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Shotcut

You get a lot for free in Shotcut, an open source video editing program.

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THE BOTTOM LINE

You get a lot for free in Shotcut, an open source video editing program, but don’t expect the slick interface or advanced techniques of the top paid apps.

MSRP Free
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

PROS

  • Surprisingly powerful for a free program.
  • Lots of output formats.
  • Chroma keying and filter effects.

CONS

  • Less intuitive than commercial applications.
  • Few transitions.
  • No built-in sharing to popular sites.
  • No 360 VR or 3D support.
For those who don’t want to pay for slick interface design and all the latest features, there’s always open-source software. In some cases, like the GIMP photo app, you take a huge usability hit, but video editing software Shortcut is only moderately less usable than the commercial offerings like PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio. Shotcut offers many standard video editing features, and after you spend a little time figuring it out, it’s not that hard to use. It’s free, too, so you have nothing to lose by kicking the tires.

Pricing and Starting Up

Shotcut is available for Windows (both 32- and 64-bit), Mac, and Linux. It runs on Windows 7 through Windows 10; for Apple desktops, macOS 10.8 and later is supported; Linux machines need at least GLIBC(Opens in a new window) 2.13. Your CPU should be 2GHz, with 4 cores for 4K video, and you need 4GB RAM for SD video, 8GB for HD video, and 16GB for 4K video. In addition, your GPU must support OpenGL 2.0 or DirectX 9 or 11. For a video editor, it’s a lightweight download of only 184MB. It’s updated with surprising regularity for an open source app, and on first run the app asks to check if you’re running the latest version. I tested on my trusty Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IC, with a 4K touch screen and running 64-bit Windows 10 Pro.

 
 

Interface

Shotcut’s interface, as you might expect of an open-source multimedia application, is far more bare-bones than any of the commercial video editors I’ve tested—at least to start with. Once you open a video file and click on the timeline button, however, it starts looking more like a regular video editing application, with source clips in a panel at top left, preview window at top right, and the timeline along the bottom. As with Vegas Movie Studio , the panels are undockable, offering good interface customization—especially on multi-monitor systems.

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