirectangular, 360: Rectilinear to Equirectangular, 360: Stabilize, 360: Transform
• Speed effect for audio/video clips
• Reverse a clip
• Video scopes: Histogram, RGB Parade, RGB Waveform, Waveform, Vectorscope and Zoom

Editing Features

• Trimming on source clip player or timeline with ripple option
• Easy-to-use cut, copy, and paste operations
• Append, insert, overwrite, lift, and ripple delete editing on the timeline
• 3-point editing
• Hide, mute, and lock track controls
• Multitrack timeline with thumbnails and waveforms
• Unlimited undo and redo for playlist edits including a history view
• Create, play, edit, save, load, and export (render) MLT XML projects (with auto-save)
• Save and load trimmed clip as MLT XML file
• Load and play complex MLT XML file as a clip
• Drag-n-drop files from file manager
• Scrubbing and transport control
• Keyframes for filter parameters
• Detach audio from video clip
• Presets for most filters and Export - both supplied and user-created
• Sort playlist by name or creation/recording date
• Multi-select items in the playlist and timeline
• Create custom name for clips and enter comments about it
• Low resolution proxy editing to improve speed of seeking and eliminate or minimize scaling
• Timeline markers and ranges, including export from a range and exporting as text chapters
• A Notes panel to keep notes about your project or contain text to reaad for voiceover
• Flexibly insert and reorder tracks
• Edit Lottie and rawr JSON animations with [Glaxnimate](https://glaxnimate.mattbas.org/) vector animation tool (included in our Shotcut downloads)

Cross Platform & Codec Independent

• Cross platform support: available on Windows, Linux, and macOS)
• Codec independent so does not rely on system codecs
• Can run as a portable app from external drive
• UI translations: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gaelic, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Nepali, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Taiwanese, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian (not all 100%, but you can help
• Batch encoding with job control
• Encode/transcode to a variety of formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg
• Stream (encode to IP) files and any capture source
• Video quality measurement (PSNR and SSIM)
• Perform integrity check of an audio/video file
• View detailed information about an audio/video file

Display and Monitoring

• External monitoring via Blackmagic Decklink card on NTSC monitor
• External monitoring on an extra system display/monitor
• UI themes/skins: native-OS look and custom dark and light
• Control video zoom in the player: fit viewable area (default), 10%, 25%, 50%, original (100%), and 200%
• Flexible UI through dock-able panels
• Detailed media properties panel
• Recent files panel with search
• Thumbnail and waveform caching between sessions
• Save and switch between multiple UI layouts.
• On-screen grid and safe areas with snapping.
• Low resolution preview (Preview Scaling) to improve speed of realtime effects.
• Preview the Shotuct timeline as a background within Glaxnimate

Hardware Support

• Blackmagic Design SDI and HDMI for input and preview monitoring
• Leap Motion and Contour Design Shuttle PRO for jog/shuttle control
• Webcam capture
• Audio capture from system device (microphone, line in)
• 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)
• OpenGL GPU-based image processing with 16-bit floating point linear per color component
• AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA hardware encoding

Replace the Mask video filter with 3 new filters:

• Mask: Simple Shape
• Mask: From File
• Mask: Apply

The new Mask: Apply filter makes it possible to mask filters without using multiple tracks! Use Mask: Simple Shape or Mask: From File to start the filter mask followed the video filters to be masked followed by Mask: Apply to apply the mask to the filters in between. Filters before or after the mask filters affect the entire video frame. One can still use Mask: Simple Shape or Mask: From File to affect the alpha channel for multitrack compositing as before. This makes them compatible with existing information and tutorials that suggest using multiple tracks as well as enabling collage/montage or transition effects when the tracks do not use the same clip.

The new Mask: From File is a powerful new video filter offering 3 modes:

• Wipe transition (stock or custom)
• Channel > Brightness from a video or image file (File > Custom...)
• Channel > Alpha from a video or image file. Moreover, Threshold can be animated with simple or keyframes, which is especially nice when used with luma-wipe image files (stock or custom). Not only can you wipe on a masked filter but also you can use this as an alternative way to make a wipe transition using multiple tracks (instead of same track transition).

What's New

Ambisonic Audio

Ambisonic spatial (spherical) audio is often used with 360° video whether output as spherical or reframed to a rectangle. Adding support for Ambisonic facilitates 360° video workflows with Shotcut.

But also the new Ambisonic Decoder audio filter is part of an affordable, simple way to record (e.g. GoPro MAX, Zoom H3-VR) Ambisonic audio and convert it to 5.1 surround. FYI, YouTube supports 5.1 surround on most TV-oriented devices (smart TVs, streaming boxes, game consoles). And Windows has something called Sonic to listen to surround through headphones. The new filter can also be used to listen to Ambisonic through headphones (binaural), to rotate the sound when you rotate spherical video, and to pan stereo or surround audio output for reframed 360° video. For example:

• Added Settings > Audio Channels > 4 (quad/Ambisonics).
• Added Ambisonic Decoder audio filter that converts to binaural, stereo, quad, Ambisonic, or 5.1 surround. When Ambisonic mode is chosen, it is an Ambisonic panner.
• Added Ambisonic metadata to Set Equirectangular if there is a track with 4 audio channels.
• Added Copy Parameters to 360 video filters to use with Ambisonic Decoder > Paste Parameters.
• Shotcut only supports first order Ambisonics at this time.

More New Stuff

• Added support for AMD AV1 hardware encoder on Windows (av1_amf) and Linux (av1_vaapi).
• Added automatic vertical scrolling to Timeline when moving a track.
• Added changing Properties > Duration on image clips on the Timeline (behavior depends on Ripple similar to changing Properties > Speed on an audio/video clip).

Fixes and Changes

• Upgraded macOS and Windows to Qt version 6.5.3, which changes the mininum macOS version to 11.
• Stop automatically grouping audio/video clips when Detach Audio (changed in v24.01).
• Improved selection in Timeline after various operations.
• Improved behavior changing Properties > Speed with Timeline > Ripple on.
• Improved the speed of opening a timeline project.
• Fixed Filters > + > Sets adds audio filters in reverse order (broke in v24.01).
• Fixed Properties > Convert HLG HDR to to Rec. 709 SDR is not tone-mapping (broke in v23.09).
• Fixed distortion caused by Mixdown audio filter.
• Fixed Normalize: One Pass audio filter maximizing levels at start of playback.
• Fixed old custom presets in text and timer video filters load with 0% opacity.
• Fixed Loop Selection on the last clip of Timeline not looping.
• Fixed Enter Full Screen and Preferences shortcuts on macOS.
• Fixed problematic filename characters in Settings > Video Mode > Custom Add.
• Fixed disabling the last audio or video filter when there is a time filter in Filters.
• Fixed File > Exit is slow or hangs if a job in Jobs is paused.
• Fixed Wave video filter distorts if Settings > Preview Scaling is on.
• Fixed incorrect gamma in preview player and File > Export > Frame when GPU Effects is on.