Fast Cut

The complete functionality of Shotcut [1] can be described easily: The tool edits videos, adds effects, joins the videos to create a new movie, and returns the results in a freely selectable video format. For a year, Dan Dennedy has been working hard on a small, relatively easy-to-use video editing program that newcomers to video editing and the occasional filmmaker will really appreciate. The feature scope and concept are somewhat reminiscent of the now defunct Kino [2] program, to which Dan Dennedy incidentally also contributed.

The software is currently in a process of rapid change: Almost every day a new version appears with fixes and minor new features. Nevertheless, this development does not prevent production use – if you are aware of the pitfalls. For this article, I used the release from September 13, 2013.

Unwrapped

To set up Shotcut, first install the packages for Qt4, SDL 1.2, libsox, and libexif from your package manager. Under Ubuntu, enter the following command to install all the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libqtcore4 libsdl1.2debian libsox2 libexif12

On the Shotcut homepage, look at the Download section at the bottom right of the page.

If you are running Ubuntu 12.04, Debian version 7, openSUSE version 12, or a version that builds on one of these distros; Kubuntu; or something more recent, then click the 64-bit Linux or 32-bit Linux link, depending on your computer's architecture. If you are unsure, call uname -i in a terminal. On a 64-bit system, you will then see x86_64 in the output.

Users of Fedora, as of version 16, currently only have a package for a 64-bit installation. To download, click on 64-bit Fedora. If you still want to use the 32-bit version, contrary to the recommendation by the Fedora developers, you can try one of the other versions, but you should be aware of a risk for crashes.

Clicking on one of the links gives you a tarball that you simply unpack in your home directory. In the Shotcut/Shotcut.app subfolder, run the shotcut script. It is a good idea to launch the script from a terminal window. In this case, you not only see a list of all video and audio formats supported by the program, you also see whether any libraries or other dependencies are missing.

Helmsman

After launching, the clear-cut Guide window shown in Figure 1 appears. To load a video file, click the Open File button in the toolbar (or press Ctrl+O) and select the desired file. (Warning: The interface takes quite a lot of space, so you need as large a monitor as possible to edit videos in Shotcut.) If your camera uses the modern standard AVCHD, look for the appropriate file in a subdirectory of the memory card. The files typically reside below AVCHD/BDMV/STEAM and have the .MTS extension. You can expect the file you need to be quite large.

Figure 1: The main window looks extremely tidy after the first launch. This changes quickly. Shotcut also opens a video file if you drag it from the file manager onto the help text.

Shotcut can read and edit videos in the old DV format (file extension .avi). To retrieve the data from the camera, you need a different program. One of the potential candidates here is Kino [2], which most distributions still have in their repositories.

Shotcut plays the movie directly, and you can use the space bar to pause it. At the very bottom of the main window, you will see several small buttons at the center that let you to control playback (Figure 2). The left-bar and right-bar triangles jump to the beginning and the end. The icon in the middle starts and stops playback.

Figure 2: The film snippet in this figure runs for just 21 seconds and a bit; in the preview, Shotcut shows you just 6 seconds.

The two small double arrows start fast-forward or rewind. Because processing high-resolution HD video costs a large amount of computing power, the playback might be jerky and could even stop.

To the left of the playback buttons is an input field. The time shown here pertains to the clip running in the preview. Using the small icons in the input box, you can navigate backward and forward one frame at a time. The number to the right of the input box indicates the total running time of the film.

To adjust the volume, click on the upper or rightmost (depending on your version) of two buttons situated on the right edge of the window. Shotcut then displays a controller that lets you adjust the preview volume, as shown in Figure 2. The other button mutes the audio input. Incidentally, you may increase or decrease the window size or view in full screen. Under certain circumstances, however, this can slow down the playback speed.

Lean Movie

Below the video is a narrow timeline with a vertical line indicating your location in the preview. By pushing this time needle to another location ("scrubbing"), you can move quickly through the video.

At the beginning and end of the timeline, small triangles let you set the beginning and end of a video as needed. If the end of the video is a shot of your feet, because you forgot to turn off the camera, hold down the mouse button on the trim button on the timeline at the far right and drag it to the left (Figure 3).

Figure 3: If necessary, you can trim the beginning and end of the video. The numbers in the bottom right-hand corner of the window (e.g., 00:00:00:00 and 00:00:16:02) tell you the time the video begins and ends.

As soon as you no longer see the unwanted part in the preview, position the triangle. Following the same principle, you can trim off unwanted material at the beginning, if necessary. Depending on your computer's performance, the preview might not be able to follow the mouse. In this case, move your mouse a little more slowly.

In the timeline, Shotcut uses colored bars (blue in Figure 3) to mark the active part of the video. You can adjust the new start and end points at any time with the mouse and restore the parts you edited out.

If you open a new movie, Shotcut ditches all the settings you have made without a warning. To change this, you need to add the movie to the playlist. When editing, then, you initially want to focus on a single video.

Incidentals

When you click Properties in the toolbar (the 'i' icon) or select View | Properties in the main menu, a sidebar with various additional information and settings appears in the window on the left (Figure 4). If the sidebar is only partially visible, zoom out the main window, and move the boundary divider to the right until the sidebar is completely visible: Reapportioning your sidebar in this way could reduce the preview size.

Figure 4: The sidebar provides technical information about the movie currently on view.

The Properties sidebar shows some useful information about the video currently on view, such as the Resolution and the format (Codec) used. If your raw material includes several audio tracks (e.g., for different languages), go to the Audio tab and set the desired Track in the corresponding list. You should only change other values in the Properties sidebar if you know exactly what they do.

To close sidebars and other areas, click on the small box with an X in the upper right corner. Alternatively, go to the View menu and click on the name of the section you want to close.

Pink Sunglasses

If the colors in the movie are wrong, or if the material is fuzzy, you can apply an effect. Shotcut refers to them as filters. To apply one, first select the Filters icon in the toolbar. You can also select View | Filter in the main menu. In any case, Shotcut adds a new Filters area at the bottom of the main window (Figure 5). Below the Filters list, click the plus (Audio) button and choose an effect, such as Color Grading from the menu that appears.

Figure 5: Shotcut basically always applies the enabled filters to the complete video. In this example, the movie was tinted purple to mimic an old celluloid film.

The filter-specific settings show up to the right of the Filters list (Figure 5). In this case, you change the input level by dragging the bar in the black-and-white rectangle. Similarly, you can give the image a different color mood by moving the black dot in the color wheel.

The Mode determines whether to apply the color to the Midtones, the Highlights, or the Shadows. The current version of the program has no option for entering precise color and brightness values. The workaround is to click around the color wheel and adjust the levels until you find a suitable setting.

The program at least offers the option of scaling the circle and the bar. To do this, move the mouse to the boundary between the Filters and preview areas. When the mouse pointer changes to a double arrow, hold down the left mouse button and drag the boundary upward.

All at Once

If you have created a filter that you want to apply to other movies, you can save it as a template (to the right of Preset). When you edit other movies, you just need to select this template in the Preset drop-down box.

More filters can be added by following the same principle: Click on the plus sign to add an audio filter, select the effect, then set up the filter using the controls on the right. Note that not all filters have user-controlled settings; for example, the Mirror effect always stubbornly uses vertical mirroring.

To disable a filter temporarily but retain the settings, uncheck its box in the Filters list. To reactivate the filter, re-check the box again. To delete a filter completely, select it and press the minus button under the list.

The Reset button in the Properties pane is used to undo changes, but the Shotcut version I was using contained a bug that destroyed the Filters list. You will want to avoid this button for the time being.

Colorful Daisy Chain

Shotcut is not just designed for editing a single clip; you can also use it to compile several clips into a longer movie. To begin, you create a list, which you add to by clicking on the Playlist icon in the toolbar. (Alternatively, you can select View | Playlist.) The list displaces the Properties pane on the left side of the window (Figure 6). From now on, you can toggle between the two via the tabs at the bottom left.

Figure 6: Combine video clips in the Playlist pane.

The playlist initially only shows help text. To apply previously edited videos, including any effects you have added, to the list, click the button with the plus button below the playlist. The columns show the video's file name and run time.

Now select File | Open to open another video, edit it, then add it to the Playlist by again pressing the plus button. The complete movie now comprises two clips (Figure 7). Shotcut plays the clips from the top down.

Figure 7: The complete film now consists of two video clips in the Playlist. Also note the marks on the timeline.

In the timeline below the preview, Shotcut shows numbers that tell you when the video starts in the overall composition. If you double-click on a video in the preview, Shotcut jumps to its beginning. To change the order of the videos, just drag and drop them to a new position in Playlist.

If it turns out that a movie needs some color grading later on, or you want to edit it in some other way, you need to select it first by clicking the entry in the Playlist. Click the menu button (with the three horizontal lines) at the bottom of the Playlist, and select Open as Clip from the context menu.

In the preview, you again only see the video, and you can edit it as necessary. When you are finished editing, click the menu button again and choose Update. The entire movie appears again in the Preview after double-clicking one of the videos in the Playlist.

Once you have compiled the complete movie, at the latest, you will want to save your work. To do this, press the Save icon in the toolbar (or File | Save in the menubar). Shotcut only saves the Playlist and all the settings; in other words, make sure you do not simply delete your video files. In the version I used, however, the save feature was not fully functional: The software steadfastly refused to save the settings.

Bouncer

To output the finished movie, choose View | Encode. On the right side of the window, you will now see the Encode section (Figure 8). Under Presets, select the desired video format. If you want to share the movie on the web, choose the H.264 Main Profile. If you want to burn it onto a DVD, select an entry that starts with DVD. The correct choice depends on the screen size of the material. If you recorded the movie in widescreen format, select DVD (dv_ntsc_wide) or DVD (dv_pal_wide); for the 4:3 format, select DVD (dv_ntsc) or DVD (dv_pal). For experts, the tabs in the bottom half of the sidebar provide more options; however, the presets are usually fine.

Figure 8: After editing, the window is now more cluttered: On the right side are all the settings to output the movie.

Finally, to generate the movie, click Encode File. Once you have entered a file name, Shotcut puts the Jobs pane in the sidebar on the right with an entry for your movie. If, after a few seconds, no percentages appear to the right of the entry (i.e., the program has not started to encode), right-click the entry and select Start.

How long the software takes to create the file depends on the speed of your computer, the size of the file, and the selected effects. It might be necessary to leave the computer running overnight to complete the task. Shotcut does not offer any options for burning the finished file onto a DVD, but you can use a program like Bombono DVD [3] for this.

Conclusions

When you work with Shotcut, you quickly notice that the development work is not yet complete, so it's a good idea to save your projects frequently. That said, the program is fine for editing smaller videos, adding effects, and exporting movies.

The interface might not be quite as intuitive and clear as the venerable Kino. Tabs with many settings and options are likely to put off newcomers, and Shotcut does not offer enough features for advanced users.

If you find the timeline in OpenShot too complicated and just want to edit a short video quickly, or if you still hark back to the legacy Kino, you might want to keep an eye on how Shotcut develops. In future versions, the developer will be looking to add more filters, a multitrack editor, and transitions. Shotcut just might become the multitool for movie fans.