Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

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Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 11 Dec 2020 17:36

Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

To get Shotcut. go to ..

http://shotcut.org/

.. and click on Click to Download at the top.
This will take you to the download page. The program will have already determined what operating system you have on your computer/laptop and will offer you a download. In my case I have two sites I can download it from, so will go with the one on the left (FossHub) and click on that.

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Don't click any of the green buttons that say START NOW. These are advertisement downloads and you will get something you don't want. I have downloaded it to my desktop, where I can find and double-click on it to set it up.

At the start of the download I ticked the box for an Icon to be set up on my desktop (for me to double-click on to launch it). This is it.

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When you first launch Shotcut this is what you see:

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A pause here to read the instructions on how to use this program.

How to use Shotcut Free Video Editor



To be continued.

Before starting to put our project together, there are a few things the program needs to know, so we should put these in.

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Projects folder. This is where the pictures, videos and MP3 for this project are stored. I have a dedicated Folder I have created in Explorer, so have made this the Projects Folder.
Project name. This is OverTheRainbow(Shotcut) so I have given it that name.
Video mode. We want the Widescreen 16x9 format, which in this context is the 1920x1080 one, at 25 frames per second. The default is 'Automatic', and this would pick up the first video you put in and use that format for the whole project. This may not be 16x9, so best to click on the word Automatic, when you get the dropdown box below, and then you can choose HD1080p25fps for the whole project.

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Now we are ready to import our material onto the timeline.
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Brian007 » 12 Dec 2020 08:39

Hi Hugh,

A new one on me but will follow this with interest

All the best, Brian007
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby dentyr » 12 Dec 2020 10:17

Hello, Not found any decent transitions in this program. Maybe not looked hard enough but in the video he says to overlap the clips and that will produce the fade in. Not sure. Den.
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 12 Dec 2020 11:39

I've come to the conclusion that this programme is designed for professional film makers. There is so much to get your head around, so it's a question of picking up the salient points for creating a simple video .. and avoiding the pitfalls. Like getting huge gaps of 'nothing' in between the clips I am putting into the timeline! To understand how to use this program properly you'd have to go to night school and have an instructor who knows this program inside out explain to you how to use it. But I will give it a go and see what I can find out about it.
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 12 Dec 2020 14:50

First, you need to get all the photos and video clips you are going to use into the Playlist area on the left. I already have a Folder with all these in it on my laptop, so will click on Open File in the top left hand corner, highlight all my files and click Open, which will load all my files into the Playlist in one go.

The default is to "View these as details", but I prefer to see them as thumbnail pictures that fill the screen. To get this view you click on the icon underneath the Playlist that shows nine squares in a block.

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When I click on this I get this view.

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Double-clicking on a picture will load it into the 'view and play' window on the right, so if it's a video clip you can watch it. As Kevin Stratvert said in his video, you can 'trim' your video and remove bits you don't want by dragging those white arrows on the left and right across the 'play line' .. and even split the video to remove part of it.

Grabbing one of my picture/video files I can drag it and drop it on the Timeline. But when I did this it just dropped it where I put it, so it either overlapped the clip before, or ended up on the timeline further on with an olive green box of nothingness in between.

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From watching Kevin's video, the answer to this is to click on the 'magnet' symbol (Toggle snapping) to activate it (as indicated by a dark blue surround) ..

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.. then grab my picture and pull it to the left until it 'sticks' like a magnet to the clip on it's left. You will then have no 'gaps' in your timeline. My picture now looks like this.

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I also had a gap at the start of my video (the video starts at the white line on the left .. at 00:00:00.

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So grabbed that and moved it to the left until it 'stuck' too.

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Watching what Kevin did in his video, I think I shall abort all of this and start again. On my laptop, Windows puts all my clips into alphabetical order, but in the Playlist you can move the clips around into whatever order you want .. and can have duplicates of them. So what I plan on doing now is to move all the clips in the Playlist into the order I want to use them, then 'highlight' them all .. and drop the whole lot onto the timeline in one go. Much quicker than dragging each one individually!

To make a Copy of a clip, you click on it, do a right-click and choose Copy:

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Then click on the clip again, do a right-click and choose Insert. This will put your 'copy' to the left of the original clip.

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And now you have two of them.

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I can (hopefully) change the time each clip shows, but what I had in mind for this was maybe to 'zoom in' on the first one; and then 'zoom out' on the second.

So I have made the 'copies' I wanted and sorted my clips on the Playlist into the order I want them. Highlighted the first one, held down the Shift key and clicked on the last one .. which highlighted them all. Then dragged them down onto the Timeline, which spread it across and way off the edge of the screen. In order to see it all I clicked on the symbol that fits the timeline to the computer's screen.

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This is what I now have.

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Note that I have an 'olive green' rectangle at the 00:00:00 which means I have a bit of 'blank' before the video starts. I won't remove this just now by grabbing and moving the first clip to the left (using the 'magnet' feature) as I may need this area for my Title?

In order to get at the individual clips so I can put in some Transitions and Pans & Zooms (hopefully!) I can expand that Timeline again by pressing the + symbol over the top of the Timeline.

This is probably a good time to SAVE what I have done so far as I don't want to lose it all and have to start again! In the video he says click the SAVE icon at the top as you go along to 'save' your work.

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Trouble with this is that it overrides what you had before. I always prefer to have a New Name for a 'saved' file so you can go back to a previous 'save' if you make a real mess of it. This is rather like when creating a REGISTRATION on the keyboard. SAVE your work with eg. same name but with a number after it. To do that here, click on the Edit tab at the very top, and you get a dropdown box with a Save As... option.

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You will have noticed in the video that he mentions quite a few 'shortcuts' where you press buttons on your computer/laptop to carry out certain functions. Unless I were making videos constantly day in day out I would never remember what these were! So I prefer to work from the icons on the screen. When you hover your mouse over one it tells you what it does.

At the top of the Shotcut screen there is a Help tab. If you click on this you will find some Tutorials you can watch explaining how Shotcut works. The LINK below will take you the Tutorials page. One of the videos is the one I have already put up, by Kevin Stratvert.

Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab.
https://www.shotcut.org/tutorials/

To be continued.
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 12 Dec 2020 21:53

The time photos are displayed

This program sets the 'default' time for photos to be displayed as 4 seconds. Once you have started your project you cannot change this! The only way you can change this time is to do it before you start loading your pictures into the timeline.

With your pictures in the Playlist you do a single left-click on any one of them, then click on Properties (the i) at the top.

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You then get the 'properties' for that picture. Note that the Duration is 'active' (ie. not greyed out), and this is showing the 'default' time of 4 seconds.

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You can change this to whatever time you want using the up/down arrows. Say 7 seconds.

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This becomes the new 'default' time for the project and applies to all the pictures, whether or not you click on Set Default.

So you cannot change the time of individual pictures, and cannot cange the default time of 4 seconds once you have started putting pictures onto the timeline. So for my project all the pictures display for 4 seconds. I can put two pictures the same side by side, and then that would display for 8 seconds etc.
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 13 Dec 2020 00:38

Transitions

Den, you were quite right when you said that to do Transitions you have to 'overlap' clips. To get them to overlap you first have to make sure there is no 'space' between the two clips (indicated by an olive green rectangle). If there is a space, get the 'magnet' activated (it has a dark blue surround when activated) and drag the clip to the left so it 'sticks' to the one next to it. Then grab the clip again and move it across so the two clips overlap. While you are grabbing the picture and moving it across to overlay it, a digital 'time clock' shows letting you know how much 'overlay' you have. This starts with a minus sign. I reckon the overlays should be about 1:00 seconds.

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The default is to get a 'Dissolve'. But you can get others. To get the other Transitions do a right-click over the egg-timer Transition area and choose Properties from the drop-down box.

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Up come the Transitions available. Click on one of them for it to take effect.

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Shotcut Tutorial: Cross-fades and Transitions

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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 13 Dec 2020 12:58

So how am I getting on with this program? Not very well! It takes a while to put a video together even though I know what I want to do as I have already made this video with three other programs. So I SAVED what I had done so far and turned my laptop OFF. When I turned it on again and reloaded my project the screen didn't look the same as before. The Playlist area was black; and once when I did it the Timeline area was black. Took me a wile to realise I could get them back by clicking on the appropriate symbols at the top. There is also an X in the top corner of the Playlist, and if I click on that the Playlist will disappear and go black again. Clicking on the symbol at the top brings it back.

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Then I had more problems when I was doing the Transitions. You have to grab and move your picture over the top of the picture to the left of it, so they overlap about 1:00 seconds. This then gives the Dissolve Transition by default, but you can change that to one of the others (as described in my post above). What I hadn't realised is that as you move the picture to the left, the other pictures to the right are left on the Timeline where they are. So you end up with rectangles of olive green 'space' and you have to grab each picture and move it to the left to 'stick' to the one next to it (**Note** - see below) before you do your next Transition by overlapping.

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There may be a way of dragging all those pictures on the right with you as you do the overlap, then you wouldn't get those olive green 'spaces' .. but I couldn't see how to do that. Still, I have done all my Transitions now and will see how I can do Pan & Zoom.

**Note** - one video I watched said to do a 'right-click' on that olive green area and choose Remove(X). Much easier!
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 13 Dec 2020 22:24

Pan & Zoom

I have double clicked on a picture on the Timeline to select it and get into the top screen. Then clicked on Filters, at the top, which has given me the screen below.

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There is a + in the bottom left corner which says "Add a filter" which I have clicked on, and got this.

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The only option I can see that could refer to Pan & Zoom is Size, Position & Rotate, so I have clicked on that.

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Clicking on the 'down-arrow' by the Preset box I get the following options to choose from.

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These Preset options will do me, so I have chosen Slow zoom in, Hold Top. I shall choose one of these Presets for each of the other static pictures.
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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 16 Dec 2020 16:08

Doing a Title (and Text overlay)

To get a 'text box' click on Open Other (at the top).

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Choose Text from the drop-down box, and you get the below. Type your text into the box.
This is a transparent box, so you can 'overlay' one of the pictures if you want the text to show over it.
I have done this with my final clip.

To have a 'background' to your text, click on Background colour

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.. and you get this to choose from. I have chosen a blue.

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As you can see in the below, transparent has been replaced by the blue colour.
Notice it says, "Text attributes are available in the Filters panel after clicking OK"
This means you can eg. 'Scroll the words upwards' etc. if you want to.

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When you click OK you get this showing in the main display area.

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You then have to expand this box to cover the full screen. So grab a top corner of the white box and pull it up to cover all the blue.

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I realised that my wording was sitting right at the very top of the screen, so in the Text box on the left I put in the mouse cursor top left and did an 'enter' a few of times to move the wording down. As I did it I could see the text moving down in the display screen, so stopped when the text was positioned on the screen shot as above.

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Next, you need to get back to the Playlist, so click the symbol for that at the top.

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Now grab the picture (ie, click with the mouse, hold it down and drag the picture across the screen) and drop it into the Playlist ready to put on the Timeline. You can drop it straight onto the Timeline if you want to, but I prefer to put it into the Playlist first .. and then grab it and drop it from there later when I have decided what I want to do.

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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 16 Dec 2020 18:24

Adding Audio

Having completed the video part of my project, I now need to add the audio.

In the area under the timeline for the video, do a right-click and in the box that comes up. choose Track Operations, Add Audio Track.

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A box comes up showing the Folders on your computer. Found the MP3 and clicked on it. The sound track was added to the project.

I then decided to listen to the completed project right through, with the sound. This was a disaster! The movement along the track was so jumpy, with the sound coming through in 'bursts', it just wasn't possible to listen to it in any meaningful way. Keeping my fingers crossed as I turn this into an MP4 file!

Exporting the completed Project as MP4

Click on Export.

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In the Export Panel I just clicked on Export File (ie. I didn't choose a Preset).

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The resultant MP4 file was fine, and below is my video on YouTube.

But, WARNING!! ...

In other programs they show you how far they have got with the MP4 'processing' (which is quite a long time! Go make a cup of tea!). But in Shotcut there is no indication of where the program has got to with the processing. Don't interrupt what it is doing by trying to do something else on the computer. Wait till it has finished. I know. You're asking! Haven't a clue! Went and had some supper before looking for the MP4 file again. Eventually I did get my MP4 to post up on YouTube.

Click the back arrow after watching to get back to this page.

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Not a bad result.

But ...

I had to cut my audio track down as it was too long. In other programs I have just changed the length of time the pictures show for and this adds in those extra seconds. But as I said, once I had started this project all the pictures were displayed for the 'default' of 4 seconds. And that also caused a problem with 'effects' applied to a picture. Four seconds was too short a time to show the effects in a meaningful way. There would have been a lot more movement if the picture had shown for 7 seconds.

I could have just added more pictures to my project to make it longer (and therefore match the time of the audio), but I couldn't work out how to add another picture into the Timeline without it either doing an 'overlay' on another picture, or 'splitting' an existing picture into two parts. I have watched quite a few videos on how to do things in Shotcut but they go through things too fast for me to pick up what they are doing. Maybe this video will explain better how to do things.

Shotcut Video Editor - Tutorial for Beginners in 10 MINS! [ 2020 ]

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Re: Shotcut, FREE Video Editing Program

Postby Hugh-AR » 21 Dec 2020 22:08

How to create a revealing text effect and other cool effects in Shotcut

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