- What are the minimum system requirements?
- Why does it crash on Windows upon launch?
- Which Export preset should I use?
- What can I do if Export is failing or getting stuck?
- How do I add text? Is there a titler?
- Why is seeking so slow?
- Why is stepping frame-by-frame repeating the same frame?
- Are there keyboard shortcuts for editing?
- The keyboard shortcuts do not seem to be working.
- Shotcut will not start on Linux…
- All I see is white or green instead of video, and I know there is video in this file….
- Can I have multiple versions installed at the same time?
- How do I cut or trim a clip without encoding or transcoding it?
- Why do I not have the __ filter?
- Is Shotcut free for commercial use?
- What is your privacy policy?
- Where are the log, presets, cache, and settings stored?
- What is the history of Shotcut?
- How do I make subtitles?
- How do I change the speed of the video?
- How can I edit the audio at the wave/sample level?
- How does Shotcut use the GPU (or not)?
- Why does Shotcut not use hardware accelerated video decoding?
- How does Shotcut use multiple CPU cores and threads?
- How can I scale the GUI on my high DPI monitor?
See Also
- Posts in the Forum tagged #FAQ
- How To Articles
What are the minimum system requirements?
Operating system: 64-bit Windows 10 - 11, Apple macOS 11 - 14., or64-bit Linux with at least glibc 2.31.
CPU: x86-64 Intel or AMD; at least one 2 GHz core for SD, 4 cores forHD, and 8 cores for 4K.
GPU: OpenGL 2.0 that works correctly and is compatible on Linux, Direct3D 11 on Windows.
RAM: At least 4 GB for SD, 8 GB for HD, and 16 GB for 4K.
NOTE: If your computer is at the lower end of CPU and RAM requirements, you should use both thePreview Scaling andProxy features to help reduce preview lag.
Hard drive: yes, get one; the bigger, the better :-)
Network: Shotcut does NOT require access to the network to activate,check a subscription, or send usage analytics. However, some links inthe Help menu do link out to this web site. If you have files on a fast(at least 1 Gb/s) network share you can access them from there throughyour operating system.
Why does it crash on Windows upon launch?
Is this a new - for the first time ever - installation of Shotcut?If NOT, and it used to work, then you may need to delete your Shotcutregistry entries and try again. The registry keys are stored atHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Meltytech\Shotcut.
One Windows 8.1 user reported he needed to change the following inthe Compatibility tab of the Properties for the Shotcut icon/exe: Run incompatibility mode for “Windows XP (Service Pack 2)”, and “Run thisprogram as administrator.” However, not every one needs to do that, andwe are not sure why he needed it.
If you just want to save your changes to re-open it later in Shotcut,you can save your project as a MLT XML file by clicking Save on thetoolbar at the top of the window. If you want to upload the video to aweb site or somehow share the result with someone as separate videofile, then click Export on the toolbar, which opens or raises theExport panel. In the Export panel, there are 3 basic steps:
- choose and click a Preset,
- click Reload to load the currentvideo settings, and
- click Export File at the bottom of the panel.
By default, if you have made a playlist Export uses the Playlist unless youhave put something into the Timeline, in which case, it uses thetimeline. Otherwise, it will Export the clip or live source (stream,device, screen, etc.). However, you can control what is used for the source ofthe export using the From control at the top of the Export panel.
Which Export preset should I use?
It all depends; that is why there are so many of them! But here are somesuggestions:
- Upload to a video-sharing web site: H.264 Main Profile
- Extract the audio: Ogg Vorbis or MP3
- Save to an intermediate file to use with another tool: DNxHD orlossless/ProRes - really depends on what the other tool accepts
- Put onto my own web site: WebM and/or H.264 Main Profile
- Screen recording (Linux only): lossless/MJPEG
- Capture from SDI/HDMI: lossless/ProRes if your system can handle it,otherwise lossless/MPEG-2
What can I do if Export is failing or getting stuck?
If a job appears to be stuck or hung (please allow ample time for percentage tochange), right-click the job in the Jobs panel and choose Stop. Try exportagain with Export > Video > Parallel processing disabled (unchecked). Ifthere is still a problem see what percentage it reaches before failing orhanging. Then, apply the percentage to your project duration to find the roughtime of where it seems to be having trouble. Is there something complicated ordifferent there? You can temporarily remove some things in this area and tryagain to see if export goes further.
How do I add text? Is there a titler?
There are 2 text filters at this time: Text: Simple and Text: Rich. You can apply the text filters to a videoclip, an image file or a whole track. You can also apply a text filter to a transparent clip to act as its own text clipby choosing File > Open Other > Text from the menu or Open Other > Text from the main toolbar. The defaultbackground color in Open Other > Text is transparent which as well can be changed to a solid color by clicking onthe Background color button.
You can also create text with an external program as an image with an alpha channel and composite it. To composite, youadd a video track to the Timeline to use as a layer. Then, you open an image, set its Properties to adjust duration orenable an image sequence, add it to the new video track, and further adjust its position and duration as-needed. Youmight also want to apply the Size, Position & Rotate filter to the image clip. The image file formats thatsupport an alpha channel are PNG, SVG, and TGA. You can also use Quicktime Animation format. There are many tools thatcan create images with alpha channels for this purpose. Some of them include GIMP, Inkscape, Krita, Paint.NET, etc. Foranimation, consider Blender and Synfig.
Why is seeking so slow?
Some formats and compression methods simply make it take longer. In theSettings menu set Interpolation to Nearest Neighbor. Thissetting not only affects the quality of image scaling but also theaccuracy of seeking. Please be aware that this setting may cause seekingto become less accurate resulting in some frames repeating when steppingframe-by-frame backwards or the first several frames in the forwarddirection immediately after a seek.
Why is stepping frame-by-frame repeating the same frame?
In the Settings menu set Interpolation to something other thanNearest Neighbor - Bilinear is recommended. When theinterpolation level is set to nearest neighbor it relaxes the accuracyof seeking to make the responsiveness of the video player faster.
Are there keyboard shortcuts for editing?
The best way to see the shortcuts is in the Actions and Shortcuts dialog.This dialog appears by navigating “Help->Actions and Shortcuts…” or bypressing the “?” key.
There is also a page with all of the keyboard shortcuts.
Just like j, k, and l for playback transport control, the bare i, o, x,v, b are very common shortcuts use by other professional video editingsoftware from Apple, Avid, Lightworks, and others.
P.S. While it is rather obvious to use cursor left and right keys forsingle frame stepping, there is another technique so you do not have toremove your fingers from the JKL: while holding down K, tap J to stepleft or tap L to step right.
The keyboard shortcuts do not seem to be working.
Sometimes the keyboard “focus” might be captured by something in the GUIcausing the shortcuts to not function. In that case, click the videopreview region to return focus to the player.
Shotcut will not start on Linux…
Some file managers do not like the launcher icon provided with thebinary download from this site. The launcher icon was testedsuccessfully on GNOME Nautilus and KDE Dolphin.
- open a terminal/console window
- cd to the location where you have extracted Shotcut
- enter
Shotcut.app/shotcut
Please do not try to run bin/shotcut; always use the wrapper script in the Shotcut.appfolder! If it still does not start, then it should report that somelibraries could not be loaded.
All I see is white or green instead of video, and I know there is video in this file….
First, use Properties to see if the Video tab is disabled. If itis disabled, then Shotcut is not compatible with this format or codec.If the video tab is enabled, more than likely OpenGL (or also Direct3D onWindows) is not working on your system, or it is too old. First, makesure GPU Effect is disabled in Settings. GPU effectsrequires OpenGL version 3.2. When it is disabled, you only need OpenGLversion 2.0 on Linux, Direct3D on Windows, or Metal on macOS.
Can I have multiple versions installed at the same time?
Yes. Simply rename your existing program folder to put the versionnumber in it or move it out-of-the-way to another location.
On Windows, the installer is mostly just a fancy zip extractor that alsoadds a start menu item. So, you can install the new version to adifferent location, or rename the existing folder to prevent it frombeing overwritten. Then, you can just navigate to whichever programfolder you want in Explorer and run shotcut.exe.
On macOS, you do notneed to copy Shotcut to the /Applications folder - that is merely asuggestion. Simply drag Shotcut out of the .dmg to wherever you like andrename the app bundle to put the version number into it. Or, rename theexisting version to move it out of the way before copying Shotcut fromthe .dmg.
The same concepts apply to Linux, where Shotcut is simplydelivered as a compressed tar archive. However, on Linux, it isimportant to understand that the launch icon always looks inShotcut.app; so, either version the folder containing the launch icon orhave multiple, versioned Shotcut.app folders and run the launch scriptthat is inside of it.
How do I cut or trim a clip without encoding or transcoding it?
This is available through Properties > menu > Extract Sub-clip…; however,it is not frame accurate and there are some pitfalls.We recommend LosslessCut, VirtualDub, or Avidemux as alternatives for this.However, those usually have the same limitations and problems.In Shotcut you can try the extract, and instead export if that did not work good enough.
Why do I not have the __ filter?
- Some filters are not compatible with GPU Processing.
- Some filters cannot be applied to a track or the entire timeline (i.e. Output).Please check what is currently selected. The top of the Filters panel showsthe name of what is selected.
- By design, we do not make all LADSPA and frei0r filters availablethrough the UI. We do not want to present a confusing genericinterface to all available plugins and overwhelm users with so many,often redundant, options. Also, the Shotcut team wants to betterunderstand the filters we are providing and ensure each one isoperating as intended with MLT. If you are manually authoring XML,then you can add any filter you want.
- Sometimes a MLT plugin may fail to load due to a missing orincompatible library. Shotcut downloads provide all dependencies forWindows and macOS, but it may rely upon some libraries provided bydistribution packages on Linux.
Is Shotcut free for commercial use?
Yes, because the software is made available under the GPLv3 license, itsupports The Free Software Definition,which includes:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
What is your privacy policy?
The Shotcut software does not collect, store, or share any personal information.It does not even collect any usage activity to send to our server.The exception to that is the Microsoft Store, and you can read theMicrosoft Privacy Statement.Of course, there might be other app stores and distribution systems, as permittedby the license, with their own personal information collection that is notunder our control.
The Shotcut forum has a privacy policy.
Where are the log, presets, cache, and settings stored?
Currently, the cache is used to store thumbnail and waveform data.
Windows
The log, cache, and presets are stored in%LOCALAPPDATA%\Meltytech\Shotcut\. In the Explorer location bar, enter“%LOCALAPPDATA%” and press Enter. Then look for Meltytech\Shotcut.
The settings arestored in the registry at keyHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Meltytech\Shotcut\.
Linux
The log, cache, and presets are stored in~/.local/share/Meltytech/Shotcut/ where ‘~’ is your home directory, ofcourse.
The settings are stored in ~/.config/Meltytech/Shotcut.conf, which is atext file in INI format.
macOS
The log, cache, and presets are stored in ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/Meltytech/Shotcut/, where ‘~’ is your home directory, ofcourse.
The settings are stored in~/Library/Preferences/com.meltytech.Shotcut.plist, which is a binaryplistfile.
What is the history of Shotcut?
Shotcut was originallyannouncedin November, 2004! You can read more about it from abackup of its original website.The current version of Shotcut is a complete rewrite with none of theoriginal requirements in mind. The original Shotcut was created byCharlie Yates, a MLT co-founder and original lead developer. Since DanDennedy, another MLT co-founder and its current lead, wanted to create anew editor based on MLT, he simply chose to reuse thenamesince he liked it so much. The current Shotcut had its origins as theMLT BuildOnMe project.BuildOnMe was created in January, 2011 as a minimal, example project ofhow to use MLT in a cross-platform Qt 4 project. Eventually, Dan soughtto replace the aging Melted GTK+ client, Rugen, with a cross-platformreplacement and needed an app on which to easily test the cross-platformcompatibility of new MLT features such asWebVfx andMovit.That led him to fork BuildOnMe and start Shotcut.
How do I make subtitles?
If you are strictly asking about subtitles or closed captions, Shotcutdoes not read, make, edit, or pass-through subtitles. There is plannedthe ability to read, show, pass-through, and burn-in subtitles, butthere is no estimated time of arrival. We recommend that you try thefree, open source, cross-platform subtitle editorAegisub.
However, if you are just asking about the ability to put/overlay text inyour video, use the Text: Simple or Text: Rich filter.Since it is a filter, that means you need something to which to applyit. If you just want a solid color, choose File > Open Other >Color. You can also use a picture/photograph just like a video clip byopening it and adding it to your playlist or timeline. If you just want atext clip (transparent background) choose Open Other > Text and add itto your playlist or timeline.
How do I change the speed of the video?
This is implemented as of version 16.01. With a clip open in the sourceplayer or selected in the timeline, choose Properties and look forthe Speed field. Shotcut only provides simple frame dropping orduplicating. However, if the frame rate of your source footage is higherthan the Video Mode (under Settings menu), then you can achieve a fairlysmooth slow motion. If you are looking for more sophisticated resultsusing more advanced optical flow techniques, we recommend you try thefree, open source, cross-platform toolslowMoVideo.
How can I edit the audio at the wave/sample level?
Shotcut does not offer that, but we recommend to try the free, opensource, cross-platform tool Audacity.
How does Shotcut use the GPU (or not)?
Shotcut uses the GPU in three ways:
- For drawing parts of the user interface and showing video: Direct3D on Windows, Metal on macOS, and OpenGL on Linux.
- hardware encoding (where available and enabled)
- OpenGL for GPU Effects (filters and transitions) mode
Shotcut does NOT use the GPU or hardware acceleration for the following:
- decoding and pixel format conversion
- automatic (as-needed) filters to deinterlace, scale, and pad video and toresample or downmix audio
- filters that you add
- transitions
- compositing/blending video tracks
- mixing audio tracks
Thus, you cannot expect Shotcut to use close to 0% CPU and much % of GPUwhen exporting using the hardware encoder because the reading of files anddecoding alone becomes a bottleneck to feed the hardware encoder. Also, if youhave any decent amount of image processing, you should expect a significantamount of CPU usage especially if parallel processing is enabled (it is bydefault). Software from other companies may limit itself to one GPU vendor APIsuch as CUDA in order to provide almost entirely GPU-based pipeline. Shotcuthas not chosen to go that route because it is a cross-platform solution.
Why does Shotcut not use hardware accelerated video decoding?
The video stream always originates in system (CPU) RAM, and CPU-based videodecoding is highly optimized and fast. Meanwhile, transferring full,uncompressed video from the GPU RAM to system RAM is a relatively slow. Thus, inthe context of a video editor (not simply a player or transcoder),hardware-accelerated decoding should only be done when all video processing canalso be done on the GPU. That alone is non-trivial. Shotcut does have anOpenGL-based effects system that is disabled and hidden currently due toinstability. Even when enabled it is a small subset of all effects and does notinclude a deinterlacer. Next, assuming you do not need to deinterlace and agreeto limit oneself to the GPU effects, there is a major technical hurdle totransfer the decoded video in GPU RAM to OpenGL textures due to multipleAPIs for multiple operating systems.Likewise, the complexity to convert OpenGL textures to hardware encoder framesfor the various hardware encoding APIs. Any tool that claims to do all of thesebut does not ensure the video stays in GPU RAM is going to have limitedperformance gain if any.
Even if made available (integrated) there are major hurdles to handle resourcelimitations (number of simultaneous decodes) in a robust fashion and to handleincompatible video streams with many permutations of encodingprofiles/parameters, APIs, and devices. That would result in a huge source ofunreliability and support issues.
If you want to help with this, please feel free to contribute.We have not made much progress here due to higher priorities: fixing bugs,rework on some features, adding basic expected UI features, upgradingdependencies, providing support, making documentation, and stabilizing GPU Effects.
How does Shotcut use multiple CPU cores and threads?
Shotcut’s engine (MLT atop FFmpeg and other libraries) uses multiple CPUcores/threads for:
- decoding video on many (most?) video codecs
- image slice-based multi-threaded processing in some processes
- frame-based multi-threaded image processing in many processes
- encoding video when not using the hardware encoder on most video codecs
When any of the above is not enabled, a bottleneck is introduced. Some of theseare minor and others major depending on the weight of the operation.
Shotcut’s interface - in addition to the main UI thread - uses multiplebackground CPU cores/threads for:
- generating video thumbnails
- generating audio levels for waveform display in the timeline
- the engine itself (see above)
- sending video to OpenGL for display
- exporting
How can I scale the GUI on my high DPI monitor?
Use the QT_SCALE_FACTORcommand line options.
On Windows, you can also create a shortcut to shotcut.exe. Then, edit theshortcut and modify the target field in the shortcut to include theQT_SCALE_FACTOR. E.g. C:\Program Files\Shotcut\shotcut.exe --QT_SCALE_FACTOR 2
