OpenShot 4.0: Record, Edit, and Color Like Never Before

284

mmetrofun about 4 hours ago 78 commentsRead Article on openshot.org

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Discussion (78 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

smusamashah•18 minutes ago

There is also Blick which launched recently which claims to be very very fast https://blickeditor.com/?lang=en and part of recent wave of fast software (Task Slinger, File Pilot)

bberrry•8 minutes ago

Neither open source nor free however.

hn_submit•about 2 hours ago

I've supported OpenShot financially in the past, but I'm currently leaning towards LosslessCut and Shortcut.

Most people want a video editor to splice and concatenate video files without any loss or transcoding. I believe this behavior (lossless) should be default on all of these editors.

nickjj•about 1 hour ago

> Most people want a video editor to splice and concatenate video files without any loss or transcoding

You can do this with mpv. It's an open source cross platform media player.

For example, here's how I set up a tiny Lua script extension[0] to be able to visually cut videos in an intuitive way. It does it in seconds without re-rendering the video by shelling out to ffmpeg.

Years ago I did the same thing with a shell script CLI tool[1], but mpv's visual aspect makes it so much faster and easier to make clips out of a longer video.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/visually-create-video-clips-w...

[1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/create-video-clips-with-ffmpe...

Sophira•about 1 hour ago

For that kind of functionality, I would always recommend Avidemux[0]. It's quite a light package (which I like), and it allows you to do that and some other useful things too.

[0] http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

mrbluecoat•41 minutes ago

I absolutely love Avidemux but it doesn't preserve subtitles when removing a middle clip like lossless cut can.

roblh•33 minutes ago

Dunno if it’s just me, but I tried to download it the other day and couldn’t. The windows download link just punts you right back to their own site.

Abishek_Muthian•about 1 hour ago

LosslessCut is great, but I've had issues with the final export like timing being off, having cut sequence etc. I think it is very particular about encoding/container.

Shotcut is my default video editor, if anyone's trying it on Linux please use their AppImage as it solved most of my headaches when I was using Flatpak version.

wvbdmp•about 1 hour ago

You have to make a lot of sacrifices for lossless editing, so it’ll probably always be a specialized app or at least a separate tool within an all-purpose NLE. For instance, you’re limited to compatible input streams and you can only cut on specific intervals, depending on encoder settings etc.

I guess an NLE could import clips in a locked mode by default that only supports lossless operations, and you’d have to specifically enable the rest. Could be interesting.

j1elo•about 1 hour ago

Note on the specific intervals: that's where the clever optimization comes in: leave as-is (passthrough) all not affected sections of the video (basically everything) and only recode the tiny fraction that needs recoding due to the cut being set on a non-keyframe.

That one, I do believe should get more research and implementations. Currently I only know of LosslessCut's "Smart" mode, but I'd like to see other big players of the video editing space improving the state of the art in that direction for simple cuts.

Youden•about 1 hour ago

I wonder, rather than re-encoding when starting on a B- or P- frame, could you preserve the entire GOP losslessly but make the earlier content "disappear" on playback by shifting PTS, or bundling several frames into a single frame's payload? Maybe it causes too many problems with players.

kraktoos•25 minutes ago

(self promotion)

I've been working on OpenPost's Video Editor (Svelte-based video editor that runs on your (chromium) browser). If anyone's looking for something they can run on the browser, fully free and OSS as well, check it out https://app.openpost.social/video-editor

Currently really in early Beta but this seems like a great place to mention it.

Here is the repo if you want to give it a star

https://github.com/getopenpost/openpost

upcoming-sesame•12 minutes ago

The "open-x" product name inflation - how did that happen

zikani_03•about 4 hours ago

Nice, looks like a great release. UI looks like it got a nice touch up and also cool to see that the project has AI powered object masking using onnx models: https://github.com/OpenShot/openshot-onnx.

zersiax•about 2 hours ago

Will have to give this a whirl with a screen reader, see how it does. Given the only somewhat working video editor accessibility-wise is currently Clipchamp, competition is sorely needed. Don't have high hopes, but I guess a x.0 release might be the time for me to start fixing it if nobody else is going to -.-

ricardobeat•20 minutes ago

Who knew a QT app could look this good? Congratulations on the release.

featwanz•about 1 hour ago

Is this effectively a leaner more basic, record, cut, colour version of Resolve?

y42•about 2 hours ago

I am quite familiar with Resolve..I am not a pro, and it's probably totally overload for my purpose, but I think it's easy to learn and even quite intuitive

I tried many others, but mostly all others are not stable enough or have an even worse UI/UX... so I wonder... is this different?

countrymile•about 2 hours ago

How far is blender off this nowadays?

embedding-shape•about 1 hour ago

AFAIK out of "Record, Edit, and Color", Blender mostly excels at the editing part of video editing. There is no recording at all, and coloring you'd do via the "Post Processing" which can be via nodes or "standard". Coloring is alright, although far cry from Resolve.

If you're already used to the Blender shortcuts though, editing video is a breeze and everything just works as expected, which is really nice. But I wouldn't pick up Blender and its shortcuts just to edit video, then I'd probably go with something more fully meant for video editing.

localtoast2•about 3 hours ago

This is one of those occasions where a video would be appropriate.

Mashimo•about 3 hours ago

They have videos for 3.0, 3.3 and 3.4, maybe check back on their channel in a few days or weeks: https://www.youtube.com/@OpenShotOfficial/videos

Schlagbohrer•about 4 hours ago

Has anyone tried having a local agent (like Qwen) use this? I wonder how good the API is for programmatic / CLI usage.

drob518•about 3 hours ago

That was the first question that popped into my head as well. We’re now in the age of “AI all the things,” so it seems like every app needs an API or CLI of some sort. Everything needs to be machine accessible.

nasso_dev•about 2 hours ago

shouldn't we focus on human accessibility first? it also makes things more "machine accessible" as a byproduct, but at least humans remain the main focus

also, openshot is foss. can't you just give the source code to your clanker and let it mod itself in the app?

dmix•about 2 hours ago

> shouldn't we focus on human accessibility first?

This is the big question for designers, how much of the future of software will be human-oriented UIs vs a human typing into a chat window (or as a temporary bridge, telling an agent to operate existing GUIs).

For now I believe agent-driven software is still pretty niche, something for highly technical users, but that will change as it mainstreams. Early adopters demand early adopter software features.

ReptileMan•26 minutes ago

Yes we should. Still UI is for telling the software to do meaningful work. Which means that every well designed UI software will have ready to expose api lurking just benath the surface.

renegat0x0•about 2 hours ago

- ...but is the video encoding fast? - Does it often break while encoding?

That was my experience some years ago and I decided I will skip a decade to see it all working.

TheAtomic•26 minutes ago

So it runs on ?

I really wish all s/w had the platform and price in line 1.

TheAtomic•21 minutes ago

Ok, all the usuals.

TBF, it is on their home screen, https://www.openshot.org/download/

Gisbitus•18 minutes ago

Their homepage features a download button, with all the platforms listed, as the first thing when you open it.

xnx•23 minutes ago

Linux, Mac, Windows, Chrome. $0

RobotToaster•12 minutes ago

Not to be confused with OpenCut, which is a completely different FLOSS video editor.

akrauss•about 4 hours ago

Adtech cookie banner on a .org domain for a thing whose name starts with „Open“? No thanks. Won‘t look further.

TheChaplain•about 3 hours ago

Your loss then. Although I prefer KDEnlive, OpenShot is not a bad video editor.

And I don't think it's a terrible thing for an open source developer to try to earn a few coins.

prmoustache•16 minutes ago

FWIW you can just install it from your distro's software repos or as a flatpak[1] and never ever visit the official website.

[1] https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.openshot.OpenShot

bonoboTP•about 4 hours ago

Its name starts with Open because it's open-source / free software (GNU GPLv3).

touwer•about 2 hours ago

Easy to say. What did you accomplish for FOSS?

mogwire•about 2 hours ago

Typical FOSS hypocrite.

Mad that “free” software has to be paid by someone.

iLoveOncall•about 4 hours ago

Oh come on, they only have 210 "partners" they give your data to!

magicalhippo•about 4 hours ago

You jest, but with even trivial sites having 900+ so-called partners, "only" does indeed seem apt.

iLoveOncall•about 3 hours ago

I know, but we're talking about some free & open-source software funded by donations, not a for-profit company.

Funnily enough their not (fully) free and not open source competitor DaVinci Resolve doesn't have a cookie banner and doesn't set any cookies on your browser.

LoganDark•about 3 hours ago

I feel like the only way to have this many "partners" as is to inherit them, at least if you're 'trivial'. Like, they probably chose some ad or tracking script that has so many partners.

conradfr•about 2 hours ago

That seems excellent.

I wonder if they finally change the caption editing with the weird timing reference, probably not.

edit: this is what I'm talking about: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenShot/comments/1s27wre/the_way_c...

edit: can't really try as it crashes on my M1 Sequoia (maybe the install being named OpenShot-v4.0.0-x86_64.dmg was not a good sign ;))

Almondsetat•about 4 hours ago

Since the announcement is, frustratingly, low on details, did they implement the usual hue vs hue, hue vs sat, etc. controls? I don't do much color grading but my line of work requires using multiple cameras, thus I enjoy using a color chart to match the video clips. With a vectorscope and with the color chart I could quickly do basically everthing I need with this software instead of relying in Resolve, if only it offered those controls

Maken•about 4 hours ago

Just check the documentation: https://zh.openshot.org/files/user-guide/color.html

Joel_Mckay•about 2 hours ago

In general, DaVinci Resolve on Linux desktops handles Dlog/HDR camera and drone LUTs like a champ (KDE plasma handles HDR10.) When they run the budget speed-editor promos you get the studio license card for free. If you needed gyroflow because your cameraman has a thorazine stomp, there are few completely FOSS options around.

For old or no GPU, there are a few other options:

OpenShot is simple, Shotcut works everywhere, and https://www.cinelerra-gg.org/en can handle >4k footage for free.

Depends how much time you have to dig through manuals. =3

Almondsetat•20 minutes ago

Is this a bot reply?

ankit84•about 2 hours ago

A Video editor landing pages with still screenshots doesn't do any justice for new comer. The power can only be shown with smal 10-30s in-inline videos.

chrisandchris•about 2 hours ago

Like the animated GIF on the landing page?

[1] https://www.openshot.org/

timonoko•about 2 hours ago

I have dream that Oneday Oneday these surpass Cinelerra, written in 1996. Thirty Years Ago.

prmoustache•13 minutes ago

It is not like Cinerella's current release is thirty years old though. You are talking thirty years of development.

jonathanstrange•about 3 hours ago

If it had VST support I could use it instead of DaVinci Resolve.

Joel_Mckay•about 2 hours ago

If you publish to platforms like YT, DaVinci Resolve can actually prepare your audio so it remains intact during their compression shenanigans.

I don't know of any FOSS programs that can automatically handle it cleanly. =3

kilawattcloud•about 2 hours ago

nice

woadwarrior01•about 2 hours ago

The cookie banner and the list of 209 adtech vendors they share user data with is so repulsive.

sejje•about 2 hours ago

Try AdGuard DNS or an adblocker. I didn't see any ads on the site.

woadwarrior01•about 1 hour ago

I have an adblocker. You don't see the cookie banner because you're likely outside the EU and your data is silently being shared with the aforementioned adtech vendors. The EU requires "informed consent" for this within their jurisdiction, hence the cookie banner.

bewareofscams•about 4 hours ago

How does this compare to After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Davinci Resolve?

I am pretty sure, this thing solves half of the problems the above solve, and it does it half-good.

Matl•about 4 hours ago

I am pretty sure you haven't tried it yourself. I am also pretty sure the software you mention is significantly more expensive or at least not open source.

Which makes me pretty sure yours was a useless comment.

bewareofscams•about 4 hours ago

I have tried the ones I have mentioned, and I hadn't tried this one, - which is precisely why I am asking!

No need for snarky "but ours is foss smugface" comments.

Not to say, your comment make me pretty sure you hadn't tried either of mentioned by me, and does not take video editing seriously.

Matl•about 3 hours ago

I use and pay for DaVinci Resolve Studio on Linux myself, so yes I have tried them and yes, they're obviously more feature packed and polished than OpenShot is.

OpenShot is however significantly easier to use and does what you need for casual editing. If you want a step above that and still FLOSS then Kdenlive is a better choice.

What makes your original comment useless is that it reads like an American saying, 'I bet our GDP is bigger than Nauru's' - like what is the point? You know the answer already. An open source video editor is unlikely to be as good as DaVinci Resolve. DaVinci has multiplicity of the resources OpenShot/Kdenlive etc. do.

So again, what is your point?

mschuetz•about 3 hours ago

I've had great experienced with it. It's almost certainly not as full-featered as premiere pro, but it runs buttery smooth and robust, while Premiere Pro kept crashing frequently and was a bit tedious to use for simple tasks.

sejje•about 2 hours ago

> I am pretty sure, this thing solves half of the problems the above solve, and it does it half-good.

What makes you pretty sure?

t-writescode•about 3 hours ago

With enough time, love and leadership direction, any art-focused OSS can be the next Blender or Krita :)

bonoboTP•about 4 hours ago

It's FLOSS (GPLv3). There are very few free software video editors. Another good one is kdenlive, which a few years back I liked better that OpenShot.

noir_lord•about 2 hours ago

Kdenlive has improved remarkably over the last few years and in many ways not in a way you'd visibly notice, they had a period where it was very unstable/crash prone so they spent a good chunk of time really focusing just on that and as a result it's now incredibly stable, I can't remember the last time it crashed.

For basic video editing it's quite user friendly and you can do some fairly prosumer level things with it (it's not going to match a studio grade NLE but for most people it doesn't need to).

bewareofscams•about 4 hours ago

This does not answer my question, I need something that can do thing, not how it is licensed. I have used Kdenlive, and it's nowhere near either of these functionality-wise, and struggles with big files.

bonoboTP•about 4 hours ago

Unlikely to be near that polish and feature completeness. If you ask "then what's the point?", for now the answer is the license and the source availability.

poulpy123•about 2 hours ago

"how does this small open source tool developed from the good will of developers in their free time compare to the juggernauts of the fields, with millions in revenues ?"

You know it very well, why do you pretend to ask ?