Shotcut is a multi-track video editor that opens almost any media format natively, with keyframed filters, colour grading and scopes, subtitle tools, audio mixing, proxy editing, and hardware-accelerated export.
Shotcut is a timeline-based video editor that works directly with source files instead of converting them first. Media is dropped onto a multitrack timeline with thumbnails and waveforms, trimmed with ripple or roll edits, and arranged with three-point editing, insert, and overwrite controls. Filters are applied per clip, their parameters keyframed with easing functions, and the result viewed in real time or through a lower-resolution preview when the footage is heavy. Subtitles can be created, imported, burned in, or exported, and finished projects are rendered through presets or queued as batch jobs.
Two capabilities keep Shotcut useful on demanding projects. Speech recognition, built on a Whisper model, turns an audio track into a subtitle track that can be corrected and exported, which removes most of the typing from captioning. The other is the colour workflow: three-way wheels for shadows, midtones, and highlights, an eyedropper for white balance, 3D LUT support, and live scopes for waveform, parade, and vectorscope readings. Audio is treated seriously too, with loudness and spectrum scopes, mixing across tracks, and filters ranging from equalisers to noise reduction. Kdenlive is the closer match for multicam editing and proxy-heavy team workflows, while Shotcut leans towards format flexibility and built-in capture.
What makes Shotcut worth installing is that it removes the usual friction around media. Files open without an import step, mixed resolutions and frame rates coexist on one timeline, and image sequences, animations, and network streams are treated as ordinary clips. That flexibility matters when a project pulls footage from a phone, a camera, and a screen recording, because nothing has to be transcoded before editing starts. The subtitle and speech-recognition tools handle captioning inside the same project, the scopes make colour decisions measurable rather than instinctive, and the audio side covers mixing and voiceover recording without another application. Preview scaling and proxy editing keep heavy footage responsive on hardware that would otherwise struggle, and hardware acceleration applies to both decoding and export. Batch jobs then process a folder of edits unattended.
Key capabilities and highlights.
Shotcut opens hundreds of audio and video formats through FFmpeg without an import or conversion step, and a single project can mix resolutions and frame rates. Image sequences, animated vector files, and network streams are treated as ordinary clips, and seeking is frame accurate for most sources.
Subtitles can be typed, imported from common caption formats, edited on a dedicated panel, burned into the picture, or exported as a separate file. Speech recognition based on a Whisper model can generate the first draft of a subtitle track from the audio, which turns captioning an interview into a review task.
The filter set covers chroma key, several blur and noise-reduction variants, crop and mask shapes, lens correction, sharpen, glow, and old-film treatments, alongside text and audio visualisation generators. Tracks composite with blending modes such as screen, overlay, and HSL options, and each filter parameter accepts keyframes with easing.
Three-way colour wheels adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights, an eyedropper sets white balance from a neutral point in the frame, and LUT files apply a prepared look. Histogram, parade, waveform, and vectorscope views update during playback, so grading decisions can be checked against numbers as well as the monitor.
Shotcut mixes audio across all tracks and offers loudness, peak meter, waveform, and spectrum scopes for judging a mix. Filters include equalisers, compressors, limiters, noise gates, pitch shifting, and noise reduction, and a voiceover can be recorded straight onto the timeline instead of imported from another application.
Heavy footage can be edited against lower-resolution proxy clips, and preview scaling reduces the resolution used for real-time playback, which keeps effects and seeking responsive on modest hardware. Export always uses the original media and the selected output settings, so preview shortcuts never reach the delivered file.
Image processing runs on the GPU through OpenGL with multi-core parallelism, and hardware decoding performs the scaling and encoding work on supported chips. Those paths matter most on long 4K or 8K timelines, where software-only processing would make every preview and export noticeably slower.
Screen, webcam, and audio can be captured into a project, and the timeline can be monitored on an external display or through professional capture hardware. Rendering supports presets, streams, and batch jobs with job control, so a set of exports can be queued rather than run one at a time.
Browse historical releases and previous builds.
Common questions about Shotcut.
Editing projects that mix media from different sources, since files open natively without conversion. It suits tutorials, interviews, screen recordings, and short films, and the built-in colour scopes, subtitle tools, and audio mixing mean most finished work does not need a second application.
Yes. A speech recognition tool based on Whisper analyses the audio and produces a subtitle track that appears in the subtitles panel, where the text and timing can be corrected. Importing existing caption files and exporting the result, or burning the subtitles into the picture, are handled from the same panel.
Not necessarily. Preview scaling and proxy editing reduce the resolution used during editing, so large files stay workable on ordinary machines, and hardware decoding and encoding help where the chips support it. Export always returns to the original media and the full output settings.
Renders go through presets for web platforms and standard delivery formats, with control over codecs, bitrates, and quality settings, plus streaming output and image sequences. Audio can be exported separately, and a batch of jobs can be queued to run one after another.
Yes. Screen and webcam capture are supported, audio can be recorded from a microphone or system device, and a voiceover can be laid down directly onto the timeline while the project plays. That removes the need to record in one program and sync the file in another.
Shotcut sits between the simplest cutters and heavier suites: more format depth, scopes, and audio tools than a basic editor, but fewer automation features than editors built for team workflows. It is often chosen when media arrives in awkward formats and conversion is not an option.
Shotcut is a multi-track video editor that opens almost any media format natively, with keyframed filters, colour grading and scopes, subtitle tools, audio mixing, proxy editing, and hardware-accelerated export.
Subtitle Edit is a subtitle editor that creates, fixes, converts, and translates captions, working across hundreds of file formats. It adds a waveform and spectrogram timeline, speech recognition, and OCR for subtitles locked inside video files.
Kdenlive is a multi-track video editor with keyframed effects, titling, subtitle tools, colour scopes, and proxy editing for large footage. It covers cutting and finishing work in one application without a subscription.
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