Shotcut

External Monitor with a System Display

Three years ago, when we upgraded our UI library to a major new version, we lost support for using an additional system display as an external monitor. Many people were disappointed to lose that feature. Now, after a major change to the video plumbing, it is back!

The External Monitor submenu is moved from Settings to the top of the Player menu. It is incompatible with newly added Settings > Player > Use Old Video Output (provided just in case the new plumbing does not work).

The new plumbing also provides a way to preview HDR video except, for technology reasons, it must be shown in a separate window...

HDR Video Preview and Export

As a quick reminder for those unfamiliar: "HDR" means high dynamic range, not high definition resolution. It is about expanded color and light. A lot of phones and cameras are recording with this today, and many people are not aware until they try to edit and run into problems. Also, HDR game captures on computers is increasingly common. A year ago, we added very limited, hidden support for editing HDR video because, basically, we had no way to display it without a device from Blackmagic Design. Now, there is a way.

• Added Player > External Monitor > Preview Window (HDR) that can be made fullscreen.
• It also works for SDR.
• HDR requires a display properly configured with HDR, Native 10-bit CPU or Linear 10-bit GPU/CPU processing modes, and HDR video sources.
• For HDR, only use filters tagged with #gpu or #10bit.
• It does not appear to work on Linux, at least I have not been able to get it working.
• Switching between PQ HDR (HDR10) and HLG HDR requires restarting the app.
• The default shortcut to open or raise the preview window is <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>`</kbd>. It does not toggle between open and close because raise is more convenient.
• You can move the window by clicking anywhere inside except the controls bar and dragging.
• <kbd>F</kbd> toggles fullscreen and <kbd>Esc</kbd> also leaves fullscreen.
• Incompatible with Use Old Video Output.
• Added Dynamic range to custom Video Mode and Timeline Properties.

This offers SDR, which follows the colorspace, HLG HDR, and PQ HDR.

• At this time, Shotcut only supports converting log profile video to HDR with GPU processing mode and HLG HDR video mode.

And it cannot convert between HDR formats or combine multiple HDR formats within a project.

• Added support for PQ HDR (HDR10) to External Monitor > DeckLink.
• Added support for HDR to Export (based on Video Mode and 10-bit processing mode).
• Added HDR10 metadata dialogs for External Monitor > DeckLink and Export > Codec.

Export only embeds HDR10 metadata for the libx265 and libsvtav1 video codecs and no hardware encoders.

• TODO: Properties > Convert and View > Resources > Convert do not support 10-bit yet; that will be added in the next release.

External Plugins

We added limited support for external audio and video plugins.

"Limited" means it does not support a plugin's included UI, and our UI generator is new and experimental. That means you can only try it if you are an advanced user who knows how to supply a command line option to reveal the new UI generator. There are many mysterious effects, and uncertainty if things are working correctly. As a result, the user experience is not yet good enough with an increased risk of crash.

"External" means both effects included with Shotcut but not yet available in the UI or plugins that you install yourself to the standard, expected location for your OS.

OpenFX Image Effect Plugins

• Added a UI (--experimental not required) for NTSC-rs.
• Limited compatibility: not available, seems to do nothing, or makes the video black.
• No support for plugins that operate temporally or require mu

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Shotcut - a free, open source, cross-platform video editor

<div align="center">

<img src="https://www.shotcut.org/assets/img/screenshots/Shotcut-18.11.18.png" alt="screenshot" />

</div>

• Features: https://www.shotcut.org/features/
• Roadmap: https://www.shotcut.org/roadmap/

Install

Binaries are regularly built and are available at https://www.shotcut.org/download/.

Contributors

• Dan Dennedy <<http://www.dennedy.org>> : main author
• Brian Matherly <<code@brianmatherly.com>> : contributor

Dependencies

Shotcut's direct (linked or hard runtime) dependencies are:

• MLT: multimedia authoring framework
• Qt 6 (6.4 minimum): application and UI framework
• FFTW
• FFmpeg: multimedia format and codec libraries
• Frei0r: video plugins
• SDL: cross-platform audio playback

See https://shotcut.org/credits/ for a more complete list including indirect

and bundled dependencies.

License

GPLv3. See COPYING.

How to build

Warning: building Shotcut should only be reserved to beta testers or contributors who know what they are doing.

Qt Creator

The fastest way to build and try Shotcut development version is through Qt Creator.

From command line

First, check dependencies are satisfied and various paths are correctly set to find different libraries and include files (Qt, MLT, frei0r and so forth).

Configure

In a new directory in which to make the build (separate from the source):

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local/ /path/to/shotcut

We recommend using the Ninja generator by adding -GNinja to the above command line.

Build

cmake --build .

Install

If you do not install, Shotcut may fail when you run it because it cannot locate its QML

files that it reads at run-time.

cmake --install .

Translation

If you want to translate Shotcut to another language, please use Transifex.