Hello, this is Cristi in today's video
i'm going to
have a first look at a video editor
software called
Shotcut. This is a free, open source,
cross-platform video editor it runs on
Linux, Windows, Mac
and I can't believe I didn't know
about it until now.
I was looking for a way to play a
video in reverse and I found this on
Google, I thought
hey, this is probably free, this is
probably not very good.
But from the screenshots and the reviews
and the feature list on their website
shotcut.org, it seems like a very capable piece of
software. So in my channel I've been covering
Premiere Pro which is not free. I've been covering
Camtasia videos and other video editing
stuff
and I haven't covered much free software.
So in this video, I haven't actually
installed this yet so I'm installing it
right now for the first time.
I'm downloading it. If you go to the
download page here you can download it
and install it and let's see what it can
do.
OK so I've downloaded the software now,
I'm going to install it
as we can see the GNU general public
license here, so it is free, it is
open source. I'm gonna just install with
the basics, the defaults
and let's see how fast it works.
Apparently, the underlying
rendering and conversion and editing
engine is ffmpeg which is also free.
And if you look here in the feature list,
I mean it's quite impressive,
it seems to support 4k, Prores, all these formats and 4k
resolutions,
and you know, a bunch of audio filters
and effects and mixing and all that
stuff and then video effects
and editing features. So you know, I
mentioned before it works on these
platforms so let's have a look. So now I've finished
installing it, let's close this,
and let's run it!
OK so the program has launched now let
me resize this window
a little bit to fit my screen here.
OK, so it seems that
I can do a new project here in the
project folder, a project name
I'm just not gonna bother moving stuff
so I'm just gonna call it
'first look video' and video mode, so the resolution and frame rate
based on the first file you
add that is fine by me and um
let's say if we wanted to edit video for
YouTube maybe, we could probably do an
HD 1080p at 29.97 or 25 frames per
second - let's try 25.
So if I specify this here apparently
it's going
to keep it at that resolution
no matter what video clips I'm adding so
let's click start.
OK so there is nothing here
very specific, let's see. So the
interface seems to be
of course like most other editors it's
kind of dark
gray so we have a toolbar at the top
here
it's a peak meter, okay you can turn it
on and off
properties, on and off so these panels
appear
here. A recent playlist timeline the
timeline is down here okay
so let's find a video clip and
import this clip onto the project so let
me see if I can drag this
what happens to it
OK
OK, so it starts playing but also
I'm seeing the properties for my clip
here 'driving'
and recent files used in this
right side panel here and we can see the
controls
at the bottom here similar to the other
software
like Premiere and Camtasia so you can
have the play buttons here you can start
and stop the playback and you can have
zooming or you can zoom fit and you
can have a grid, that's fine, that's great.
So that's the source and this is -
there's two tabs here they seem to be
the 'source' and the 'project', now
I'm just getting familiarised with this,
I haven't used it before.
So let's see 'view layout' let's say
timeline
project, clip only project, playlist
project, player.
OK, let's try 'timeline project' so this
is the layout
you can use, now if you use the plus here
you can add filters to this video file
but,
I'm curious how to add this to the
timeline.
OK so this plus sign here allows you
to add
the append or you know, add the clip
to the track to the timeline and then
you can shift it
like this with this hand selection tool.
So now I am actually on the timeline editing.
I'm not sure if this can be resized - yes,
you can pull this up okay so there you
go. So this is how you modify your layout,
you have these little dots on the sides
so you can
change the layout and the size
of the different elements like
this, and if you need to do multi-tracks
you have very very similar to premiere and all
the other software
you have 'v1' such as 'video 1' which has
audio and video in a single track, which
is a bit different then.
You can split them if you right-click on
this, you can cut, copy, remove,
lift, and so on - detach audio which will
separate the audio and the video.
Yes, as I assume, so if I want my video to
not have audio, I can probably just
delete this audio track. There we go, so
now the video is playing
with no sound, that is fine. So
you have the timeline here if i drag
another video
in here let's see
okay this is the same video but it's a
different color
on it so if i want to go now
and add this here
i can add a video track right clicking
on the timeline
and now i want to add this clip
driving unprocessed i can drag it down
here
or not this track no i can't maybe
clicking the plus sign
yes so apparently you can't really drag
stuff around maybe i'm not i'm missing
something here but um
you you cannot drag stuff in here so
you have to use this plus um
button to append to the current track
and then
you have all these uh all these controls
here to do with the track so
like for example here you can zoom in
and out
see more or less and then you can detach
audio like this
so you can delete the audio if you want
so now i have two clips
um on the timeline they are in sync so
if i
move one of them then this one is
playing and then
this other wipe shows up so this is the
same principle the
video tracks that are above
um appear above of course above the
stack so they would be in front
of the camera so it's the same like in
premiere pro
okay now let's see uh what happens if i
just zoom out here and try and put these
clips okay you can drag them on the
timeline
apparently and they will snap it seems
they do snap
okay now let's see if i import an audio
file can i actually put an audio file as
the background sound for this video so
i'm going to go and find an audio
file okay this is quite annoying when
you drag a new file in there it starts
playing automatically so i guess
that could be maybe one of the settings
you can probably turn off somewhere and
now let's see if i just put the playhead
somewhere random like this
and i go to the audio track
i can only remove it from here there's
nothing to do so if i drag this down
here
it doesn't seem to put it on the on the
timeline which is quite annoying this
so i apparently i have to select the
track audio track in this case
and just select the file i want to add
and click
plus which then puts it in the file
in the timeline and i can then drag this
around
and change it so now let's see is it
playing with sound
yes so that's good okay this is basic
editing i'm not trying to do anything
advanced in here i'm just trying to
explore
the interface of this software so i have
the audio track
on a separate track here i have the
couple of video things so
let's see how we can add some titles if
we can
okay so the filters apparently if you
want to add some text you need to use
filters which sounds a little
unintuitive for me because
you know text is not really filters it's
more like a an asset or a title
so you need to go to filters here and
then you click this plus sign
and then you have a lot of stuff in here
you can add and you can have favorites
video and audio so if you go to video
then you see all of these things they
apparently are filters so
there's old film noise all of these
things which
they do make sense to be called filters
but then
there is a text element filter here so
there's two
there's a 3d one and an html one which
apparently they are deprecated
and now there is text simple now if i
click on this
you can see here i can actually have a
text time code you can resize this
it seems to create like a frame with the
the element i can resize and move
from the center dot here and let's try
and put some text in here so welcome to
shortcut okay this is my text yeah i
added the filter to the audio file by
mistakes okay
beginner mistake um apparently these
filters
they can be added to a specific
element so i'm going to actually go to
the track
here click on the track there's nothing
on this video track here
and see look it's showing me the title
so these are the filters for this
track now let's try again let's add this
next one
you can search here for filters text
simple
here it is and let's say welcome to
shortcut again so this is my this is my
text apparently you can change the
preset
for this element to be like a lower
third or
slow move down like a bit of an
animation top
left and it will move it automatically
top right
this is the position of the element and
obviously if i
drag this and resize it the position
changes the size
changes so i'm going to put it in the
middle here like that
so i've obviously added this to the
video
track but the track doesn't have
anything so i'm curious if i move one of
these clips in here
and now click the track i see the text
on there so the text now appears on top
of the track it's probably because
the track was blank the name
filter for the text is appropriate in
that sense because
it seems that even if you add a filter
with text on it
it doesn't appear until there's actual
video in there
so that the filter or text can be
superimposed
so yes this is what it happens so now
i can actually see my text
i don't seem to be able to control the
alignment here so
i'm not sure this is top right
i suppose it respects maybe this
let's try bottom left yes that's where
the whole thing goes
so if i make the container larger
it enlarges the text as well let's see
do can we add
new lines yes we can okay
and if i want to select a single word
and make it a different color
that doesn't work so it makes the whole
text that color
that's okay i guess uh limited um
editing facility there for the titles
you can move it from here
and now let's see can i align this
default okay default seems to be
centered so i guess if you play with the
size a bit
you can center your title like this
quite a cumbersome way to
work with this um if i want to change
the color
it changes the whole thing so yeah
that's not
i'm not really impressed with this but
um anyway i guess to for a free tool to
add quick titles and
annotations on your text on your video
that is fine
okay let's move on so i have now video i
have two video tracks here there's one
on top of the other so
um and then there's an audio file
playing there so okay
i guess that's enough for now i'm gonna
try to
export this video file now see how that
comes out
what happens with that so to export
let's try to go to file maybe you have
export video export an individual frame
apparently edl
this is like a file to dictate the
segments i believe
so export video let's see so we have all
these presets now
so the defaults create an h.264 aac
mp4 which is suitable for most users and
that is
true now you can use a hardware encoder
and then you have these presets and
let's try
h.264 high profile or maybe
does it give you presets like premiere
does with your youtube and all those
formats no they don't okay so
um i'm just gonna oh there it is youtube
okay
so i'm gonna i'm gonna select this
youtube
preset which is h.264 aac
audio and an mp4 container for youtube
so let's see how that goes um
it doesn't seem to ask me for any file
probably it's gonna ask me when i click
export file down here
or if i click advanced then i can
probably yes
i can configure the aspect ratio the
resolution here
the scan mode and other things like
interpolation
and uh you can change the
the quality okay you can change the
quality the codec
same thing for audio and there's some
sim
flags here i'm sure these flags and
parameters are actually being passed to
ffmpeg
so i'm not going to bother changing
these let's click export file
okay it wants me to specify where i want
to
save it so i'm going to go and select a
folder
and i have clicked save it seems i don't
have a lot of disk space that's not a
problem
yes i want to continue so there's a
panel here that appeared called jobs
which
shows me the progress of my encoding
so there it is it's exporting my file
right now
it's quite fast actually
okay so the export i believe is done i
have this check mark on the right side
here that says
it's done so let's see the quality of
the resulting video
okay so the file uh seems to be 11.9
megabytes not too bad
let's open it up so there is this is the
file
uh quality wise it doesn't seem too bad
um
definitely the title is big and red like
i did it
nothing seems to have shifted and let's
play it
that looks good so the quality is good
uh com you know considering the file
that i
used in the first place to feed it into
it
and the file size is obviously not very
large so that is great
and you know apart from little things i
haven't explored this so
i think i'm going to do a video a series
on
how to do things with shortcut this is a
seems to be very promising
tool and definitely for a free tool
it is far more advanced than i expected
and i again i i think i've seen it
mentioned a few times
in various places but um i didn't really
give it a second thought so
today i was looking for a way to reverse
a video so
this one came up in the google results
so there you go
i've decided to install it and do a
first look for you
i hope you enjoyed this and maybe it
makes you um you know consider
using shortcut it is free after all and
for free come on
it seems it is uh even slightly more
advanced
than da vinci resolve at least the free
version the free version of davinci
resolve they used briefly
and it seems a little you know limited
in terms of what you can do with it but
this one seems a bit more advanced
and for a free tool they have certainly
added a lot of features in here so i
cannot wait to
explore these so thank you for watching
if you enjoyed my tutorials
please subscribe to my channel and you
know stay tuned for
more tutorials about uh shotcut if you
have any questions or comments
let me know in the comments or requests
you know like feature requests for
you know you want to learn how something
is done in any of these
programs that i'm covering feel free to
give me a comment
and i will see if i can do it for you so
thanks again for your time see you next
time
